Native Voters Could Swing the 2020 Election - if They're Able to Vote

By Stephanie Woodard, In These Times

05 October 20

Menominee tribal citizens are working to make Native votes count in Wisconsin

he pow­er of Native vot­ers to decide the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion can­not be over­stat­ed, U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids (D‑Kan.), a Ho-Chunk Nation cit­i­zen, told the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in August. States with siz­able Indige­nous pop­u­la­tions — Ari­zona, Min­neso­ta and oth­ers — are in play, Davids said. Even Wisconsin’s small Native vot­ing-age pop­u­la­tion could impact the race for the White House, accord­ing to Davids. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump won Wis­con­sin in 2016 by just 0.77%, while Indige­nous vot­ers make up about 1.5% of the state’s elec­torate, accord­ing to the Nation­al Con­gress of Amer­i­can Indi­ans (NCAI).

To get peo­ple to the polls, a grass­roots advo­ca­cy group called Menikanaehkem, based on the 235,000-acre reser­va­tion of the fed­er­al­ly rec­og­nized Menom­i­nee Indi­an Tribe of Wis­con­sin, is work­ing with the Native-orga­niz­ing arm of Wis­con­sin Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers on dig­i­tal ways to com­mu­ni­cate with fel­low trib­al mem­bers about this year’s issues and vot­ing pro­ce­dures. The group, whose name is pro­nounced men-ee-KAHN-ah-kem (trans­lat­ed as “com­mu­ni­ty rebuilders”), sup­ports the well-being of Menom­i­nees liv­ing among the green hills, rush­ing rivers and sparkling water­falls of north­east­ern Wisconsin.

Dur­ing Wisconsin’s April pri­ma­ry elec­tion, in-per­son vot­ers faced long lines and the risk of Covid-19 infec­tion to cast their bal­lots. To pre­vent this from recur­ring, Menikanaehkem is encour­ag­ing use of the absen­tee, or mail-in, option — as is Menom­i­nee Coun­ty, whose bor­ders cor­re­spond with the reservation’s and which han­dles nation­al elec­tions there.

While the Menom­i­nee reser­va­tion, accord­ing to Menikanaehkem Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Guy Reit­er, enjoys rel­a­tive­ly good mail ser­vice, postal ser­vice in many Native Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties, like access to phys­i­cal polling places, has long been unre­li­able and inequitable. Postal slow-downs dur­ing mail-in vot­ing would like­ly hit these com­mu­ni­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly hard.

A drop in Native vot­er turnout could have con­se­quences across the coun­try. Native Amer­i­cans are more involved and influ­en­tial in U.S. elec­tions than is com­mon­ly under­stood—field­ing scores of can­di­dates for state and nation­al office, run­ning pres­i­den­tial can­di­date forums and man­ag­ing ener­getic get-out-the-vote cam­paigns. With around 3.7 mil­lion Native peo­ple of vot­ing age con­cen­trat­ed in West­ern states — and this vot­ing-age pop­u­la­tion account­ing for up to 11% of the elec­torate in New Mex­i­co, 12% in Okla­homa and 17% in Alas­ka, as tab­u­lat­ed by NCAI — Native vot­ers can dra­mat­i­cal­ly shape elec­tion results. Trib­al back­ing has helped many can­di­dates, among them Lt. Gov Peg­gy Flana­gan (D‑Minn.), Sen. Jon Tester (D‑Mont.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D‑Wash.), for­mer Sen. Mark Begich (D‑Alaska), for­mer Sen. Hei­di Heitkamp (D‑N.D.), for­mer Sen. Tim John­son (D‑S.D.) and for­mer Sen. Tom Daschle (D‑S.D.).

To make sure every Menom­i­nee vote counts this year, Wis­con­sin Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers is help­ing Menikanaehkem and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er trib­al nations reach out to their com­mu­ni­ties through text mes­sages, social media, email, and vir­tu­al town halls. These dig­i­tal tech­niques have become essen­tial to cam­paigns in the pan­dem­ic era, as for­mer­ly rou­tine meet­ings and can­vass­ing efforts become poten­tial­ly haz­ardous. Reit­er explains: It’s hard to be a com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er if you can’t be in the community.

Hur­dles to Native voting

Since being grant­ed U.S. cit­i­zen­ship and suf­frage in 1924, Native peo­ple have brought scores of law­suits to exer­cise their vot­ing rights. Some Native vot­ers still face harass­ment, dis­tant and hard-to-access precinct offices, reduced or unpre­dictable vot­ing times, and the refusal of poll work­ers to accept the kinds of per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion they ordi­nar­i­ly carry.

The pan­dem­ic adds new bar­ri­ers: This year, because of Covid-19, many vot­ers will rely on mail-in bal­lots to cast their votes. But as In These Times has report­ed, many trib­al cit­i­zens do not have home mail deliv­ery but rely on P.O. box­es or gen­er­al deliv­ery in dis­tant post offices. On some reser­va­tions, these are small con­tract facil­i­ties with incon­sis­tent ser­vice and lim­it­ed hours.

A recent study con­duct­ed around the Nava­jo Nation offers a warn­ing. Native vot­ing rights group Four Direc­tions sent test mail­ings from towns in and around the reser­va­tion and found that while mail from some major­i­ty-white com­mu­ni­ties typ­i­cal­ly took a day to get to the coun­ty polling place, Nava­jo mail took as many as 10 days.

Four Direc­tions is assist­ing Nava­jo plain­tiffs with a fed­er­al vot­ing-rights law­suit that fea­tures the mail study. The law­suit asks Ari­zona to allow addi­tion­al time for Nava­jo mail-in bal­lots to be counted.

Bret Healy, a con­sul­tant for the group, puts it this way: “[Mail ser­vice on the reser­va­tion] was bad before the pan­dem­ic, and any slow­down or con­fu­sion makes it worse.” Healy pre­dicts a “cat­a­stroph­ic drop” in vot­er turnout across Indi­an coun­try if such prob­lems aren’t fixed.

Mean­while, in the Dako­tas, the Stand­ing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Lako­ta People’s Law Project recent­ly joined Sen. Tom Udall (D‑N.M.) and U.S. House Assis­tant Speak­er Ben Ray Luján (D‑N.M.) to work on pas­sage of the Native Amer­i­can Vot­ing Rights Act. The bill would man­date acces­si­ble polling places, increased vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, bet­ter access to fed­er­al elec­tion mon­i­tors and oth­er improve­ments for Native communities.

Sav­ing the “good place”

Accord­ing to Reit­er, many Native vot­ers are more dri­ven by issues than can­di­dates and par­ties. They are always inter­est­ed in health and edu­ca­tion issues, he says, and have grave con­cerns about chal­lenges to trib­al sov­er­eign­ty and harm to land, water and sacred places. As in the Stand­ing Rock Sioux Tribe’s fight against the Dako­ta Access Pipeline (DAPL), Native peo­ple are often the spear­point in envi­ron­men­tal clash­es with out­comes that affect mil­lions of people.

In addi­tion to push­ing for pipelines, such as DAPL and Key­stone XL, to be built through or near Native home­lands, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has dimin­ished fed­er­al pro­tec­tion for vast areas of nat­ur­al beau­ty and trib­al cul­tur­al mean­ing, includ­ing Bears Ears Nation­al Mon­u­ment in Utah. A major wor­ry in north­east­ern Wis­con­sin is the Back Forty Mine, an open-pit met­als mine pro­posed for just over the bor­der in Michi­gan. Wisconsin’s name comes from a Menom­i­nee expres­sion mean­ing “a good place to live,” and Menom­i­nees say the mine will degrade that good place. They pre­dict dam­age to cen­turies-old gar­den sites, cer­e­mo­ni­al places and bur­ial mounds.

Accord­ing to Earth­jus­tice, the law firm rep­re­sent­ing the tribe in lit­i­ga­tion against the mine, its harms would go much far­ther. Tox­ic acid drainage from the mine will con­t­a­m­i­nate the Menom­i­nee Riv­er, the firm says. The riv­er flows into Lake Michi­gan, one of the Great Lakes, which togeth­er con­tain one-fifth of the planet’s sur­face fresh­wa­ter. Chica­go, Mil­wau­kee and oth­er cities and towns down­stream from the pro­posed mine pull their drink­ing water from this gigan­tic con­ti­nen­tal reservoir.

Also wor­ri­some for the Menom­i­nees is explorato­ry drilling under­way for a met­als mine in the head­wa­ters of the Wolf Riv­er. This Wis­con­sin Nation­al Scenic Riv­er aris­es north of the Menom­i­nee Reser­va­tion and flows through it.

Though the chal­lenges are huge, Reit­er says, his peo­ple and oth­er trib­al cit­i­zens will per­sist in fight­ing to pro­tect the earth. “As long as this earth is here, as long as we’re here, we’ll nev­er give up,” he says. To vote in a way that sup­ports that effort, “You have to do your home­work.” Though Democ­rats have his­tor­i­cal­ly been coop­er­a­tive about envi­ron­men­tal issues, so have some Repub­li­cans, Reit­er says — so he is pro­duc­ing paper and dig­i­tal elec­tion score­cards to chart and clar­i­fy can­di­dates’ posi­tions on issues impor­tant to Indige­nous people.

Lead­ing from tradition

Menom­i­nee polit­i­cal activism exists in the con­text of numer­ous her­itage-based projects and busi­ness­es. “Our work is spir­it-led and comes from our land-based life­ways,” says trib­al mem­ber Rachel Fer­nan­dez. For a cen­tu­ry and a half, the tribe has used tra­di­tion­al prin­ci­ples to har­vest wood sus­tain­ably and prof­itably. The 145-year-old con­ser­va­tion group Amer­i­can Forests calls the Menom­i­nee wood­land “one of the most his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant work­ing forests in the world.”

Menikanaehkem brings the same time-hon­ored prin­ci­pals to bear in its oth­er projects. Among them are food sov­er­eign­ty and women’s lead­er­ship and empow­er­ment, includ­ing mid­wifery and tra­di­tion­al birthing prac­tices. The group’s solar-pow­ered “tiny homes” shel­ter those who need time and space dur­ing life transitions.

Fer­nan­dez believes that get­ting the next gen­er­a­tion of Menom­i­nee lead­ers inter­est­ed in elec­tions is also impor­tant and func­tions as part of prepar­ing young­sters to car­ry their tra­di­tions into the future. “In these try­ing times,” she says, “we need to reflect on who we are, who our ances­tors were and what they endured to ensure that we are here. In this way, we can …pre­pare for our descen­dants’ lives. We must be that good ances­tor for them. When you stand in your truth, it sus­tains you.”

Despite the tur­moil this year, Menom­i­nees are unde­terred, Reit­er says. His peo­ple have sur­vived oth­er crises, even oth­er pan­demics, even geno­cide. “That is a hel­lu­va strength,” he says. “We got this.