Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
The importance and impact of elected officials for local offices cannot be understated. School boards, county commissioners, mayors, city councils, public works commissions and others make decisions that impact local communities.
Election Day this year was Nov. 7.
According to the Thurgood Marshall Institute, these officials decide everything “from how police engage with the community to whether public transportation is affordable, safe, and clean to whether affordable housing is being built, local elections shape our communities and impact our lives. Our state, municipal, and county-level elected officials make a wide range of decisions that affect your daily life.”
This fact is not lost on Ronalda Tome-Warito, Navajo, a 26 year advocate for Indigenous students who ran in this year’s election for Albuquerque Public Schools’ Board of Education.
“Education was there to divide our families,” Tome-Warito told ICT. “It was there to tell us that we didn’t belong. It was there to tell us that we didn’t have a language, we didn’t have a culture, and then eventually our names were taken away.”
She is the first Native American elected to the APS school board that was created in 1891, before Native American people were even considered citizens and as federal Indian boarding schools were stealing children from their communities to forcibly assimilate them into White, western society.
Today, this practice that would meet the United Nations’ definition of genocide.
“Education was used to get rid of us,” Tome-Warito said. “We’re facing a big challenge but it can be faced.”
Tome-Warito is the parent of three gifted children, with one that was diagnosed with a disability at seven. In New Mexico’s public schools, gifted children are also placed in the special education program and are provided with individualized education programs, more commonly referred to as IEPs.
“I’m always concerned about kids. I’m concerned about are they reading? Are they getting the literacy they need?” Tome-Warito said. “But then I’m also really concerned with our own Native children because I see the disparities. I see policies, I see what’s creating trauma.”
After lots of contemplation and prayer, Tome-Warito decided it was time to run again for the school board. She ran previously in 2010 but was met with ridicule and racist comments to go back to where she came from.
Two of her children were in school and she wondered if they would be attacked too. Ultimately, she dropped out of the race because she wanted to protect her children.
She is one of 52 Indigenous candidates who won seats in local elections in 2023. This is according to a database of candidates managed by Advance Native Political Leadership and ICT.
Here is a list of non-incumbents who were elected this year:
- Naomi Concha, Pueblo of Taos, was elected for her first term on the board of education for Taos Municipal Schools in New Mexico.
- Alana Quintasket, Swinomish, was elected to La Conner School District School Board in Washington.
- Ernest Norton, Iñupiat, was elected to Kotzebue City Council in Alaska
- Josiah Patkotak, Iñupiat, was elected as the mayor of North Slope Borough in Alaska.
- Martin Qalġiḷan Edwardsen, Iñupiat, was elected to the North Slope Borough Assembly in Alaska.
- Frieda Kaleak, Iñupiat, was elected to the North Slope Borough School District School Board in Alaska.
- Raven Sheldon, Iñupiat, was elected to the Northwest Arctic Borough Assembly in Alaska.
- Alice Melton-Barr, Iñupiat, was elected to the Northwest Arctic Borough School District Board in Alaska.
- Brenda Pusher-Begay, White Mountain Apache, was elected to Navopache Electric Cooperative in Arizona.
- Anthony Tamez Pochel, Wuskwi Sipihk First Nations Cree and Sicangu Lakota, was elected to the Chicago Police District Council in Illinois.
- Brian Jiron, Isleta Pueblo, was elected to Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District Board of Directors in New Mexico.
- Amanda Page, Klamath Tribes, was elected to the Redmond School District Board of Directors in Oregon.
The other 40 candidates were incumbents that were re-elected to their seats.
Question 6 in Maine
In Maine, voters decided to restore long-removed language about Maine’s obligations to tribes to the printed versions of its constitution.
Maine inherited the treaties from Massachusetts when it became its own state more than 200 years ago. The language still applies, but it was removed from the printed constitution in the 19th century.
Citizens of tribes in Maine and others have said the restoration of the language to the printed constitution would make clear the state’s obligations to Indigenous groups. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills had opposed the measure, though, and has said she feared it could lead to lawsuits.
Maulian Bryant, Penobscot Nation ambassador and president of the Wabanaki Alliance, said that restoring the tribal treaties to the printed constitutions honors the tribes’ ancestors.
“It feels good that Mainers heard us and felt our message and agreed,” she said.
More coverage on this is coming soon.
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