Cascadia dives deep into Indigenous Studies with new Tribal Liaison

Throughout his life, Dr. Victor Begay has been connected to Native American and Indigenous communities across the country. 

Begay recently joined Cascadia College as a pioneer of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) program. He is also the first Tribal Liaison in the Community and Technical Colleges system.

As Tribal Liaison, he serves as a bridge between tribal and non-tribal communities.

The American Indian and Indigenous Studies program is one of many courses offered at Cascadia College that aims to establish networks between faculty and students from marginalized communities and underrepresented groups.

Begay and Kristina Young, Dean for Student Learning at Cascadia, are working with the University of Washington to create courses that transfer directly to the UW’s American Indian Studies major.

Originally from the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Begay started teaching AIIS courses in 2010, and spent many years teaching and working with tribal communities in the Southwest.

“Teaching AIIS courses has given me the opportunity to look at Native communities apart from my own Navajo community,” Begay said. “I am better able to understand why they behave a certain way, but from a historical and cultural perspective.”

Begay began his formal training in education during graduate school. He received his master’s degree from Arizona State University, and then went on to receive his Ph.D. from the same institution.

He vividly recalls his volunteer experience at a local high school, where he taught and worked with Native students. This experience inspired him to focus on development opportunities in the AIIS program, both as a professor and a student. 

“It was working with my Native high school students that motivated me to engage in the AIIS program as an academic discipline,” Begay said. “I had to become a student of AIIS myself.”

During his time as a tenured professor at North Idaho College, Begay organized and taught AIIS courses. His goal was to understand the barriers that impede and influence secondary education, and how that plays out in policy decisions surrounding coursework.

“My professional experience allowed me to marry my skills of formal training with the community needs and discipline of the AIIS program to create new ways of impact,” Begay recounted.

Through his teaching, Begay wanted to answer one question: “What does it mean to be an Indigenous individual?” He identified high school as the place that he wanted to start these courses, because he believed that that is where students start to really question themselves and who they are.

“My goal in AIIS is not to convince students to think like me,” Begay said. “The class is about sharing what each student understands of historical events and public policies, what they think is right and wrong."

He built the program to focus on identity development from a sociological standpoint. To achieve this, he started conducting discussion sessions where students could communicate and examine their place in the world as it relates to their identity.

His past experiences led him to search for answers about his own identity, something that Begay wishes to encourage his students to do as well, and to deal with questions about the communities they belong to.

According to Begay, most AIIS courses offer an in-depth study into the historical views and paradigms of the Indigenous communities. 

Cascadia started the AIIS program with its first class in spring of 2021, and has recently added new courses for the fall quarter.

“This isn’t a class that was going to talk about stoic Native people and dates. It’s about having critical conversations about how and why society works the way it does,” Begay said. “I am trying to create it to be critical, and ask hard questions.”

His goal is to build a strong, sustainable program that meets the needs of the university, that would involve strengthening and shifting his own pedagogy to align with students. 

“It is not a history class, but more of contemporary conversations on how we could work towards the development of this country, taking inspiration from past ideas,” Begay said. “We talk about tribal sovereignty, education and languages.” 

Begay hopes for AIIS to become a major program at Cascadia, and he continues to find ways to deeply embed the program in the institution. His role as a Tribal Liaison has also helped him move towards this goal.

“I am trying to create a program at Cascadia to ask hard questions, to ask those uncomfortable questions,” he said. “One that recognizes ideas of any student, Native or not.”

Dr. Victor Begay at the American Indian Convocation at Arizona State University.