Navajo student wins Miss Native MCC 2025-26
Raegen Ellis came to Mesa Community College working through discovering herself hundreds of miles away from her small hometown in Northern Arizona. Now, she is the college’s next Indigenous student ambassador.
The Navajo film major earned the title of Miss Native MCC 2025-26 during the annual eponymous pageant on Feb. 20 in MCC’s Performing Arts Center. Tanielle Klah, a Navajo psychology major, earned the title of First Attendant.
The pageant was originally set to occur on Nov. 21, 2024 to determine the 2024-25 titleholder before being postponed mere days before it was set to happen. 2023-24 titleholder Kadence Sayles, a Yavapai and Lakota creative writing student, clarified that MCC’s budget crisis was a significant deciding factor.
“We were put in a position where we had to push [the pageant] back to 2025, which is unfortunate for everyone involved,” Sayles said. “We were supported, though, by the American Indian Institute (AII), which Miss Native MCC falls under, and our students from Inter-tribal Student Organization were able to help us as well.”
Despite the challenges, the Miss Native MCC pageant ultimately came to fruition.
The show is divided into three segments: traditional talent, modern talent and an oral presentation of the platform they chose and how it relates to the theme, which was “Awakening the Legacy of Cultural Beauty.”
Ellis’s traditional talent was a vocal performance in Navajo, her modern talent was playing “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King on bass guitar and her presentation was centered around the journey of healing yourself.
This topic is very close to her heart, as she has struggled with feelings of being lost and confused, according to her.
“One way I got in touch with really bettering myself and knowing myself was through my culture,” Ellis shared. “It’s your physical body, your mentality, how you think and your spirituality…it’s knowing yourself in those components and being able to understand yourself.”
Klah’s traditional talent was an instrumental and vocal performance rooted in the Native American Church, her modern talent was showcasing her artwork and her presentation was centered around keeping Native children in Native foster homes.
“It’s basically [about] stopping assimilation from other sources and other outlooks and just basically ending the genocide and assimilation of my people,” Klah clarified.
By the end of the night, Sayles and Kaitlyn Yazzie, last year’s First Attendant who is also Navajo, shared emotional farewell speeches before the announcement of the new winner and First Attendant.
When it came time to announce the outcome of each of the contestants’ performances in each category, Ellis walked away with every possible top prize.
During the announcement of the overall results, emcee Trevor Foster of the Phoenix Indian Center mistakenly announced Klah to be the new Miss Native MCC. Margaret Talia White of the AII and ASMCC President and score tabulator Liam Tubman quickly rushed to the stage to correct the mistake, leading to a reference to Steve Harvey’s infamous 2015 Miss Universe blunder from Foster. The two contestants looked at each other and giggled upon the realization.
Both contestants shared their excitement for their reigns and their future collaborations after the pageant, with Ellis being particularly excited to interact with the local Indigenous community.
“I love just being with people,” Ellis said. “I just want to be more community-based, and I think community is healing.”
