Intimidation, Voter Suppression, and Racism in Indian Country

A MAGA fanatic hits the gas and sits on the bumper of a Democrat-driven four-door sedan emblazoned with “Vote Blue” and “Pro-Choice” stickers. A white man in a cowboy hat swerves and honks his horn. He accelerates and pulls up next to the driver, a dark-skinned woman, and starts the engine, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. Two flags fly on the back of his huge Ford-150, one an American flag and the other a “Make America Great Again” flag.

His bumper stickers include GOP slogans from the past 20 years: one reads “Voter for Life,” another has an M-16 silhouette, and a third says “LIBTARDS,” but I can’t make out the text below because of the wild zig-zagging. truck.

The woman doesn’t seem embarrassed; it does not flinch and never speeds up or slows down. The MAGA driver, however, loses patience and hits the accelerator. He makes a sharp left turn at a yellow light and disappears into the distance, apparently to find another brown man to pursue and endanger.

Intimidation comes in many forms in an election year, especially in Indian Country. This rotten incident happened in Bemidji, Minnesota in 2020 before the elections of Biden and Trump. Bemidji is surrounded by Indian reservations — Leech Lake, Red Lake, White Earth, Bois Forte, and others.

But it is not only an open threat that tries to prevent democratic participation. Reservations are usually geographically isolated communities, and politicians, almost always Republicans, sometimes use the isolation and physical conditions of these areas to suppress the indigenous voice at the polls.

It is not uncommon for reservations in states such as Alaska, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota to be covered in ice and snow on November 5th. And many families, including seniors, lack transportation on many of these reservations. And those who have a car or a truck sometimes don’t have enough money for gas. Unemployment and poverty rates are high on many reservations in the West, so there is a question of food on the table or gas in the tank to drive 50 miles away on snowy and icy roads to vote.

And this is if there is a road at all. In Alaska, Native people in some villages are sometimes expected to fly more than 100 miles over mountains, tundra and ocean to get to the polls. Back in the Lower 48, not all roads on reservations are serviced. Some are dirt covered with snow drifts; others are paved, but under the snow drift is a minefield with potholes.

The Native American Rights Foundation (NARF), a non-profit organization that advocates for the rights of indigenous peoples, found that the farther indigenous people are from the polls, the less likely they are to participate in state or federal elections. If you move the polling station even a quarter of a mile away from the people, the organization writes a report titled “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” noted a decline in voting propensity. The report concludes: “This makes common sense.”

Many of the nation’s 574 Indian reservations do not have polling places, forcing thousands of Native Americans in states like Utah, South Dakota, Nevada and New Mexico to travel nearly 100 miles round trip to cast their ballots.

And natives who can drive that far to vote face not only racist intimidation when they approach the building, but red tape associated with their IDs.

As a result of generations of land theft by the United States and the establishment of many prisoner of war camps in the West, now known as Indian reservations, many homes in these areas have no physical addresses. For decades, indigenous people could vote simply by showing their tribal ID, which often did not include an address.

Then, in 2012, in North Dakota, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, ​​a Democrat, won by just 3,000 votes, prompting the Republican-controlled state legislature to ban anyone with an ID without a physical address from voting. In 2020, the state settled two federal voting rights lawsuits and agreed to allow natives without an address to vote. But this form of suppression of indigenous peoples still occurs in Arizona, where it is estimated that 40,000 Native houses do not have a physical address.

“These are state-of-the-art literacy tests,” said Alison Nezwood, Daine’s NARF attorney. “These are trials that people cannot overcome because of the structure of their communities.”

And there are also language barriers. English comes from England and Spanish comes from Spain, but Oglala, Diné, Yup’ik, Cree, and hundreds of other indigenous languages ​​were created here in North America, and many elders still struggle with English to this day. Indeed, NARF found that a lack of culturally-sensitive language assistance during registration can discourage Native people who do not speak English or speak English poorly.

Unfortunately, some of the barriers to voting faced by Indigenous people are part of broader systemic problems. In big cities, Indigenous people are more likely to be homeless, making it harder to vote. According to A research according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 55 percent of the Native American population is homeless, the highest rate of any demographic group.

In 1956, after the discovery of oil, gas, and minerals on reservations, Congress passed the Indian Resettlement Act, which used fiscal coercion to force Native Americans from their homes on reservations to the nearest major city, such as Denver, Minneapolis, or Los Angeles. – Angeles. Native homelessness thus became so rampant that, particularly in Denver, street corners were de facto named after the dominant tribe that settled there. Sixth Avenue and Broadway, near downtown, was named Lakota Corner.

It has been 100 years since indigenous peoples were first recognized as American citizens, and racism and discrimination against indigenous peoples continue to create massive barriers to the voting process. We indigenous people have survived genocide, the founding fathers, and centuries of brutal oppression. We are not easily intimidated no matter how hard they try and we will never give up. We’re still here, and with groups like NARF taking up the cause, we’ll continue to fight for the vote.