McKayla Lee (Diné) is the first recipient of the Underscore Indigenous Journalism Fellowship. After completing the fellowship in the summer of 2022, she returned to the University of Montana, where she is an undergraduate student double majoring in Journalism and Native American Studies. She was born and raised in Whale Rock, Arizona on the Navajo Nation and is an enrolled citizen of the Navajo Nation. McKayla spent four years as a reporter at the Southern Ute Drum in Colorado and has won awards for her writing and photography from the Native American Journalists Association, Society of Professional Journalists, Colorado Press Association and the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
