If voting is sacred, nobody told Ross John. “I’m not a voter in state and federal elections,” the 68-year-old businessman and Seneca nation citizen tells me, “because I’m not a US citizen.” Technically, John is an American. But his reaction to the Native American “Voting is Sacred” campaign is telling. For if American politics has become thoroughly national — 70% claim to have thought “a lot” about Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, even as a third can’t identify their own state governor — the issues, especially for indigenous Americans like John, remain defiantly local.
The 2024 presidential race is one that will be decided at the margins. Democrats hope the Voting is Sacred mantra will produce a reprise of the 2020 Native American vote. Four years ago, a surge in Navajo and Hopi turnout proved the difference in Biden’s 10,000 vote victory in Arizona. In the Midwest, Menominee and Ojibwe voters proved decisive in Wisconsin, a contest ultimately decided by just 20,000 ballots.
Yet if Voting is Sacred is a national effort aimed at the broad indigenous public, they in fact represent a kaleidoscope of lifestyles. All told, there are some 9.7 million Native Americans and Alaskans, scattered across some 573 federally recognised groups. Like John, some have built their homes in the country. Yet from Anchorage to Phoenix, 70% live in cities. Like John, meanwhile, about a quarter live on reservations or tribal trust lands, while the rest make their way independently.
Given this spread, at any rate, native priorities are as varied as anywhere else in America, from casinos in New York to buffalo rights in Montana. Beyond that, Native Americans differ in one more vital respect: their power. A century on from the law that finally gave them citizenship, they’re now of course equal before the law. But if the Navajo can leverage their swing-state location, and tribes elsewhere have grown adept at encouraging strategic voting to achieve their goals, men like Ross John seem condemned by geography.
Native Americans, after all, are not just any other interest group. Expelled from much of their ancestral lands, tribal groups possess sovereignty and rights guaranteed by federal treaties. Yet as a dispersed people, they lack concentrated electoral power. And if Voting is Sacred is a strategy to give the indigenous vote some heft, in presidential politics at least, centuries of broken promises mean many aren’t sure politics can help.
Ross John has lived his whole life in far southwestern New York. Amid the Alleghenies’ towering sugar maples, and the crumbling barns with their flecks of red paint, he’s one of 8,000 Seneca here, scattered across a pair of non-contiguous communities. In John’s Cattaraugus Reservation, the poverty rate is 65%. At the neighbouring Allegany Reservation, it’s 33%, but that’s still markedly higher than many nearby towns.
In nearby Salamanca, a ramshackle New York town of 6,000, just off the Southern Tier Expressway, a high-rise casino dominates the landscape. Salamanca offers legal pot, shabby gas stations for tax-free gas and cigarettes — and gambling. A dingy tourist trap with random signage in the Seneca language, it’s become a symbol of native struggles.
No wonder John threw himself into politics, serving 14 years on the tribal council. Yet despite seeing tribal sovereignty as the alpha and omega of local politics — by treaty, the Seneca is an independent nation distinct from the US — John was ultimately disappointed by his time in office. The basic problem, he explains, was the disdain of outsiders. “I wasn’t very successful at changing tribal politics,” he says. “There are just too many federal guidelines.”
John Kane, a Mohawk who lives in Seneca territory, has similar complaints. “The Seneca pay 50% of their gaming revenue [to New York] to buy exclusivity that they don’t need,” laments the host of the Resistance Radio show. Problems started back in 2002, when the Seneca opened the first of three New York state casinos, all owned by Native Americans. To do this, Albany forced an agreement that has the Seneca pay the state one-quarter of all slot machine revenues. The Seneca, for their part, pay all operating expenses out of their share, which translates to a 50/50 split in profits with the state.
All told, the Seneca paid $1.4 billion to New York State between 2002-17. But Kane wonders what the tribe got in return. In 2002, the same year that the tribe opened their casino, the state constitution banned all gambling. In 2013, voters amended it to allow Las Vegas-style gaming. So $1.4 billion paid for an “exclusivity” that was already barred by law but is now allowed. Explaining all this, Kane sighs: “You can’t make this shit up.” In 2017, the Seneca quit their payments. To this day, the tribe and state remain locked in a legal battle. Unlike John, Kane doesn’t renounce his citizenship, but he’s nonetheless cynical about the Voting is Sacred movement. “The idea that we are a determinative voting bloc is blown out of proportion,” he says. “We just want to be left alone.”
Not everyone is so jaded. Unlike Kane, Tracie Garfield embraces Voting is Sacred. The Fort Peck Tribe member lives in Montana, where 6% of voting-age citizens are Native American. In 2006 and 2012, the native vote helped the Senate Democrat, Jon Tester, to narrow victories. For 2024, the communications director for her state’s Western Native Voice campaign has been running voter registration drives right across Montana.
This time round, though, Garfield sees lots of voter fatigue. “I don’t see a lot of excitement.” What she senses in Montana is a national issue. Only 66% of voting-age Native Americans are even registered, a problem with deep roots. Native Americans were denied the right to cast their ballots until 1924, when Congress finally passed the Indian Citizenship Act. Even then, several Western states held out until the Fifties.
As Garfield puts it: “We have to start from scratch, since most Natives are only in the second generation of voting.” That dovetails with other challenges. In Big Sky Country, a trip to the polling station can be a 100-mile round trip. And even once they arrive at the county seat, Garfield warns that would-be voters sometimes feel intimidated being the only native in town.
Though the situation isn’t hopeless. One solution, Garfield suggests, is to turn voting into a tradition, like community bingo or a family dinner, something she believes will help Native Americans become enthused by politics. “As a tribal people,” she says, “we respect our elders. If we get families to vote together then that is our goal.”
Yet more than the tangle of history, or the lure of custom, you get the sense that native electoral enthusiasm can ultimately be understood as a function of political heft. If, after all, John and the Seneca are understandably pessimistic in New York, a Democratic stronghold that anyway cleansed most of its indigenous population in the early 19th century, tribes further west have far more sway.
Montana, with its 6% tribal bloc, is one thing. But that’s nothing compared to Oklahoma, where Native Americans comprise 13.4% of the population, and where low turnout generally bolsters their collective influence still further. “I am optimistic,” says Ben Barnes, Chief of the Shawnee in the Sooner State. “Native Americans can really make a dent. If we turnout, we can make a difference.”
More to the point, numerical muscle seems to translate to real-world excitement. In conjunction with the United Indian Nations of Oklahoma group, Barnes has promoted a new turnout initiative. Known as Warrior Up to Vote, it’s already registered hundreds of new native voters right across the state.
And if that speaks, yet again, to the wildly diverse opportunities for Native Americans across the country, something similar might be said of what indigenous voters actually want. Liberals often imagine that the Native American vote is staunchly Democratic. But a 2021 report shows that indigenous voters lean Left by just 11%. That’s echoed by schisms elsewhere. As Garfield emphasises, Montana alone has 12 recognised tribes, each with distinct priorities. The Crow, for instance, exploit their coal and oil reserves, while neighbouring Blackfeet push environmental protections for their “buffalo brothers”.
Demographic discrepancies also affect how Native Americans make their voices heard. In swing states such as Wisconsin, the Ojibwe can appeal to national politicians when state and local authorities ignore them. In 2020, the Ojibwe, who were hit hard by Covid, voted for Biden to keep reservation health restrictions intact. Presidential candidates sometimes even come to them: in September, Donald Trump promised to formally recognise the Lumbee, a tribe in the crucial battleground of North Carolina.
Interest from the big guns is harder to muster in Oklahoma, a one-party state where Trump has little to gain by playing nice. Yet the demographic power of natives in the Sooner State still matters — it’s just that leaders like Barnes need to be more subtle about exploiting their influence.
One tactic involves educating legislators on native concerns, especially that all-important issue of tribal sovereignty. “I find that in Oklahoma not every legislator or senator understands,” Barnes explains. “We have to vote for a Republican or Democrat that understands Indians are sovereign.” Another option is simply backing native candidates: Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma’s junior senator, is both a fervent Trump supporter and a Cherokee.
“Don’t vote R, don’t vote D, vote I for Indian,” is how Barnes evocatively describes this approach — and certainly it’s one that’s bearing fruit. On Capitol Hill in Washington, the head of the House Appropriations Committee is Tom Cole, a conservative Oklahoma congressman. More importantly, he’s also an enrolled member of the Chickasaw nation, one with an intimate knowledge of Native American affairs. “How great is it,” Barnes says, “that we don’t have to explain why funding is necessary?”
This comprehensive plan has borne fruit: Cole is now sponsoring a landmark bill to investigate the horrors of Indian Boarding Schools. Not that Barnes and other Native Americans are exclusively putting their hopes on one side of the House. Cole also liaises closely on tribal concerns with Sharice Davids, a liberal Ho-Chunk congresswoman from Kansas. Barnes, for his part, is full of praise for this political odd couple. “How refreshing is that?”
Despite these regional successes, and notwithstanding the gaggle of federal treaties impinging on indigenous groups, Barnes still argues that elections in “the tribal races” are most important for voters like him. It’s a point echoed elsewhere. For Cynthia LaMere, the former vice-chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and member of the Yankton-Sioux, elections at the community level, in the reservation or tribal trust, are just more “tangible”. Considering the bewildering range of native concerns, that’s surely unsurprising, especially when the lowest rung of electoral politics is the arena where schools are run and casinos managed.
But where does that leave people like Ross John, flailing between an aggressive and sceptical state government on the one hand — and indifferent Congressional legislators on the other? For Stephen Knott, that strikes at the heart of the issue. As the emeritus professor at the US Naval War College says, Newt Gingrich “nationalised” every congressional race in the land way back in 1994. But if the media now obsesses endlessly about the antics on Capitol Hill, 536 federal officeholders still pale compared to the 500,000 elected officials nationwide. “It is a schizophrenic arrangement,” John admits of his native Seneca. “And we have to live with it.”
Disclaimer
Some of the posts we share are controversial and we do not necessarily agree with them in the whole extend. Sometimes we agree with the content or part of it but we do not agree with the narration or language. Nevertheless we find them somehow interesting, valuable and/or informative or we share them, because we strongly believe in freedom of speech, free press and journalism. We strongly encourage you to have a critical approach to all the content, do your own research and analysis to build your own opinion.
We would be glad to have your feedback.
Source: UnHerd Read the original article here: https://unherd.com/