Navajo and Hopi voters in Arizona played a major role in securing the crucial state for President Joe Biden last year, but nationally more than a third of voting age Native Americans aren’t registered to vote.

The disengagement from electoral politics reflects both historical and modern barriers to voting access and the fraught relationship between tribes and the federal government.

Despite a small national population and traditionally low turnout rate, Native American voters could play a major role in deciding the next presidential election with large tribal communities in the key battleground states of Arizona and North Carolina — especially if a candidate can boost their participation and support at the polls.

Biden has taken steps to engage Native Americans through consultation with tribal leaders on a host of issues, including voting rights and environmental conservation. Federal dollars have also flowed at historic levels with the $31 billion to tribal governments in Biden’s American Rescue Plan representing the largest one-time payment to Native American communities.

Tribal leaders have noticed.

“It’s as much about the respect as it is about the dollars,” said Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. during a Wednesday roundtable with the president on infrastructure.

Hoskin thanked Biden’s administration for “working and consulting in a meaningful manner with tribal nations,” a sentiment that’s been echoed by other Native American leaders. The infrastructure package, which passed the Senate on Tuesday, includes $11 billion for tribal communities, which Hoskin said could be potentially transformational.

“This bill is important for the country. But I want you to know that the bill is important to me because you didn’t forget Indian Country,” Hoskin told Biden.

The National Congress of American Indians estimates that 34% of eligible Native Americans aren’t registered to vote based on an analysis of the 2010 Census, but the Census Bureau does not track turnout rates for Native Americans as it does for other racial groups.

However, Biden’s narrow win over former President Donald Trump in Arizona has been attributed in large part to Navajo and Hopi voters based on precinct level data.

“If you look in Arizona, the counties that went overwhelmingly for Biden are the counties that are heavily reservations, heavily Native-voting,” said Jean Reith Schroedel, a professor of political science at Claremont Graduate University in California who studies Native American voters.

In addition to Biden’s victory in Arizona, Schroedel said Native American voters played a key role in Georgia Senate runoffs in January that gave Biden’s party control of the Senate.

Winning re-election could hinge on whether Biden maintains support of this crucial but often overlooked community.

Kevin Killer, president of Oglala Sioux Tribe and a resident of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, said one challenge to turnout is making it clear to voters in isolated reservation communities that they’ll see “a direct benefit” from voting for a candidate who cares about their issues.

“There’s been basically a 180 in terms of outreach and making sure our needs are met,” Killer said about the change since Biden took office.

But Biden has a responsibility to address the unique needs of tribal communities regardless of the electoral consequences, said Washington state Rep. Debra Lekanoff, a Democrat and member of the Tlingit and Aleut tribes.

“In my opinion, every president regardless of whether or not Indian Country voted high or low for them or wherever the vote count is, they have an obligation no matter what,” she said.

Voting rights

While some tribes lean Republican, Native Americans tend to vote Democratic nationally, Schroedel said.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both sought to increase turnout among these voters, but it was “nothing like what we’re seeing right now,” she said. “It’s exciting and important and it’s long overdue.”

Biden in March established the Interagency Steering Group on Native American Voting Rights which will produce recommendations within a year for increasing Native American turnout and protecting voting access from state-level barriers.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland met last month for an hour with tribal leaders to discuss voting rights challenges faced by tribal communities, including long distances to polling places and barriers to registration.

“It’s refreshing to actually see them being pro-active about making sure our rights are protected before the election starts,” said Killer, a former South Dakota legislator who was part of the group that met with Harris.

Congress did not pass legislation to recognize Native Americans as citizens until 1924, but many states continued to restrict ballot access for those voters for decades, which Harris compared to the Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Black Americans during the same time.

But the Native American community still faces hurdles to voting access, Harris noted.

“In Montana and North Dakota, for example, I’ve heard stories about it taking at least one hour each way to get to the polling location and then get home,” she said. “God forbid there’s a snowstorm and what that might mean in terms of the encumbrances on the ability of people to exercise their right to vote.”

Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, said state-level hurdles to voting sometimes stem from a disrespect for tribal sovereignty, one of the issues the steering group will seek to address.

“There’s things like not recognizing tribal ID cards as a valid form of identification. Tribal governments are governments,” Davids told McClatchy in an interview. Not recognizing tribal identification cards “would be akin to saying we’re not going to recognize your license from Kansas for purposes of registering to vote,” she said.

“So that’s the kind of thing that ends up happening and why it’s very specific for Native people because there’s a disconnect in terms of recognizing tribal sovereignty,” said Davids, who previously worked on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

How does Biden compare?

In addition to elevating the issue of voting rights, Davids said that the Biden administration has engaged in more robust consultation with tribal leaders on other issues, including COVID-19 relief funds, than previous administrations.

However, Oklahoma Republican Rep. Tom Cole, a member of the Chickasaw Nation, sees Biden’s outreach as a continuation of the work of previous administrations of both parties.

“I am encouraged that, like his predecessors, President Biden is continuing to prioritize this outreach and seeking to build upon prior initiatives that recognize and value the unique and constitutional role of tribes in our society,” Cole said in an email.

Several tribal leaders are optimistic that Biden will raise the bar compared to previous presidents. They point to his selection of Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, as the first Native American to lead the Interior Department, which oversees relations with tribes. Haaland is also the first Native American to head a Cabinet agency.

“Auntie Deb is what we call her,” said Judith LeBlanc, director of Native Organizers Alliance and a citizen of the Caddo Nation.

“Appointing Auntie Deb was a thank you to Indian Country, a way to say ‘I see you.’ So when we have someone like Deb Haaland … as part of the decision-making, it’s the beginning of real self-determination and how we govern together in unity.”

Haaland this week met with tribal leaders in Washington, California and Wyoming about climate change and other issues. In Washington state, she visited a new housing development built by the Quinault Indian Nation and listened to tribal leaders discuss the threat posed by climate change to their community.

Fawn Sharp, Quinault Indian Nation vice president and president of the National Congress of American Indians, said Haaland approaches the issue with a deeper understanding than her predecessors.

“We know she sees it, she feels it, she burdens it and she’s fiercely fighting for it and that makes a big difference in how we’re going to directly engage with the secretary of the Interior.”

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