Indigenous voters showed up in force for the 2020 election, a marked increase from 2016. And get out the vote organizers expect to keep the momentum going by reminding Indigenous people that they can help sway an election and boosting the communities' top priorities.
Like the rest of the nation, Native Americans tend to care most about healthcare and the economy right now.
Though this election has put the power of Indigenous people in the spotlight, in the past their vote was undervalued.
"This was an untapped resource in the voting population," says Dee Sweet (of the Chippewa tribe), who worked with Wisconsin Native Vote to get Indigenous people to vote in the 2020 election. "Native people, when they believe in you, when they trust you, when they feel you are telling them the truth and you are going to work on their behalf, they will come out in droves."
In particular, Arizona and Wisconsin saw higher Indigenous voter turnout than the last presidential election and these voters may have helped tip President-elect Joe Biden's vote count over the edge in the tight swing states. Although President Donald Trump won both in 2016, Biden flipped both states in 2020 with narrow margins.
In the days after the election, after Biden had won Wisconsin and it looked increasingly clear that he was going to flip Arizona from red to blue, some Twitter users pointed out that precincts where the Democrat won largely included tribal lands.
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
Despite barriers to voting and a lack of support from the Republican and Democratic parties alike, Indigenous voters in the key battleground states of Arizona and Wisconsin made their voices heard.
In Arizona, two counties with large Native American populations highlight the trend for Biden. In Apache County, which is three-quarters Native American, 66 percent of the vote, or about 23,000 people, went for Biden, according to Arizona's Secretary of State website. In Navajo County, the same number of people voted for Biden, which was about 45 percent of the vote. Native Americans make up a little less than half of the county's population. Both Apache and Navajo counties saw higher turnout than in 2016, says Jordan James Harvill (Cherokee and Choctaw), chief of staff for VoteAmerica, a nonpartisan nonprofit that registers voters.
As of Tuesday, Biden currently leads by a little over 10,000 votes in Arizona. Biden's the first Democrat to win the state since 1996.
While Latinos gave Biden a big bump after years of Democratic outreach in the swing state, James Harvill believes Indigenous efforts to get out the vote also helped deliver a decisive edge. He worked to increase voter turnout in the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation (the reservation extends into Arizona and the neighboring states of Utah and New Mexico).
"When you dig down to specific precincts [in Arizona], you see precincts [on the Navajo Nation] going 60 percent or more for Biden/Harris," says James Harvill. "Looking on to other major Native nations in Arizona, such as the Tohono O’odham reservations, we saw as high as 90 percent for Biden/Harris."
Tara Benally (Hopi and Navajo), the field director of both the Rural Utah Project and the Rural Arizona Project, which register underrepresented voters in each state, agrees. "This election shows that Native American voters are an important part of the process and can no longer be ignored," she explains.
In Wisconsin, Biden's lead currently sits at about 20,500 votes. Voters in counties that overlap tribal nations helped tip the scales towards Biden, High Country News reports. Menominee County (which overlaps with the Menominee Reservation) voted for Biden at a rate of 82 percent compared with 49.4 percent statewide. Wisconsin is home to about 71,500 Indigenous people of voting age and more than 50 percent live in eight of the state's counties, HuffPost reported.
Two Wisconsin locals, who are also Indigenous, have been digging into preliminary election data. They found so far that the majority of Native Americans voted for Biden in the precinct wards that are more than 70 percent Indigenous.
Barriers to vote
Indigenous people often face structural barriers to voting like spotty or non-existent internet and a dearth of formal residential addresses (some use P.O. boxes or highway names), says Sweet. Both hurdles can make it difficult to vote, access information about election deadlines, and your voter registration and mail-in ballot status.
In the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation, which at more than 18,000 square miles is larger than any reservation in the country, voters only have access to 27 postal locations (that's equivalent to all of New Jersey having just 13 mailboxes). This is according to a failed lawsuit that attempted to extend the mail-in ballot deadline for tribal members on the Navajo Nation in Arizona by 10 days past Nov. 3. The lawsuit, Yazzie vs. Arizona, was filed by the voting rights organization Four Directions on behalf of six Navajo Nation members in October. The reservation as a whole, including the portions outside of Arizona, has one early-voting site per 1,532 square miles, according to Four Directions.
After the Yazzie vs. Arizona decision, activists tagged Harvill, along with others, in a now-deleted tweet, in the hopes of setting up a rides-to-the-polls program. But this revealed further barriers to voting, this time wrought by the pandemic.
Public health restrictions on the Navajo Nation made such a program impossible because the Navajo Department of Health discouraged outside visitors to the reservation and physical interactions between non-family and household members. Instead, to encourage voting, VoteAmerica gave out gas cards and organized people within the same households to drive one another to the polls.
It also went virtual. In total, the organization sent over 100,000 texts to Indigenous voters in Arizona and more than 20,000 within the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The texts included reminders to vote and informed voters that their ballots were unlikely to reach polling places in time for the mail-in deadline, says James Harvill.
Benally said she helped register nearly 3,200 Indigenous voters on the Navajo Nation in Arizona since February 2020. Before the pandemic, she used a combination of face-to-face-conversations and door knocking. She emphasizes the importance of door knocking, especially in the most remote parts of the Navajo Nation, to engage Indigenous voters and let them know someone cares what they think.
But when the pandemic hit, these strategies were difficult or impossible because of the same COVID-19 restrictions James Harvill faced. Instead, Benally contacted potential voters by phone and text, and dropped off voter registration forms on doorknobs with pens in Ziploc bags.
Sweet, too, speaks highly of chatting with people IRL to get out of the vote. Before the pandemic, Sweet conducted in-person listening sessions in churches and Indigenous community schools.
"We sit down and we ask people what are the issues that are most pertinent to them...and how do they feel about the voting process," says Sweet. "We try to get a feel for the realities of their community."
The Native Americans she spoke to seemed most concerned about healthcare and the economy. James Harvill noted many wanted to oust Trump because of his poor response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit Indigenous communities especially hard.
Still, Sweet thinks there could have been even larger Indigenous support for Democrats this year if Biden had paid more attention. She points to the first-ever presidential forum on Native American issues last year, where Biden was not listed as a participant, but Kamala Harris was. She answered questions over Skype.
"If any of the presidential candidates had early on gotten involved in that presidential forum, and had not suddenly just discovered us two weeks before Nov. 3, I think that there would have been even a better turnout of perhaps Native people who would have voted for the Democratic party," says Sweet. Indigenous voters tend to lean Democrat.
However, James Harvill (whose political views are not associated with the nonpartisan VoteAmerica) also points to Biden's willingness to strengthen relationships with Indigenous people, as evidenced by his plan for tribal nations.
"He spent a lot of time trying really trying to understand Native issues and centering them in the campaign as well," say James Harvill.
James Harvill believes politicians should pay attention to Indigenous voters, because turnout will continue to grow in years to come.
"Native people are starting to vote at much higher levels than they did in the past... In the next decade, we're going to see that power continue to build on itself."
"Native people are starting to vote at much higher levels than they did in the past...despite the pandemic," he says. "In the next decade, we're going to see that power continue to build on itself."
"I think [the government's] failed for decades, and I think if anything this turnout in Native voters and the will of Native voters in this election cycle, more than anything, is showing that tide change and showing that anger and frustration and the will of Native voters to change that system," he says.
Benally says that "if Biden ignores Native voters ahead of the 2024 election, they may not swing his way next time." It's unclear if Biden will seek a second term. If he did and won, he'd be the first president in office in his eighties.
How to help moving forward
With that in mind, James Harvill says the incoming Biden-Harris administration should address systemic barriers to participate in voting (like the digital divide and polling places not accepting tribal IDs, while supporting critical services like healthcare for Native American people.
Sweet, Benally, and James Harvill will continue to register Indigenous voters without regard for who wins (all their work is nonpartisan). You can help too. All three suggested the below organizations (besides their own).
Four Directions registers Native American voters across Indigenous lands in the U.S. and also safeguards Indigenous voting protections in court. You can donate here to help get out the vote efforts, though donations won't be earmarked specifically to this work.
Western Native Voice, a nonpartisan social justice organization in Montana, registers Indigenous voters, mobilizes them to vote, provides training on issues like the history of Native American voting rights, and empowers voters. You can get involved with phone banking to encourage people to vote (including your own friends and family), writing letters to the editor, and helping with Western Native Voice's office work.
National Congress of American Indians' nonprofit and nonpartisan Native Vote initiative holds voter registration events, election protection initiatives, provides voter education information, and collects information on the impact of the Indigenous vote. You can become a Native Vote Coordinator, where you will promote voter participation and act as a contact between NCAI and Indigenous voters in your community. Additionally, you can donate to support the National Congress of American Indians' work broadly, which also supports Native Vote.
On top of get out the vote efforts, James Harvill recommends supporting the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund to financially aid the Navajo Nation and Hopi reservations, which have been hit hard by the pandemic. Donations go toward purchases or reimbursements of food, medical items, water, PPE, and other essential items to aid Navajo and Hopi families, according to the fund's GoFundMe page.
Topics Activism Social Good
