Indya: Hello. It’s so nice to be here with you. Honestly, I’ve had some of the most fun I’ve ever had on a shoot.
Justin Campbell: I am too. I feel like what you and I were able to do, that I don’t think you’ve been able to do before, was capture you in a raw way.
Indya: It’s amazing that you created this space for me to bring myself in this way—such a raw way. Being a model, so much of it’s like acting for me. I got to bring myself to a fantasy, to a story that we were telling. That’s something I’ve never done before in fashion. It was truly a beautiful experience and reaffirmed that I am enough.
JC: Has that always been easy for you? Have you always had that inner anchor to something where you felt you are enough?
Indya: Well, it’s something I grew into. I think everyone comes into this world knowing they’re enough. We just come into this world, not even thinking about it, being our full selves. Then there are so many influences that we have, different messages that we’re challenged by that become obstacles to our own access to ourselves later on. I think everyone in this world fights with what the standard is for being, what the standard is for doing. And finding our way around that as queer people, as trans people, as people of color—it can be really challenging. There are many ways I’ve had to discover and rediscover that I am enough. The first being my identity, and who I am, and in my queerness, and my transness, and also in my blackness, and my brownness, and my indignity.
When I was younger, I didn’t like the size of my lips. I wanted my lips to be smaller; I wanted my hair to be straighter; I wanted my skin to be lighter. And learning about my history, about how my ancestors looked and loving myself through identifying with my parents and my family, all of that was essential to having an anchor in my identity and in my own body.
So many influences that make us feel like we need to change, like we need to do things differently. We have to adopt different power dynamics or ideas about power, or owning the room, or whatever that means. I’ve learned to accept myself and come into the space as myself, and to be comfortable sharing space with other people in the room, and not needing to dominate anything in order to feel fulfilled or like I have access. It’s just this huge space of unhealthy competition, right? It cuts away at who we are in spirit and who we get to be to each other. So in reorienting my own perspectives, I got to redefine for myself what it means to hold space for other people, and myself, and to learn that these two things can coexist at the same time.
JC: You’re pointing out something that’s really important for people to hear, which is this idea of making space. I think when you come from being a minority, in a marginalized group or part of the queer community, you feel like you’re in survival mode, and that instinct to survive is drilled into you. Is there something specific that you attribute that unlearning process to, to be able to say “I am enough,” but also, “There’s enough space for everyone”?
Indya: I came into this space wanting to investigate what it means for people to move from an individual to a collective. I think about what the obstacles are in that. I think about it all the time, because so much of my life—growing up in foster care, in so many different ways, even just being a trans woman—I’m constantly being treated like I’m taking something from somebody else.
Foster care is a space where everyone is afraid of not having the attention that they need in order to survive and thrive. I just had to grow into finding other ideas and perspectives. They say you can’t love other people until you love yourself. I think there’s a larger reflection: We can’t love this planet and hold care for other forms of life that don’t feel, think and exist the same way we do if we don’t create space for one another.
JC: Do you feel like you’re in a place where you do love yourself?
Indya: Every day I’m learning the different ways that I have to love myself. I’m constantly growing, and I feel like I’m having a death and a rebirth every day. I have so many different experiences that I don’t expect to have, and I have to quickly learn how to navigate them. I try not to be too hard on myself for not knowing how to deal with certain things right away. I have to give myself space and time, and that has been instrumental in me learning how to love myself every day. I’m going to say yes, I do love myself every day. I do love myself every day, as much as I can.
JC: If you were to close your eyes and imagine yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you, what would you see?
Indya: I’d see myself through the eyes of my mother. First, I’d see the baby that my mom fell in love with when I was born, and the hope. I’d see the pride in seeing how this baby has grown. I’d see the sorrow for the ways my mother didn’t understand how to approach how I was growing and developing. I’d see gratitude for my health and my strength, and for how I’ve learned to take care of myself. And I’d see the pride and love in my fire, because my mother always talks about how my attitude toward being disrespected, or seeing other people hurt, reminds her of herself.
JC: You brought up earlier that you grew up in foster care, and you just touched on that emotional journey with your mother. Are you in a place today where you’re happy?
Indya: Very happy. And also, I had to go. I pushed to be in foster care because I didn’t feel I would survive emotionally at home. I think most parents who are Christian or Orthodox—any Abrahamic faith—may misperceive or confuse their child’s identity or sexuality as bad behavior. I was over disciplined for just existing in a way that is perceived as an anomaly. I also had to think about how my parents were entire beings before I was born. They’re not here on this planet to serve me and to understand me. They were entire people before I came into this planet; so being able to wrap my mind around the ways that they love me, and the limitations around the space that they were able to create for me as a queer or trans person, was so instrumental in us coming together. I think there are a lot of ways that I was able to learn from my parents’ compassion, but there are a lot of ways that my parents also learned from my compassion for them. It couldn’t have happened unless we sat down and listened.
JC: You said something that’s so important: the power of listening and how much we can heal by sitting down and listening to one another. Because through listening, we can find compassion and understanding, and we can also relate.
Indya: Listening is an important segue for reasoning and understanding. I was born into a family that understood queerness and transness as a spiritual demise. I grew up with that understanding, so I always thought, “This is who my parents are,” because it was the only understanding that I had of them in the culture that I grew up in. I don’t blame my parents for a lot of their thinking and beliefs because that’s what they were taught—through teachings of salvation, through cultural principles that were passed down from a very long time ago, and through colonialism. I’m not here to argue about other people’s belief systems, but I am here as proof that human beings don’t know everything, and human beings make mistakes about each other all the time. It’s important for us to allow each other opportunities to grow and heal instead of holding people to their mistakes forever.
JC: Do you feel that the fashion industry has done that for you?
Indya: It’s definitely been a battle in TV, film and fashion. I came into these spaces already knowing who I was. The industry still struggles with artists and people who know who they are and what they need. I’m often branded as difficult or complicated because I advocate for other people’s safety, or the culture of treatment.
Everybody was treating me, like, “She don’t know how things go down here?” It was a huge culture shock for me, coming into this industry. I had to learn how to navigate these complexities, so I wasn’t dismissed as someone who wasn’t meant to be here. I’m somebody who’s been deeply traumatized by hurt, harm and violence, that’s inspired by a lot of the same attitudes that people in powerful positions carry and act on in different ways that don’t, necessarily, amount to physical violence.
This thing that I’m hearing—that I’m complicated or difficult—I often think about the people who carry this narrative and ignore my growth. I think about how a lot of these same people want to work with other folks who truly do treat people with less power like crap or poorly, or less than what they deserve. I think everyone is still learning that this isn’t the only possible model that exists for success. People often treat me like I’m lucky to be here. I think if I was in a position of power—and I had the same grievances, or I had the same preferences around the importance of my travel, security, food and shelter in this industry—I would be respected if I had more power.
JC: You said something that I want to touch on. You said you’re often made to feel you’re lucky to be here.
Indya:It’s the challenge of being committed to who you are and creating with that; and that creation being connected to the spirit of who you are, and not being severed, right? So protecting that, and moving into an industry with that intact, doesn’t make us lucky. It makes us valuable. It makes us all an asset, right? To each other.
JC: And I think standing up for your principles and your beliefs is not a lack of gratitude. That’s the narrative that people want to create, like, “Oh, you’re not grateful for being here if you have a problem with the way things are.”
Indya: The way that things go—yeah.
JC: And they’re not synonymous.
Indya: It’s really unfair. First of all, I’m incapable of doing any good work without gratitude. I can’t do a good job if I don’t have gratitude, right?
JC: You’ve been one of the most gracious people I’ve ever worked with. You showed up; you were extremely collaborative; you were extremely hardworking, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. It angers me so much to hear you repeating a narrative that I’ve heard before but never experienced. It’s crazy. I think it’s so insane the way marginalized people, women, the queer community, get mislabeled for speaking up.
Indya: People don’t want to see me successful. There are a lot of reasons why I’m a threat, which I don’t perceive myself as. But to the people who want to uphold a lot of the ways that this industry works, that’s not going to work. Me being in this industry inherently destabilizes the way that people have been working for years, right? It’s not me who is difficult to work with—or complicated, or whatever words that they use—it’s those people who are undiplomatic, and who are unwilling to listen and create space for the truth.
Again, I think it’s this idea that I don’t have gratitude. I know myself very deeply, and it’s those people who carry this narrative, I feel, who lack gratitude—lack gratitude for the opportunity that they have to work with me. They dismiss the value that I bring to every space I come into. They dismiss the ways I amplify the value all around me, and the spaces that we share. I am honest. I am honest in an industry and in a world of smoke and mirrors. I’ve worked very hard to step into that space. I’m 27 years old. I’ve been working in these spaces for four or five years now, which isn’t very long, but it’s long enough for me to see what’s really going on. I am not difficult to work with; I am healing; I am honest, and I am deeply compassionate and caring about what’s happening around me, not just with me.
JC: I love you so much. It’s been an honor to work with you, to interview you, to see you let your wall down and let me see you for who you are. And I hope, in turn, I can let people see who you are. This is why you’re on the cover of our Rebel issue—because you are a rebel.
Indya: Thank you so much. Yes, I am a rebel only to the things that keep us all from being all that we are.