Donovan Begay — Interview Q&A
B · From the record Summaries are drawn from Cal Nez’s interview. Quotations are not published until checked against the recording. How we verify →
Answer summaries in the site’s words, drawn from the recorded Cal Nez interview (Politics on the Navajo Nation, 2026) — not quotations and not the candidate’s own wording. Their exact words are in the video, linked from their profile.
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Introduction
Cal asked: “…why don’t you introduce yourself, your clan and your basic general information about your career?”
Begay introduced himself, describing a career in Navajo Nation service and a personal history he returns to throughout the interview: he is a veteran, and he raised four children as a single parent.
1. Platform
Cal asked: Can you share with us your platform, please?
His first commitment is to sit down with the Council and work out which projects are close to completion and which matter most — framing the presidency as coordination with the legislative branch rather than confrontation with it.
2. Veterans
Cal asked: “The veteran problem. What’s the problem?” — and, pressing further: “So name two things that you think is the most pressing problem.”
Begay answered from his own experience as a veteran and single parent of four, describing reaching out to family for basic needs and child care while working, and how difficult that was. His proposal is presence: a president who attends veterans’ meetings and carries what is said there into the information that reaches the president’s office.
3. Health care
Cal asked: “…you already talked about housing, but healthcare is predominantly an issue? Don’t you think that that’s an important component?”
He agreed, and widened it: many conditions are not visible, he said — even in a medical setting a person is seen as they present themselves. He treats veterans’ needs and health care as the same subject.
4. Ranches & enterprises
Cal asked: What’s the concept behind the Navajo Nation owning ranches?
Begay recalled the purchase of a ranch in the Durango area during a previous administration, and observed that many Navajo people do not know it happened. He said purchases of this kind require far more deliberation than they have received.
5. Accessibility
Cal asked: What do you mean by accessibility?
He proposed something concrete and cheap: publish a list of the Nation’s ranches and what each one offers, so people can see how they might benefit — whether by learning from them or using them. A public list, so the assets the Nation owns are known to the people who own them.
6. Housing
Not a question Cal asked — Begay raised housing himself, inside his platform and economic-development answers:
Begay criticized the cost of modular homes the Nation has paid for, and argued for building homes with Navajo labor instead. He recalled the old chapter-based work programs as a model. The capacity, he said, is already here.