Yazzie Chee was looking for direction in his life when he ran into a friend on a bus near Eugene in the fall of 2018. Chee, just a few months past high school graduation, was homeless and unsure of his next steps. He was en route to the skate park, his refuge in times of stress.
Chee’s friend was headed to Lane Community College.
“He looked at me, and he was like, ‘Yazzie, you’re a really smart kid. I think that you should consider going to college,’” said Chee, 22. “Nobody had ever really told that to me.”
Even finishing high school was a feat for Chee, whose educational path was anything but stable. Chee didn’t learn to read until the fourth grade, after spending his youngest years bouncing from state to state, living with relatives and in foster homes as his parents struggled with addiction and legal troubles. After moving to Creswell at the end of eighth grade, Chee attended four high schools in as many years.
But that chance encounter in fall 2018 inspired Chee to apply for college and kicked off a new journey that those closest to him say transformed him into a leader. In three years at Lane Community College and two at the University of Oregon, Chee reconnected with his Navajo roots and became active in Indigenous student communities. He will celebrate graduation at the University of Oregon’s 2023 Native Graduation Ceremony on Sunday, then spend the summer and fall finishing up the last few credits he needs to earn a degree.
Chee plans to attend law school and eventually move closer to the Navajo Nation, which spans more than 27,000 square miles across northeastern Arizona and into New Mexico and Utah.
“I would like to be a presence on my reservation and to give opportunities to people that were in similar situations as me growing up,” Chee said. “People that don’t have access to resources or don’t have a strong parental figure in their life. Somebody that didn’t have anybody to tell them that they were worth anything, or that they could succeed.”
CONNECTING WITH NAVAJO ROOTS
When former Lane Community College Native American Student Program Coordinator Lori Tapahonso met Chee in his first year at college, he was quiet, she remembers. He wasn’t comfortable yet asking for help, Tapahonso said.
Tapahonso worked to create an environment at Lane that offered students unconditional support, she said. She checked in on Chee regularly and invited him to Indigenous events. Sometimes, he would respond or show up to a meeting, she said. Other times, he wouldn’t. But her arms were always open.
“It’s about always letting students know that we see you, we remember you and we want you to be a part of this community,” Tapahonso said.
Chee struggled in those first few months. He’d spent his final years of high school taking online classes, then earning credits at an alternative school while he cleaned hotels and worked at JCPenney to support himself and pay rent.
Many students in his situation would have dropped out.
Chee usually found a place to stay with his brother or a friend, but without stable nighttime housing he met the state’s definition of a student experiencing homelessness – just 59% of whom graduate high school. Jumping from school to school can also exacerbate the likelihood a student will leave school early, studies find.
“It was really extremely hard,” Chee said of his high school and grade school years. “I felt very much like I was on my own – not to say there weren’t people out there looking out for me and helping – but I was living a life as an adult while a kid and expected to provide things for myself.”
Chee says he never considered dropping out. Once, when he missed a few weeks of online school for work, he was dropped from the program and told he couldn’t graduate, Chee said. He enrolled in an alternative school instead and powered through credits to graduate on time.
Education seemed to be an anchor for Chee, said high school friend Jose Fernandez.
“No matter what else was changing around him, he had that constant, even if it was a different school,” Fernandez said. “For eight hours a day, he could have this almost safe thing, you know?”
Chee persisted at Lane, too. After twice failing remedial math – a troublesome barrier for students considered underprepared for college level classes – he passed the class with a B. He also began to open up to Tapahonso and asked about their shared Navajo heritage.
Chee spent some time as a child on the Navajo Nation reservation, but he mostly grew up in Oregon and California.
He often felt in between two worlds: isolated as an Indigenous teen growing up in mostly white environments but not fully connected to his Navajo roots. Chee has a tenuous relationship with his Navajo father and hasn’t been able to acquire a tribal enrollment number, which bars him from accessing resources like scholarships available to documented tribal members.
Tapahonso and Chee would talk about what it means to identify as Navajo. She gave him books on the foundational beliefs and philosophies of Navajo culture. They traced his lineage and learned that Chee’s family line is from a part of the Navajo Nation maybe 20 miles from her family. People from that area are known leaders, Tapahonso said.
“There is nothing that a piece of paper can tell you that your ancestors haven’t already told you,” Tapahonso said. “He had to tune into that instinctual feeling within himself.”
Chee came back to Lane for his second year more confident, Tapahonso said. He attended Native American Student Association meetings and volunteered to plan the student retreat. Tapahonso has used his story as an example of the success that creating a supportive college environment can generate.
Chee gives Tapahonso the credit. Not only was she a cultural mentor who helped him make connections he’d been yearning for, she was also a stable and trusted adult when he had few others to rely on.
“I leaned on her very heavily,” Chee said. “Being able to ask her for guidance when I didn’t have that was super important.”
Yazzie Chee, who was named Mr. Indigenous UO by the Native American Student Union at the University of Oregon, is pictured at WJ Skatepark in Eugene, Oregon on Saturday, June 10, 2023.Sean Meagher/The Oregonian
‘HE’S BECOME HIS OWN ROLE MODEL’
Chee transferred to the University of Oregon in 2021 with help from a prestigious Ford Family Foundation scholarship that helps pay for his tuition and expenses. He’s pursuing a bachelor’s in general social science with a concentration in law, crime and society and a minor in Native American studies.
He joined DucksRISE, a grant-funded program that helps first-generation and low-income students build professional skills and a network. The program helped him connect with internships at a law firm, the Urban League of Portland and a nonprofit called the Civil Liberties Defense Center.
Chee also connected with fellow Indigenous student activists, organizing an awareness event this spring for missing and murdered Indigenous people.
Jane Kissinger, a University of Oregon researcher who has known Chee for several years, said Lane helped shape Chee into the man he is today before Oregon gave him a platform to flourish.
“He loves giving back to the community, especially since he came to college and found one,” Kissinger said. “I think he went through a lot of his life with no role models or community. He’s kind of become his own role model, and he’s become mine.”
At the university’s Mother’s Day Powwow this spring, Chee was crowned Mr. Indigenous UO, an ambassador position in which he aims to help other people who are working to reconnect to their cultures.
“There’s tons of people that are in the process of reconnecting and are constantly asking themselves if they’re Indigenous enough,” Chee told student newspaper The Daily Emerald. “My biggest goal is to reach out to those people and connect with them and give them resources.”
Tapahonso, who has since moved to New Mexico, helped Chee buy moccasins for the event and sent him Navajo-specific items for his outfit. Chee invited her back to Eugene this weekend to participate in his graduation ceremony.
“I just cannot wait to see what he does in life,” Tapahonso said. “I just know that whatever it is, he’s going to pay it forward. He will transform lives.”
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Sami Edge covers higher education for The Oregonian. You can reach her at sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.