SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Voter participation advocate Theresa Pasqual drives through the tribal community of Acoma Pueblo with a stack of sample ballots in her car and applications for absentee ballots, handing them out at every opportunity ahead of the primary June 4th in New Mexico.
Residents of the pueblo’s original “sky city,” which survived after the Spanish invasion in the late 1500s, know firsthand the challenges Native American voters faced throughout Indian Country, where polling places are often hours away and election laws and identification requirements are restrictive. just add to barriers.
It’s been a century since an act of Congress granted citizenship to Native Americans, but advocates say the birthright granted in 1924 has yet to translate into equal access to voting. Inequities are especially pronounced in remote regions of the U.S. and in some key southwestern states with large Native American populations.
New Mexico is trying something new — a test of sorts for many new and contested provisions that are part of the state’s Native American Voting Rights Act, which was passed last year. The measure promises tribal communities a greater say in how and where they can vote, even opening up the possibility that tribal offices could be designated as addresses for remote families who don’t have them.
This should help in Acoma, where Pasqual said some residents still live in a village where there are no standard addresses.
Native Americans in New Mexico – home to 22 federally recognized tribal communities and properties of an Oklahoma-based tribe — were among the last to gain access to the vote, decades after the U.S. extended birthright citizenship to the land’s original inhabitants on June 2, 1924, through the Citizenship Act Indiana.
This legislation took shape in the aftermath of World War I, in which thousands of Native Americans volunteered to serve in the military overseas.
A patchwork of statutes and treaties already offered citizenship to about two-thirds of Native Americans, sometimes in exchange for land allotments that fractured reservations, gestures of assimilation, military service, and even the renunciation of tribal traditions. The one-sentence Indian Citizenship Act eliminated these requirements in an attempt to grant citizenship to all Native Americans.
At the same time, Congress deferred to state governments who would be eligible to vote. Legal access to vote was denied under existing state constitutional provisions and statutes until 1948 in Arizona and New Mexico — and until 1957 on reservations in Utah.
It was intentional, said Maurice Crandall, a history professor at Arizona State University and a citizen of the Yavapai-Apache Nation of Camp Verde. Pointing to the largest Native populations in New Mexico and Arizona, he said, “They don’t want a large group of Natives that could influence elections.”
Fast forward to 2020, he said, “a lot of people credit the Native vote with the decision to bring Arizona into (Joe) Biden’s camp.”
Biden won Arizona by about 10,500 votes as voter turnout increased on the Navajo and Hopi reservations.
In Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, voting provided Native Americans with a path to power amid the political rise of pueblo members Deb Haaland. She became one of the first two Native American women in Congress in 2018, before taking the reins at the Department of the Interior to oversee U.S. obligations to 574 federally recognized tribes.
For the upcoming primary, Laguna is at the forefront of two Democratic contests, with first-time Native American candidates competing in districts that were redrawn in 2021 to increase Native American influence. In the general election, eligible voters among Laguna’s 8,000 residents will vote in a congress swing district rematch between US Representative Gabe Vasquez and Republican Yvette Herrell, who lost in 2022 by 1,350 votes. Herrell rarely invokes his Cherokee heritage.
New state Native American voting rights legislation provides new tools for tribal communities to request convenient on-reservation voting locations and secure drop-off ballot boxes with consultation requirements for county officials and an appeals process.
But obstacles remain, said Laguna Pueblo tribal administrator Ashley M. Sarracino, pointing to tensions with county election administrators over the decision to remove three Election Day polling locations in the pueblo this year, leaving three open.
In Arizona, the anniversary of the Indian Citizenship Act stirs frustration among Native American leaders, including Gov. Stephen Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community. He denounced efforts by the Republican National Committee and state lawmakers to revive and extend voter ID requirements through the 2024 general election.
It was two members of the Lewis community who sued in 1928 after being removed from the polls, only for the Arizona Supreme Court to dismiss the case. The community would not realize the right to vote until 1948 – after World War II and the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima, which included Ira Hayeswho was part of the Gila River community.
Lewis, during a recent online forum, recounted the years that passed between the time the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed and the Indian Citizenship Act was signed. He said elected officials for years “made laws for us, about us, but never with us.”
Native Americans have widely differing views on citizenship and voting, said Torey Dolan, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Some consider U.S. citizenship incompatible with being an indigenous people; others see it more as dual citizenship.
With the passage of the citizenship law, many Native Americans feared that the expansion of U.S. citizenship would undermine the special status of trust lands that allows tribes to make their own decisions about tax-exempt land and protect it from speculators.
“This was really seen in many parts of Indian Country as being aimed at destroying tribal cultures, especially in the Southwest,” said Geoffrey Blackwell, general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians who advocates for Native American rights and sovereignty.
For some, it was worth fighting to secure the right to vote. In 1948, Miguel Trujillo, a member of Isleta Pueblo and a World War II military veteran, challenged the status quo that prohibited Native Americans in New Mexico from voting by attempting to vote in Valencia County. It was rejected, triggering a historic lawsuit that was supported by Washington-based federal Indian legislation pioneer Felix Cohen and the National Congress of American Indians.
A 1956 federal survey of Native voting in the Southwest found anemic turnout, with no polling places set up in New Mexico’s pueblos. In Arizona, Jim Crow-style discrimination began with the widespread administration of literacy tests to prevent native language speakers from voting until the practice was banned in 1970 under the federal Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 spurred a new movement within tribal communities to encourage participation, said Laura Harris, director of Albuquerque-based Americans for Indian Opportunity and a citizen of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that gave the Justice Department election oversight in states with a history of discrimination. Since then, several states have enacted new election laws that some legal experts say make it unduly difficult for Native Americans to vote, including a flurry of restrictions by Republicans enacted after the 2020 election.
But in New Mexico, the Sandoval County Clerk’s Office has expanded early voting services in recent years to the Navajo and Pueblo communities. Only one pueblo turned down the opportunity this year. Native language interpreters are stationed at each of the locations, which are open to all county residents.
Evelyn Sandoval works in the county attorney’s office as a Native American liaison. She teaches families how to use newly available tools to register online and receive absentee ballots in the mail.
“I’m trying to get them to be self-sufficient,” said Sandoval, a 54-year-old former oil and gas company employee who grew up in Ojo Encino, a Navajo community with fewer than 300 residents. His mother spoke only Navajo.
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Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed to this story from Zia Pueblo, New Mexico. AP Writer Graham Brewer contributed from Oklahoma City.
