Native News
Native Voting Rights Are Sovereignty Rights
Guest Opinion
Natives didn’t have the right to vote in federal elections until the Indian Citizenship Act was passed in 1924 but it still took decades before states ended the ban on Natives voting across the country. Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Maine all had restrictions or outright bans in effect for decades. It wasn’t until 1957 that Utah was the last state to end the ban on Natives voting.
Voting is one of the ways that we can express concerns about government policies. When communities are mobilized to vote, it creates a snapshot of who we are and what we want. That’s what democracy should look like.
Voting rights, civil rights, human rights, treaty rights, the rights of Mother Earth are all on the ballot in the midterms.
That’s exactly why the Trump administration is doing everything they can to block our right to vote. From false accusations of election fraud to redistricting to attacking vote-by-mail, that’s their playbook. It’s about shutting people out of the process — limiting their ability to participate and even undermining their belief that voting matters at all.
Now — just last week — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that federal ICE officers could be deployed to polling sites across the country. “If an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested.”
It is illegal for the government to deploy the military or federal agents to voting centers, but the Trump administration is looking to exploit any loophole to do it anyway. They can call anything they want “a public safety threat,” and that’s the point. They found their loophole.
They are afraid of our vote and what it will say about the impact of their policies on our communities’ priorities. They are trying to scare us into inaction.
Fear is their game plan. Ours is courage. Every election, Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund organizes to prevent voter suppression and to educate our communities about what is at stake in the elections. We know that elections do not solve our crisis problems. They change the context and conditions in which we will organize our power for social change.
We’ve already seen Trump follow through on past authoritarian threats, and we can’t risk him doing it again. Everything we value and hold sacred is on the ballot in the midterms: sovereignty, self-determination and justice for all.
Voting on reservations is a fight every election cycle and many states have passed legislation that will make it more difficult for everyone to vote already. We can’t allow troops at the polls to make it even harder.
Judith LeBlanc (Caddo), executive director of Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund, whixh is a partner to Native Organizers Alliance.
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