“We are bouncing back from some horrible histories, but we can rise above and we can do anything that anybody else can do,” says Aaron Yazzie. He is a Diné mechanical engineer, a member of the Salt and Bitterwater clans, of the Towering House and Near Water people. Born in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, his family later moved to a small town off reserve called Holbrook, Arizona where he graduated from high school. Now he works in Pasadena, California at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory which specializes in robotic space exploration.

Over the course of his career, Yazzie has had the opportunity to work on a lot of Mars missions. He worked on the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars in 2012, then the Insight lander mission of 2018 and the Perseverance rover of 2021. He has also worked on the Mars Sample Return campaign which is ongoing. He didn’t always want to work at NASA, it wasn’t something he ever imagined was possible.

What helped him succeed were summer programs and other programs designed to help Native American students access higher education. Each program gave him more confidence. He started with the Upward Bound program where he spent a summer at a university in Flagstaff, Arizona in his freshman year. Later, he attended College Horizons, a program that helped Native students apply for college, for scholarships and to write essays, where he received coaching from admissions counsellors from Ivy league schools. In his sophomore year, he went to a NASA summer program where he explored mechanical engineering and was paired with a mentor from the University of Michigan. He spent the summer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, doing a mechanical engineering project. That’s where he found his passion and realized he had talent.

Yazzie ended up applying to two Arizona universities and to Stanford. The Stanford admissions counsellor helped him access a program where he could fly in to see the campus and also apply for free and he applied as part of the early admission process. Going to Stanford changed his life. Under a lot of pressure to maintain good grades to keep his scholarship, he joined a study group made up of multicultural engineering students and found his footing in an environment where he was surrounded by students who came from a lot more money than him whose families had a lot more education than his.

Working at the same time also put extra pressure on him as well as his responsibilities to his own community. He was in leadership in native student clubs, part of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society and on staff at the Native American Theme Dorm. He worked at the Native American Cultural Centre where he edited a newsletter and led a few clubs. What he found as an Indigenous student was that he was put in a lot of leadership roles and he encourages other Indigenous students to embrace that while ensuring to commit only to what they can handle and take care of themselves and their academic responsibilities. Being involved on campus makes for well -rounded individuals beyond academics and is very helpful in the working world especially as far as developing communication and leadership skills.

When it comes to Indigenous students leaving their home communities to pursue opportunities, Yazzie recommends finding a support circle of elders, peers and younger people. He acknowledges that being away from home can be lonely, especially when you are the only Indigenous person in the classroom and that experience can continue into the workplace. He encourages instead of conforming to be like everyone else to be the most you can be in whatever space you are in.

As far as obstacles go, Yazzie struggled with finances, working hard to get through post secondary on scholarships. He also had a hard time with loneliness, being away from his home community and then also adapting to white culture at NASA. He had to develop confidence enough to speak up, ask questions and begin to show that there are many ways to be a leader. He was able to work his way into roles with more visibility and change the culture by being himself.

If he could say anything to people like himself it would be, “Dream bigger.” Growing up, he didn’t know anyone who had gone to Stanford or who worked at NASA and so he didn’t dream big enough. He only planned to apply to local schools but attending summer programs expanded his horizons. He encourages people with big dreams and big goals to think about how it can be possible and take steps to achieve them and make them happen. He urges them to make things happen for themselves and not to rely on others.

To help balance his mental health and wellbeing, Yazzie prioritizes self care and mental health. The review and delivery processes in his job can be very stressful but he works hard to maintain work life balance, doing things that make him happy and keep him healthy to get him through stressful times. He tries to manage expectations to avoid burnout, share his workload and adjust timelines. He also likes to call home.

As far as inspiration goes, Yazzie looks to the first Indigenous engineers, those who blazed trails in his industry, creating scholarship and internship programs. He also looks to his parents, who went to college and were athletes and his grandparents who lived traditionally and spoke Navajo. His mother got a teaching degree and taught math and his dad got a pre engineering degree and later a bachelor of science in civil engineering. Growing up, he and his brothers knew they would be going to college and his parents were so supportive of their desire for higher education. “It's just amazing what our Native peoples can do in just a few generations. We can bounce back and we can rise above so much and just accomplish so much,” he beams.

Looking back on his career, while he’s sent things into space that have landed on Mars, what Yazzie describes as his biggest accomplishments are graduating from college and using his platform to reach Indigenous youth to encourage them to realize their dreams and to dream bigger.

He never imagined he would get this far and his career milestones at NASA have been literally out of this world. Mechanical engineer Aaron Yazzie kept chasing his dreams all the way to Mars and back and he has a message of hope for Indigenous youth today. Dreaming big and never giving up, he found his way from rural Arizona to Pasadena, California to a career he never dreamed of.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.