What do Indigenous voters want in the 2024 election?
Kalle Benallie and Jourdan Bennett-Begaye
ICT
Some Indigenous voters don’t vote, some only are concerned about their tribal or local elections and some are less enthusiastic about either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, who are most likely to be the top contenders for presidential seats, taking office again.
The Native American Rights Fund released a report that only 66 percent of the known eligible Native American voting population is registered to vote. There are over 1,000,000 eligible Native American voters in the United States.
Here are what some Indigenous voters are thinking about in the 2024’s political climate.
Local elections
Jacy Sohappy, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, said the issues she’s concerned about are more geared towards local elections since she works in a nonprofit. Particularly, Sohappy doesn’t want another presidential era with Trump in it.
“We need to work on being able to grow together as Indians and non-Indians or other communities. When that happened, we were separated, and it brought more separation than necessary,” she said.
Sohappy is leaning towards voting for Biden but has concerns about his mental health. She also hopes he addresses the need to update treaties that were established during wartime.
“They shouldn't be in entreaty in wartime treaties right now. They continue to augment some of those in some of our tribes at home,” she said.
Missing and murdered people
Marie Saunders, Navajo, said she wants to see more immediacy on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People crisis. She recalled how when a non-Native went missing that it was acted upon right away.
“We need help to organize, organizations, or the law to at least help find these missing Natives,” she said. Saunders is a Democrat and is supporting Biden in the election.
School district focused
Cheryl Shepard, Diné, is concerned about her local school district elections because of Indigenous and Native American programs that are offered to students.
For the presidential election, the Democrat is looking to vote for Biden. She said Trump is “theatrical. It's more than anything else than political. That's how I see it.”
Help Native people overall
Geraldine Buck, who identifies as a Democrat, said she doesn't like Trump and wishes that Biden, if he wins the November election, that he would work on addressing and helping Native Americans more.
“This is the United States and Natives live like in a third-world country,” the Navajo citizen said. “Give them more opportunities to better themselves to come up with technology and stuff. Like we’re down here and we need to come up to their level.”
Buck said she follows the general and tribal elections.
Economy, natural resource development
Harley Semaken, who is an oilfield worker in the North Slope, above the Arctic Circle, said he leans Republican and would vote for Trump in the presidential election. His major concern is about the economy and natural resource development in Alaska for mining, oil or gas.
He thinks Biden’s push for clean energy is not economically sustainable.
“Oil production has been around for a long time. They've been developing oil since the 70s in the Arctic. A lot of that goes towards getting refined, and then once it's refined, it's transported, so they have their systems in place. It's still too early to totally rely on green energy. As big of a push they have on it, it's a lot more expensive, because they don't have the structure,” the Koyukon Athabascan citizen said.
Semaken, who’s Alaska Native corporation is Doyon, supports putting the U.S. first.
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“I would say, business driven, economy driven, money driven (is) where we should do more towards developing and focusing on,” he said.
Immigration, inflation
Virgil Jackson, Gila River Indian Community, said he is most concerned about immigration for the presidential election and is supporting Trump. Jackson, who is from Florence, Arizona, added that some of the other reasons he’s against Biden is inflation and Biden speaking incoherently at times. Jackson is Republican.
Student loan forgiveness
Ty Grey, who is a part-time masters student at Fort Lewis College in Southwestern Colorado, said that the issues that are important to him are providing economic, academic and health care resources that Native Americans can benefit from. He said in turn they can offer what they gained to other communities around the world.
“It just improves the quality of life of all, not just Native Americans, but every person with the health care system, giving quality, health care, whether it be public health, community health,” Grey said.
He said he was disappointed with Biden regarding the student loan forgiveness initiatives that have come to have certain restrictions. Those who can benefit now are those who took out loans 20 to 25 years ago and those who have worked in public service for 10 or more years.
Grey has his own student loan debt of 30,000 which he said he hasn’t been able to lower as a result of the specific qualifications.
“The rate of applications that were going in, it's not just me that was affected, it was millions of people. It was very hard to hear about it then and there. There were deadlines that you had to meet in order to kind of see if you could, in a timely fashion, qualify for any of those forgiveness,” he said.
Funding concerns
Begay, Diné, who works in the federal government, said she follows what is happening in local, county and state elections. Begay manages two federal programs and said that their major concern is funding and how soon they can receive them.
She describes how they have to wait long periods of time to receive funding and once they finally do they have to quickly spend it before the deadline to use the money.
“(The) two presidential candidates right now, I have no interest. I mean I am going to vote but I’m just kind of disappointed that nobody else got out there to try to out campaign them,” Begay said.
Tribal elections only
Rudy Myori, Ute Indian Tribe, said he’s only ever voted over 10 years ago in a local election. He didn’t return again because he was asked to do jury duty. But he’s voted in his tribal government because he said he feels the impact more.
“It impacts me like directly where the other one kind of does but it kinda doesn't. If it does impact me, it's going to be minimal,” Myori said.
A large reason why he doesn’t vote in a larger election like the presidential election is because of the divide Republicans and Democrats have with each other.
“It's kind of up in the air for me, and I think I just don't vote because I don't trust either one of them,” he said.
Doesn’t believe in voting
Gary Jay, Navajo, said he identifies as an Independent, and said he used to vote but doesn’t believe in the elections anymore.
The last time he voted was for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
He added that he thinks there’s too much favoritism in the Navajo Nation tribal government.
“It’s not what you know, it's who you know,” he said.
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