Meet Jaynie Parrish: She supports Indigenous people working for voting rights

The work of supporting Indigenous voters to “bring equity to unequal structures” is a non-stop job for leader Jaynie Parrish.

During this highly-charged election season, Parrish’s work is paying off and helping people find “that spark in connecting why our vote matters and why we need to pay attention to elected leaders because of our history in what federal government policies have done to our communities.”

Parrish is the founder and the executive director of Arizona Native Vote , a three-year-old grassroots organization “formed to advance educational, charitable, and community goals by increasing civic engagement and election participation in tribal and rural communities,” according to the website. She is a citizen of the Navajo Nation.

Parrish says the organization supports the people — mainly matriarchs — who have been fighting for voting rights for generations, for decades by providing some organized structure.

Indigenous people in Arizona didn’t get the right to vote until 1948. According to the U.S. Census, Indigenous people make up 6% of the population in the state, though census officials have said Tribal members have been undercounted .

Arizona Luminaria chatted with Parrish about how non-Native allies can support their efforts, geographical challenges for voting and the power of women. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This Q&A is part of Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces.

What are the biggest challenges Native American voters face when participating in elections?

There’s like 101 plus ways. There’s a whole book that the Native American Rights Fund actually printed so I usually refer folks if they want to do some more reading to find that.

The top headlines for us as a field team, of course, is the issue with physical addressing. It’s sheer distance that we have to organize within our community.

Also, especially in the last few years, the constant barrage of new legislation that’s meant to suppress communities like ours where they’re shortening ballot hearing times. Recently, we had the Supreme Court ruling that it’s a citizenship requirement now, in addition to the form that’s already timely and complicated for our folks to fill out.

And then of course, just battling, like any other community, apathy, and just trying to get people to really understand and believe and see how their vote makes a difference.

In what ways can non-Native allies support efforts to improve voting access for Indigenous populations?

One is definitely including the words Indigenous people and tribal nations use in their everyday language and advocacy. When talking about voting rights or policies, if you don’t know how or where that impacts tribes, learn about that.

What we need non-Native people and allies to do is be more informed and be with us in this fight. That’s ensuring that funding gets to grassroots groups like ours so that we can have more of our local folks hired and trained to continue this work beyond election day. Help us get more folks in the organization that can be a field director, that can be in our schools, or can be in places, more on the regular.

A personal story is, we have two folks in our organization who are non-Native and are tremendous allies. They help build many aspects of our program by volunteering their time for more than three years with us. They knew their space and their privilege as white women, and put themselves in the back and were always really cognizant about not overstepping. They took our lead. But they brought their talents and skills, and they also knew where to put them and how to navigate this space.

How does educating Native American youth about democracy and voting help shape future civic engagement among young voters?

Well, it gives them a platform, and it gives them good weaponry and knowledge.

We’re trying to get into more high schools where we teach our Indigenous democracy class, and that is now being coordinated and led by young people between the ages of 19 and 26. For them, they talk about why they vote and why they’re in this work. It’s a movement around climate. It’s concerns about water issues and lawsuits that are happening with the tribes. It’s issues around land back inequity. So they’re the folks that we have that are very vocal.

I mean, we’re products of federal policies every day of our lives, but no one gets to put that in context for you all the time, unless you have really good mentors, teachers, or family members who can help understand why things are the way that they are. That’s what we found for ourselves, and that’s what the young people have found for themselves in going through this process, is that spark in connecting why our vote matters and why we need to pay attention to elected leaders because of our history in what federal government policies have done to our communities. We see more Native people at the helm of trying to bring a little bit of equity to these unequal structures.

So our goal with young people is to go a little deeper and help guide this newfound energy.

How does Arizona Native Vote overcome transportation or communication barriers in remote communities to ensure civic participation?

Yeah, that’s always a complicated issue. People have tried, not consistently, but groups have tried in the past. However, things that have gone into it over the years to make it a little bit more accessible is having more ballot drop boxes in remote and rural communities to ensure folks have a chance to drop off their ballot to vote early, and then more polling places that are open for longer hours. We also have to rely on our community and family network as well.

Mailing is what we really advocate for though. Signing up for what we call AEVL, which is the Active Early Voting List, gives more people options to vote instead of waiting, or having to drive long distances on the day.

Every election year, there’s always an organized effort to provide some kind of transportation through organizations or to let people know if they need a ride they can call a number or this person and get help that day of election day. It’s good when you’re in the towns, because you’re close by a mailbox or a ballot drop-off box. But when you’re further out, that’s where the concern is for people that are living further out of the towns. That’s why we have our organizers, because it’s real people and real help.

Can you share specifics on how the Family Votes program empowers women in Navajo, Hopi, and Apache communities to take on leadership roles in civic engagement?

We started out just having conversations with the people that we knew that were good, strong voters and then invited them to come to lunch or to come to a breakfast, and just kind of have these conversations around civic engagement and what it means for them.

There’s different ways our women can be out in the field or out in the home communities. We started by having them start with their families first, and some of them have really big families, and then work out from there with friends. They were really the start of this. They are our experts, and we’re able to bring them into the classrooms that our young folks are in, so you have the expertise of an elder in the classroom talking about civics and engagement and their story, while also teaching them how to register, to vote, and why they should join us and help get their families registered to vote.

A lot of tribes work differently, but for Navajo and White Mountain Apache we’re matrilineal. So everything goes through the mother’s line, anyway. There’s a lot of respect for the women in our communities and the place they hold. So if grandma or auntie tells you something normally, you listen, and you do it. That’s the strength of a lot of our matriarchs, young and older.

How does Arizona Native Vote define “high-potential voters,” and what strategies do you use to engage those traditionally left out of the electoral process?

We learned a long time ago, where we needed to focus. These are those folks that they’re not probably consistent voters. Maybe they only voted once, but they’re there, and we have to find them, and we have to re-engage them and talk to them.

That requires things like trying to communicate. Whether that’s by letter, by phone or text, or inviting them to an event. Using that network of local folks to just see where folks are, and see if we can get them back into voting.

I think those are some of the strategies for a good field team, anyway, just keeping track and doing it in a culturally appropriate way.

I worked on campaigns where you’re tasked with making a million calls a day and that’s not possible where we are. Those tactics can be a little too pushy, you know, and that’s not the way you handle conversations and visits where we are. You take the time to visit, you take the time to converse and slow down, especially if they’re going to be older voters. We just show respect. We’re not there to check a box and say, Okay, I made a visit. We’re trying to have some real, meaningful conversations and connections.

Can you share a success story from your outreach to first-time voters or those who previously felt disenfranchised?

One of our matriarchs, and she’s now a board member, her name is Lorraine, and she’s from Hopi, and she didn’t register to vote until she was in her fifties.

Culturally, Hopis see things differently when it comes to the federal election and things outside of the Hopi nation in terms of governance and things like that. It’s different. It was a different view, but she just became more aware of the policies and procedures and the impacts of county and state laws.

She said, we need to be in those rooms. We need to have more of a say in those spaces, because they’re overall impacting us in our water rights, or they’re impacting us and our land and services.

It took some time for her because, Hopi, they haven’t always traditionally been involved in a lot of big numbers, but we’ve seen some slight increases in their precincts of more folks coming out to vote, and I would say that is due in part to folks like Lorraine and others who work locally and year round and make themselves known and helpful.

But it also is a concerted effort, for, like the county election offices, they now have a Hopi translator in their programming efforts to help with messaging as well and reaching more voters.

So I think that’s a really great success with Lorraine, and she’s able to bring more of her community members along with her.

Is there anything you’d like to leave people with?

I’m just really proud of the team that we’ve built and are continuing to build. They are dedicated!

We have a team between the ages of 19 and 76. We’re in three different tribal communities, White Mountain Apache, Navajo and Hopi, and with our key communities, where our folks live and work in and organize, we’re intertribal, intergenerational.

We’ve shown what Native voters and Native organizers can do and how much power we can really wield. Especially in midterm elections, because our two counties were the only ones that saw an increase in voter turnout.

I just want people to pay more attention and learn. Really, I think that the best way anybody can help is get involved and learn and help do this work, because it does take a concerted effort.

We’re playing the long game, too, and people dip in and dip out for a variety of reasons, and sometimes you need a break. Hopefully they come back in and say, “All right, my time, coach,” and they’ll be in this for a little while, and we’ve just got to keep it going.

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