Getting Native voters means organizing and removing barriers, leaders say

When Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, ran for a seat on the Minneapolis public school board in 2005, a voter asked her if she would only work for Native kids in the district.

Flanagan turned the question around: "Would you only work for white kids if you were on the school board?"

Flanagan, now the lieutenant governor of Minnesota, said that encounter helped her realize that many more Indigenous people needed to be engaged in civic life.

"We've got to know what happens when we organize, vote and tell our leaders to do the work they told us they would do," she said.

This and other experiences led Flanagan and three other Native people to organize Advance Native Political Leadership , a national nonpartisan organization, to train organizers, identify and nurture candidates for elected offices and protect Indigenous peoples' right to vote.

Advance hosted more than 500 people from across the United States in Scottsdale on Tuesday for a one-day summit to rally local Native rights groups to get out the vote in the upcoming presidential election.

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Chino has been politically active since the 2004 presidential election, organizing in the 10 southern Pueblos, but she still had to pay her own expenses.

"I started asking questions like, 'why do I have to do everything for free and ask volunteers to bring food when I see other demographics and other communities have a budget?'" she told The Arizona Republic.

That led her to form relationships and develop funding partners while still in New Mexico. Then she moved to Washington, D.C., to become an investment advisor for Democracy Alliance, a network of individual political philanthropists, labor unions, and foundations who work together to advance progressive initiatives.

Though it is the largest such organization in the nation, organizers lacked Native programs, Chino said. When she asked about the lack of programs, the funders turned her question back to, "If we're going to fund Indigenous political strategies, what would we find?" Chino found a gap in nationwide efforts to organize and support Native voting efforts.

She secured seed funding to explore the question of how to achieve parity in elective offices for Indigenous people. There are now about 420 such officeholders, a dismal 0.07% of all elected officials from school boards up to the U.S. President. Indigenous peoples in the U.S. represent about 3.7% of the population.

Arizona's numbers are slightly better, with 47 elected officials, about 20% of what Advance said would achieve parity since Native people in Arizona account for about 6.9% of the state's population.

Chino and other speakers at the event said that to reach representational parity, 17,000 Indigenous people would have to be elected at all levels of government.

That lack of paths to elective office and to gaining seats at legislative tables eventually led to Advance's founding in 2016 by Flanagan, Advance's current executive director Anathea Chino of the Acoma Pueblo, Diné/Chicana consultant Chrissie Castro, and Kevin Killer, former president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

The nationwide organization offers leadership training for potential candidates, campaign manager training, and shares research data and best practices in political strategy, all with Indigenous communities and cultures in mind. Although Advance's roots are in progressive causes, Chino stressed that the group focuses on people, not parties, in its work.

Chino said that one of Advance's first graduates from candidate training was future Rep. Deb Haaland, now the U.S. Interior Secretary. And the number of candidates has risen 83% over the past eight years, from 100 to 165.

Participants shared how they rallied voting in their communities. Allie Redhorse-Young, founder of Defend the Sacred, a leadership group that trains the next generation of Navajo and Indian Country leaders, said Native people are "inherently political." Redhorse-Young, a member of the Navajo Nation, uses strategies like her family's rodeo background to inspire and engage communities through initiatives like election-day trail rides.

"Youth ask me about why I want them to be part of a system that's never worked for us?" she said. But Redhorse-Young said they respond to opportunities such as honoring their ancestors who fought for their existence and using horse medicine, which represents who they are as Native peoples.

Rise in Native voting power results in pushback

The flip side of increasing Native vote: a growing effort to quash that vote. Jacqueline De León, attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, monitors attempts to keep Indigenous people from voting, and along with other attorneys and tribal officials, fights to protect Native peoples' right to vote.

Many battles are being waged to restrict access to polling places, or to register or vote, De León said. Lawmakers have tried to prevent polling places from being opened on reservations, or to require physical addresses to register to vote — about 40,000 Arizona homes have no physical address, she said — actions that tell Native people that "the system is not for you."

"These structural barriers across the U.S. are being exploited," said De León, a member of the Isleta Pueblo. "Anything that impedes some people voting is equivalent to the old 'literary tests.'"

Ensuring every person eligible to vote is able to do so without roadblocks in their way is key to winning tight races, such as the Arizona Attorney General's office, which Kris Mayes won by just 500 votes in 2022.

Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, d i rector of the Indian Legal Program and Indian Legal Clinic at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, is considered an expert in election law and policy matters and voting rights. Ferguson-Bohnee, a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, said there is a long history of Native American voter suppression.

"Lawyers have spent a long time studying how to prevent Indians from voting," she said. From tribal members being considered wards of the U.S. and thus incompetent to vote, to contriving how to prevent polling places being put on tribal lands and the English literacy tests that persisted up till the 1970s, Native people in Arizona have had to fight for their right to vote.

Despite all those barriers, Ferguson-Bohnee, who also serves as the Native Vote election protection coordinator for Arizona, emphasized that participating in elections is vital to ensuring Native peoples' concerns are heard.

"Otherwise, decisions are made without Natives at the table," she said.

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'When Native candidates win, everybody wins'

Flanagan said when Native people show up to vote and vote for Indigenous candidates who know their communities, everybody wins. She pointed to Minnesota as proof.

In addition to strengthening Indigenous rights, providing for access to higher education and tribal land reclamation, the state has opened the first MMIW office, protected rights for trans people and defended abortion rights.

Legislation requiring all agency officials to take classes in tribal histories and cultures will help relations between the 11 tribes in Minnesota and the state, she added.

The process of training candidates, registering voters, providing voter education and getting Native people out to vote has taken many years of effort, she said.

"We are making amazing progress but we have decades of work ahead of us."

But the payoff outweighs the sacrifice candidates make when they commit to running for office, Flanagan said.

"We are glass-ceiling breakers," she said. "We have those scars from falling glass, but fewer people who come after us will have those scars."

Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation .

Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture, and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com . Follow her on X @debkrol .

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Getting Native voters means organizing and removing barriers, leaders say