This Navajo student is likely the first-ever Native speaker at a University of Utah graduation. Here’s what she said.

When staff at the University of Utah told her what they’d found — or really, what they hadn’t found — Tracie Yellowman Tséyíníítsó shook her head in disbelief.

Librarians had flipped through decades of yellowed yearbooks. And they’d combed through pages of old student newspapers. They researched the name of each commencement speaker they came across from the U.’s past. They couldn’t find any like her.

In the first few words of her speech Thursday night, Yellowman Tséyíníítsó captured why: “Yá’át’ééh,” she said. “Hello.”

“Ákót’éego diné asdzáán nishłį́,” she added. “I am a proud Diné (Navajo) woman.”

In her time at the podium, Yellowman Tséyíníítsó made history: She’s believed to be the first-ever Native American student graduation speaker in 175 years at the state’s flagship school.

Buu Nygren, the president of the Navajo Nation, attended the ceremony Thursday to celebrate the milestone and personally congratulate Yellowman Tséyíníítsó. He said she likely has the distinction, too, of being the first Navajo speaker to talk at any major university’s graduation in the country.

Yellowman Tséyíníítsó still couldn’t believe it.

“Coming from where I come from, and then things I’ve experienced in my life, I never thought that I would be able to make my mark in a good, positive way for my community and for my people,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I feel honored.”

Her husband, Therill, tells her she’s far too humble. She didn’t mention to him when she submitted her speech, because she didn’t think it would be picked. When she made it to the Top 10, she only brought it up in passing.

But her family wasn’t surprised that Yellowman Tséyíníítsó — a horse-riding and professional pipe-welding mother of three, as well as a nontraditional student who believes wholly in her cultural traditions — would be a trailblazer. They’ve watched her do it all her life.

Her husband, their kids — Rylan, Loxley and Penelope — plus her parents, sisters and brothers filled rows of the Huntsman Center on Thursday, cheering louder even than the roar that erupted at the end of her speech. Her two young daughters, ages 4 and 6, excitedly waved from their seats.

Yellowman Tséyíníítsó, 43, said her ancestors were with her for the monumental moment, too, carried in the Navajo regalia she wore under her black graduation gown — the ribbon skirt made for the occassion, the red-and-silver necklace passed down to her, a pin representing her faith in Azeé Hinááh (the ceremonial way of life) and her traditional moccasins. Her hair was tied in a tsiiyéél knot.

Wrapped over her left shoulder, she had a bright turquoise blanket like the ones her grandmothers used to carry on the reservation in southern Utah. They used to say to her: “This is my protection. This is my shield.” And Yellowman Tséyíníítsó felt that same protection Thursday as she fought against her nerves before walking up to the microphone.

She tried to channel the legacy, too, of her “great grandfather many times over,” who saved her people long ago but “doesn’t get recognized a lot through history.”

“I stand before you today carrying the strength of my ancestors, a lineage of warriors, particularly Hastíín K’aayéliii,” she said to the crowd. His “resilience is instilled within me today and has given me the strength to survive and thrive not only in my everyday life but in my educational journey.”

That journey, she said, was unconventional, but she’s proud of where it’s brought her.

Learning from ‘very strong women’

Yellowman Tséyíníítsó grew up in the small southern Utah town of Díwóózhi Bíkóh’, which sits between Aneth and Blanding and was formerly a trading post. It’s named for the greasewood shrubs that root strongly in the dry desert dirt — a fitting metaphor for her life.

She went to school just outside of the reservation but spent her summers on the land of her grandparents, where there was no running water or electricity. Her grandmas, in particular, tended to hundreds of sheep, and Yellowman Tséyíníítsó said she learned from the “very strong women where I come from.”

They told her from a young age that education was vital — in her teachings at school, as well as the traditional ways of the Navajo people. They pushed for her to develop a strong work ethic and resiliency.

“Education was always a big thing that was instilled in me,” she said.

Yellowman Tséyíníítsó graduated from her local high school and went on to what was then called the College of Eastern Utah (now Utah State University Eastern). She got her associate degree in 2001.

She transferred to Utah State University in Logan to purse a degree in engineering. A year in, though, she had to step away to help her family.

Her dad worked in industrial construction, and she had picked up some lessons from him over past summers. So she trained to become a certified pipe welder to make some money. She found a passion for it.

The job led her to sites across the country and, in a way, to her husband. Therill is also in construction, working as an ironworker now in the Ironworkers Local 27 union in Salt Lake City.

The two had grown up just a few miles apart, separated by a canyon in southern Utah, but had never met. Their parents, though, knew each other and conspired behind the scenes to get them together.

They got married in 2005 and started to raise their family before another unexpected turn pushed Yellowman Tséyíníítsó back to education 17 years later.

A health scare leads to health education

Her hand throbbed as she gripped the steering wheel and pulled into the parking lot for her shift at the refinery in North Salt Lake.

When she pulled out the keys, Yellowman Tséyíníítsó saw her fingers were swelling and had turned a sickly bright red. She’d seen that color before in the hot glow of the pipes she torched.

“The pain kept growing,” she recalled from that day in 2021. “It just kept growing.”

She thought she might be able to power through work that day — she’s as stubborn as she is humble, her husband tells her — but instead it was the start of a yearlong battle that included three surgeries to save her arm and her life.

Doctors still don’t know what caused the infection in her blood. “They never pinpointed it,” Yellowman Tséyíníítsó said. “But they said I’d never be able to weld again.”

In a bed at the University of Utah Hospital during recovery, she grew restless and worried about losing what she had grown to love. She wanted to be productive.

“I always wanted to go back to school and finish,” she remembers thinking, “so I applied to go back to USU.”

She took online classes with the school for a year, but it was pricey because she didn’t qualify for scholarships as a part-time student.

At the same time, she returned to her job at the refinery. She had bested even the best predictions for the functionality of her hand. But it wasn’t enough to pay the bills, and with some PTSD each time she tied her boots, she realized it wasn’t what she wanted any more.

By luck, she said, she happened to see an advertisement for the U.’s Native scholarship program, which covers the costs for Indigenous students to attend the university.

Yellowman Tséyíníítsó worried about whether her family — with her youngest daughter then about a year and a half old — would be able to manage. Her husband assured her they would. And so she enrolled in spring 2023 full-time.

There aren’t many Native students at the U., despite the school’s longstanding connection to the Ute Indian Tribe of Utah; the count for this most recent spring semester was 146 out of 36,500 total students, or less than half of a percentage.

It made Yellowman Tséyíníítsó a bit nervous. So did returning to campus after being away from school for so long.

In her commencement speech, she recalled walking into her first class with a spiral-bound notebook only to look around at her younger classmates whose faces were all “lit by personal devices.” The crowd laughed with her.

“I couldn’t help but feel out of place, wondering if I belonged,” she said from the podium. “I even questioned whether I was doing the right thing. But I remembered something of my ancestors: we are equipped with the tools to endure and adapt, and with the courage to overcome.”

She had one goal: get her degree no matter what it took. And she found her rhythm, she said. She also enjoyed getting to overlap in her education with her son, who is 18 and was attending classes at the U. for his freshman year.

“I realized that no matter our age, where we come from, how we look, what we believe, we are all students on that same educational path: learning, growing, and striving to be the best versions of ourselves,” she said in her speech.

Samantha Eldridge, director of the U.’s Center for Native Excellence & Tribal Engagement, told The Tribune that Yellowman Tséyíníítsó is an example to both Indigenous and nontraditional students — inspiring all who might not think that there’s a place in higher education for them.

“Her story is a powerful example of resilience, commitment and the transformational impact of investing in Native student success,” Eldridge said.

Already, at a blanket ceremony for Native students earlier in the week, one woman approached Yellowman Tséyíníítsó and said she felt inspired to go back to school.

At the U., Yellowman Tséyíníítsó also decided to pursue a new direction inspired by her own health trial: health and kinesiology with an emphasis in health education and promotion.

While she had been in the U. Hospital, she said, it was Western medicine combined with traditional ceremonies and prayers performed by her family that healed her. She now wants to provide access to that same kind of holistic Native care to her community back home.

For her, it feels like everything has come together in a perfect circle — from being treated at the U. to going back to school there, to learning her traditions as a kid in her hometown to returning there to share more knowledge.

She wants her children to grow up how she did, too, with horses and greasewood, traditions and the desert beneath their feet.

‘Meet your prayers halfway’

Before she goes to Díwóózhi Bíkóh’ again, her next step will be working toward a master’s degree at the U. in public health this fall.

During her undergraduate degree, she worked with her faith and the Native American Church of ÁshįįhbííTó in Salt Lake City to provide Native care to patients like her at the U.’s main hospital and children’s hospital. That included smudging ceremonies and prayers.

She also did an internship with the Utah Division of Indian Affairs and looked into Native American data disparities.

“There is a lack of research in our populations,” she said. “There’s missing data or data not being reported. There’s so many things that could be improved.”

And she completed a practicum with Restoring Ancestral Winds, a Native nonprofit that works to end violence in American Indian communities. As part of that, Yellowman Tséyíníítsó helped organize the first-ever Utah youth conference for Indigenous girls and women focused on educating about domestic violence and sexual assault.

She wants to keep learning so she can help her people.

“Tracie is a powerhouse,” added Lori McDonald, the U.’s vice president for student affairs in introducing Yellowman Tséyíníítsó before she spoke at the ceremony.

Growing up in her culture and her faith, Yellowman Tséyíníítsó said she was taught to pray for what she wanted and then “meet your prayers halfway” by working hard to achieve it.

She said she prayed many times for her success at the U. — but never expected her landmark moment Thursday night on stage.

“Ahéhee’,” she said. “Thank you.”