Native Americans’ right to vote among the most violated

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Reprinted from November 12, 2020
First of three parts

Here’s how Native Americans’ right to vote has been systematically violated for generations

In the new book, Voting in Indian Country, The View from the Trenches, Jean Reith Schroedel weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts on the eve of the November 3 election. She is professor emerita of political science at Claremont Graduate University.

Nina C in New York writes in The Guardian: “The U.S. may face its biggest ballot brawl this November.

“Voter suppression has taken centre stage in the race to elect potentially the 46th president of the United States. But we’ve heard little about the 5.2 million Native Americans whose ancestors have called this land home before there was a U.S. president.

“‘Mail voting doesn’t work for Navajo Nation: Native Americans face steep election hurdles.

“The rights of indigenous communities, including the right to vote, have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to clean air and water, health, education, economic opportunities, housing and sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 Million) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians.

“Is the right to vote struggle for Native Americans distinct from the wider struggle faced by marginalized groups in the U.S.?

“One thing few Americans understand is that American Indians and Native Alaskans were the last group in the United States to get citizenship and to get the vote. Even after the Civil War and the Reconstruction, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments there was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said indigenous people could never become U.S. citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact, first-generation violations used to deny, not just dilute voting rights, were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group. It’s impossible to understand contemporary voter suppression in Indian Country without understanding this historical context.

“Why didn’t the American Indian Citizenship Act, 1924, nor the Voting Rights Act (VRA), 1965, guarantee Native Americans equal access to the ballot box?

“The motivation for the VRA was the egregious treatment of black people in the South, and for the first 10 years there was a question over whether it even applied to American Indian and Native Alaskan populations. It wasn’t really discussed until a civil rights commission report in 1975, which included cases from South Dakota and Arizona, that showed equally egregious discrimination and absolute denial of right to vote towards Native Americans, and Latinos.”

Continued next week

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