Amelia Schafer
ICT + Rapid City Journal
A Chicago man elected to his first political office this year is part of a growing movement of Native young people running for public office.
Anthony Tamez, First Nations Cree, Sicangu Lakota and Black, was elected in February at age 23 to the Chicago Police District Council from District 17.
He is one of the youngest Native people to hold an elected position in the U.S. and is believed to be only the second Native person to hold an elected post in Illinois.
“In general, what we’re seeing is Native youth are stepping into positions of leadership,” said Jordan James Harvill, Cherokee/Choctaw, the national program director for Advance Native Political Leadership.
“The systems around them are failing and their response is to take on these issues,” he said.
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At least two Indigenous people were elected at young ages to mayoral seats in Alaska.
Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson, Tlingit, who is now president and CEO of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, was elected mayor for his village of Kasaan when he was just 19 years old.
And former Alaska Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, also Tlingit, got his start in public life in 1965 at age 22, when he was elected mayor of his home village of Yakutat, in southeast Alaska. He died in 2020.
In Illinois, the only other Native person known to have held an elected post is Donne E. Trotter, Choctaw, who served as an Illinois state representative from 1988-1993 and in the Illinois state senate from 1993-2018. He announced his retirement in 2018.
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Tamez said he hopes that his election can inspire other young Indigenous people not only in Chicago but across the nation.
“In order for us to reach parity, we need to have 17,000 Native people in elected office,” Tamez told ICT. “So I hope that I am not the youngest one for long. I hope that in other cities, Native youth and Native people decide to run for office.”
Making a difference
As a member of the Police District Council, Tamez will serve to develop community policing initiatives, gather community input on the police, expand restorative justice policies and practices, and voice community concerns.
Tamez is also believed to be the first person to hold a position overseeing the police, according to the Advance Native Political Leadership, which maintains a database of Native politicians and elected officials.
“Given the history of police brutality in Native communities, I think Native voices have been lost in the conversation about police violence,” Harvill said. “We have some of the highest arrest rates and highest detainment rates in the nation, as far as the highest prosecution rates in the nation, and so particularly around tribal lands, but also at large.”
Tamez said he wants to make a difference in his community.
“When we say that the Chicago Police Department is racist, that’s just not an opinion,” Tamez said. “That is a fact, because of the Department of Justice report that came out saying that the Chicago Police Department not only endangers themselves with the practices that they exhibit on our streets, against our citizens, but they’re also infringing on our constitutional rights as well.
He continued, “As district councils, we’re the eyes and the ears on the ground in the community.”
Previously, Tamez has worked for two different aldermen, 33rd ward Alderman Carlos Ramirez Rosa and and current 33rd ward Alderman Rosanna Rodriguez Sanchez who oversees Tamez’s neighborhood, Albany Park. Rodriguez inspired him to run for his own position and step up to help his community.
“Chicago and Illinois have no representation of Native people on any levels of government, so that’s from the federal government down to the very local level,” Tamez said. “So when talking to my community, and my family and my close friends, they all thought that this would be a really good start for myself. We’re already bringing alternatives to policing and finding different ways to keep Native people safe within Chicago.”
‘Uncomfortable’ in their homelands
Despite having a population of nearly 70,000 Native people and housing the Ho-Chunk and Tunica-Biloxi Chicago branch offices, Native representation is lacking in Chicago.
“For years, Native people have felt uncomfortable on our own homelands,” Tamez said. “So we need to be able to get into these spaces and advocate for what our community needs, and how our communities are best served.”
Tamez said he made sure Native community members were involved within his campaign, and he encourages any Native youth interested in politics to reach out to him.
“These processes are not easy, and they are not set up for normal people to be able to run for office,” he said. “Those things aren’t something communities have access to, so that’s something that I’m committed to as well, to bring more Native people into that political participation, which kind of loops back into how my campaign was run.”
Within Chicago’s Native community, Tamez is the former chairman of the Center for Native American Youth’s Advisory Board, a member of the Chi-Nations Youth Council, and a steward of the First Nations Garden, which was founded in 2018. Tamez was also involved with Advance Native Political Leadership’s Native Leadership Institute.
“He was really quiet at first, but he ended up becoming one of our most outspoken folks,” Harvill said. “He did exactly what we had hoped he would — he chose an office with a high impact at a local level.”
The First Nation’s Garden, located in the Albany Park neighborhood, provides the Native community with access to traditional medicines such as prairie sage, tobacco, strawberries and sweetgrass, and allows community members to grow their own fruits and vegetables. It’s also a safe place for community gatherings and ceremonies.
“If it wasn’t for all of the Native organizations who believed in my voice, I wouldn’t be here,” Tamez said. “Not without my aunties and my mom who have kept me on track. If I strayed off a little bit, they put me right back on. There’s a community of people behind me and I’m forever grateful for them.”
Tamez will be providing his campaign documents and information to the Newberry Library to help tell his own story for future Native people interested in politics.
“I would say it’s a heavy burden being probably the youngest Native elected right now nationally, and the only one in the state of Illinois,” he told ICT.
“But it’s also cool because I get experiences like this and I can get the word out about what we’re trying to do in the city of Chicago and how we’re keeping each other safe.”
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