As primary election nears, Native group reaches into communities to encourage voting

Arizona Native Vote’s executive director Jaynie Parrish said the group has a message they want voters to remember: Change comes through voting.

As the July 30 primary election nears, groups like Arizona Native Vote continue to work toward getting people registered to vote within tribal communities in the state as well as educating Native voters and potential voters through different forms of engagement.

Parrish had been doing this type of civic work for years, serving from 2020 to 2023 as the executive director of the Navajo County Democrats and Northeast Arizona Native Democrats.

Arizona Native Vote is a newer group, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to building tribal and rural political power through community engagement to increase voter registration and civic participation .

“Our experts around organizing are from our people,” Parrish said. “We are an amazing family of organizers that are wanting so much good for our communities and are trying to do it through civic engagement and voting.”

With 15 full-time and part-time workers, Arizona Native Vote has established two pivotal programs for ensuring voter registration and education. Six of the 15, known as the Fire Keepers, work specifically within the Hopi, Navajo Nation and White Mountain Apache communities.

The other program is for youth, educating middle and high school students with a curriculum centered on voter civic engagement, referred to as the "Indigenous Democracy Class." The goal is to excite students about their roles as voters and community members.

It also allows Arizona Native Vote to meet the students' families and ask if they are registered voters. So far, the group has visited three schools on the Navajo Nation and hopes to expand to Hopi soon.

“We make two to three visits a semester and establish a rapport and relation with the students about what is voting,” Parrish said. “Sometimes we even get into the issues they care about. It gets real and they get honest, we try to guide that energy.”

Students have brought up issues such as public safety within Navajo communities and even the fraudulent sober living home scandal, and Parrish said that's when the instructors explain how elected public servants are the individuals who have the capacity to address this and make a change.

“A lot of them knew about the sober living facility and so we got into that,” Parrish said. “We worked step-by-step through the process. ‘When did it become a problem?’ ‘Who noticed it?’ ‘Just everyday people … and they notified an authority and then they notified somebody … and then they elected leaders. So now we have Senator (Theresa) Hatathlie working on legislation.’ So they get to see the full circle, and things are connected to larger policies.”

The youth organizers within Arizona Native Vote are usually out in the communities, participating in events or holding events themselves.

“But right now, the big push is reminding people to get their voter status checked and, if not, get them to register or update before the primaries,” Parrish said.

During the Navajo Voters Coalition Conference held at the Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort on June 18, the coalition recognized the Navajo Nation Council for passing emergency legislation to sync the dates of the Navajo Nation and Arizona state primary elections.

“Navajo voters possess so much power that we must ensure our presence is known this election season,” said Council Delegate Andy Nez. “It’s important for our Navajo Nation and our respective states, like Arizona, this primary and general election.”

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Registering voters presents challenges

Rosetta Walker, a deputy registrar for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office , said the Native students at Arizona State University are staunch supporters and voters in their own tribal elections, but they won't vote locally or in federal elections.

“They travel five hours to the Navajo Nation to vote in their chapter election,” Walker said. “That’s always a conversation and the charge we take on as deputy registrars in how to disseminate information, how to let the students know how important their vote is in all the elections. The fact that you don’t vote is a ‘yes’ vote for some initiative or referendum or candidate that you may or may not support.”

Walker presented during Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ Native Voting Hour, a Zoom segment to deliver information and insight to Native voters about elections and voting.

Walker said earlier this week that she assisted with training employees at Native Health to register people to vote. Last year, Native Health of Phoenix became the first Indian Health Service facility to secure a site designation under the National Voter Registration Act.

Walker, of the Sicangu Lakota Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said she focuses on facilities within Maricopa County that have a Native influence, such as the Phoenix Indian Center and Maricopa Community Colleges.

While Walker focuses on registering urban Native voters, Liv Knocki, the executive director for Wing beat 88, works on getting rural voters registered. Wingbeat 88, with offices in Flagstaff, registers people to vote throughout the Navajo Nation and on the Hopi, Yavapai and Paiute reservations.

Registering voters in tribal communities presents definite obstacles, with distance being the foremost challenge. Knocki explained that their canvassers often drive six hours a day in addition to working six-hour shifts.

“So that in itself is, how do we take care of our team members, how do we continuously motivate them, how do we engage them to acknowledge that the work is extremely important,” Knocki said. “That is a big part of it.”

Another obstacle is rural addresses, which have always been a challenge and will continue to be, said Knocki. This issue is compounded by the lack of uniform guidelines among county recorders regarding acceptable addresses for registering rural voters.

“Some county recorder’s offices are comfortable with us doing Google plus codes and introducing conversations around that,” Knocki said. “But others are not, and that is another big part of it. How do we get all county recorder offices to accept the same types of ways in which we should collect information and register voters?”

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'Passing the torch' from long-time leaders

Knocki said for someone to get out to register voters in tribal communities is not a simple task. It takes a certain type of personality to engage and converse with strangers. It's also good for those registering voters to know the community and language.

“I know that’s hard to come by because our youth are not as skilled in speaking, I think they are more skilled in understanding,” Knocki said. “Conversational Navajo can be hard for our youth canvassers, so we do a lot of work to try to educate them on the basics of translations.”

After losing some pivotal people who had been doing this civic work for years, such as the late former Navajo chairman and president Peterson Zah and Loretta Chino, who was part of the Navajo County Democratic Party's Family Votes Program, Parrish said the Arizona Native Vote wanted to ensure that their work and legacy are carried on.

“We have to figure out a way to make sure their work continues on inter-generationally,” Parrish said. “So we knew with the Arizona Native Vote we could focus on younger Native folks to learn from these women and men and hopefully pass on that torch."

The Fire Keepers, Parrish said, usually engage in community service in addition to registering people to vote. About 20 percent of a Fire Keeper's work involves checking on community members, family, and elders, conducting home visits, assisting with ceremonies, delivering wood and coal, participating in community cleanups and helping out wherever they see a need.

“They are like ‘we need to do more than just talk about voting and elections,’” Parrish said. “There is a time and place for that, but one of our elders said we have to be of service.”

Arlyssa D. Becenti covers Indigenous affairs for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Send ideas and tips to arlyssa.becenti@arizonarepublic.com .

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: As primary election nears, Native group reaches into communities to encourage voting