This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Let’s Fight for Native American Voting Rights

Indigenous Americans have long been subjected to systemic discrimination in this country. In fact, let’s be honest, the discrimination dates back to before this place became a country, back to the very first encounters between white European colonizers and the people who were already living here when they arrived. America’s native people have had to endure hundreds of years of genocidal violence and war, hundreds of years of land being stolen, treaties being broken, and cultures being eradicated. Then, when this land that used to be theirs became the United States of America, the government that fought them and eventually forced them onto reservations denied them their rights as citizens, including the right to vote.

On this Indigenous Peoples’ day, let’s take a moment to talk about the barriers to voting that STILL remain for Indigenous Americans—and how restoring the Voting Rights Act and enacting the Native American Voting Rights Act can help remove them.

To understand the situation now, we should first take a look at a few key dates in the long and sordid history of denying Indigenous Americans the right to vote.

• 1788: US Constitution ratified; Indigenous Americans aren’t considered citizens
• 1924: Indian Citizenship Act passes, but all Indigenous Americans still can’t vote
• 1962: 38 years later, Indigenous Americans finally win the right to vote in every state
• 1965: Voting Rights Act (VRA) passes, providing protections for Indigenous Americans
• 2020: New barriers to voting disenfranchise Indigenous Americans

That’s right, the people who were here, ably practicing self-government, before “America” was “discovered” were not considered citizens when the Constitution became the law of the land. From there it took 136 years for Indigenous Americans to finally be granted citizenship via the Indian Citizenship Act, but even then there was an asterisk. Voting rights were managed state by state, each with its own restrictions, and Native Americans didn’t win the right to vote in every state until 1962.

But having the right to vote is not the same as being able to vote. That’s where the 1965 Voting Rights Act comes in. The VRA is usually remembered as the crucial piece of civil rights legislation that killed off the Jim Crow laws that made it nearly impossible for Black Americans to vote. But it did more than that. The VRA required nine states with a history of discriminatory voting practices to get approval from the government before changing voting laws. Arizona and Alaska, along with two counties in South Dakota, were included among them because of how they’d long discriminated against their sizable Native American communities. The VRA’s protections led to increased participation and turnout among Native Americans, but the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013 gutted the VRA and sent states scurrying to implement all kinds of new voter-suppression laws, again making it harder for Indigenous Americans to vote.

A recent report highlighted some of the many barriers that keep Native Americans from voting:

• Isolation: Tribal members often live many miles away from polling places, tribal facilities, and county offices.
• Bad housing: Homlessness and housing instability are pervasive on reservations and other tribal lands and also among Native Americans living in urban areas.
• Low tech: More than 90% of tribal land lacks broadband internet, resulting in little eaccess to online registration or information about voting and elections.
• No addresses: Many reservations don't assign traditional addresses, with named streets and numbered homes, which makes it difficult for tribal members to receive and return mailed ballots.
• Limited IDs: State motor-vehicle and other administrative offices are rarely located near reservations and the cost of an ID card may also be too high for a disproportionately impoverished population.

This list speaks to more than voting challenges—we’re seeing here the impacts of social, environmental, and economic injustice. Which is the real reason why voter ID laws and other voter-suppression tactics have hit Indigenous communities so hard. Coupled with the legacy of abuse and mistrust when it comes to dealing with the US government, they have resulted in registration and turnout that are significantly lower than other ethnic groups.

It’s also important to mention the awful toll that COVID-19 has had on Indigenous Americans. While many people, including us, have supported voting by mail as a solution to the very real challenges of holding an election during a pandemic, the lack of physical addresses and other barriers make voting by mail very difficult for Native American communities. If COVID results in the closure of already scant polling places, we’ll likely see turnout decline even further.

Indigenous Americans face, and have faced for centuries, a lot of injustice in this country. But there are some signs of progress and hope. A Supreme Court decision about tribal lands in Oklahoma this summer gave tribes around the country an unexpectedly powerful boost in their long struggle for sovereignty. At the same time, a record number of Native Americans ran for office in 2018, and for the first time ever Native American women were elected to Congress. And last year, again for the first time, a sovereign Native American government (the Cherokee Nation) sent a delegate to Congress, based on a right first granted in the Treaty of Hopewell—back in 1785.

They say that change takes time, but this is ridiculous! Indigenous Americans have waited far too long for necessary change. And that’s why we need to do more, today. This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, join with us in supporting the Native American Voting Rights Act. We need to do everything we can to protect every American’s right to vote.