Kevin Abourezk
ICT
SIOUX CITY, Iowa – The lights shone bright as the three women stepped in front of the powwow emcee stage before a crowd of hundreds, some friends, some relatives and many people they’d never met.
The smell of burgers, hot dogs and Indian tacos hung heavy in the air, while Native children chased each other through the crowds.
One by one, the women, two of them sisters, grabbed the microphone. They shared their values, their hopes, their plans for building a better community. And then they asked those gathered for their votes.
The crowd applauded.
“They knew who we were,” Trisha Rivers said.
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The three women – two Winnebago and one Umonhon – are doing what few Native women have ever done in Sioux City, Iowa. They are seeking public office.
The two Winnebago women – Trisha Rivers, 34, and Jessica Lopez-Walker, 46 – are sisters. Rivers is seeking a seat on the Sioux City school board, while Lopez-Walker is seeking a seat on the city council. The Umonhon woman, Marguerite Cortez, 46, is also seeking a seat on the Sioux City school board.
Rivers and Cortez are seeking to fill two of five open seats on the school board and are currently facing just one other candidate. Lopez-Walker is facing incumbent Julie Schoenherr in her race for the city council. The general election in Sioux City is Nov. 7. No primary is currently planned, and none will be as long as there are no more than two candidates for each seat up for grabs.
Sioux City Mayor Bob Scott, who’s served as mayor on and off since 1985, said he doesn’t know of any Native men or women who have ran for public office but he remembers a Native man who was appointed to finish a four-year term for a school board member in the 1980s but who never ran for the seat.
“We haven’t had a lot of minority candidates in town to choose from, for whatever reason,” he said.
Sioux City school board member Monique Scarlett, one of the first Black school board members, said she remembers a Native woman seeking a city council seat in the 1970s, though she doesn’t remember if the woman won.
She said Black and Native students in Sioux City schools score lowest on test scores and highest in behavioral problems. She said she’s hopeful a Native school board member would help address those disparities.
“I believe that they would bring that connection and collaboration that is so needed, not only in the Native community but in the minority community at large,” Scarlett said. “I believe that elected officials or board volunteers should mirror their community, and our district is a minority-majority.”
The election of three Native women to Congress in 2018 inspired Natives to run across the country. Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids won election that year, making them the first Native women to win election to Congress. This year, Native candidates are seeking offices in cities, counties and states across the United States.
In late July, Susan Bayro became the first Osage woman to be elected vice mayor of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. In Duluth, Minnesota, Miranda Pacheco, a Leech Lake Ojibwe woman seeking a city council seat, advanced Aug. 8 to the Nov. 7 general election. And in Washington state, 13 Native candidates for various offices advanced to the Nov. 7 general election. Other Native candidates are seeking offices in Alaska, Oregon and New Mexico. A few key election dates this season are:
- Aug. 21: Northwest Arctic Borough School District and Northwest Arctic Borough Assembly, Alaska general elections
- Oct. 3: Alaska local general elections
- Nov. 7: Election Day includes many elections across the country, including Albuquerque, New Mexico, Public Schools School Board general elections
In Sioux City, the three Native women seeking office all have been involved in community volunteer work. And all three have had to overcome challenges to get where they are.
Trisha Rivers
Rivers shared her story of adoption. A White man, an electrician for John Deere, raised her. As a child, she attended two private Catholic schools, but eventually began getting into trouble.
She transferred to Job Corps in Denison, Iowa, but eventually made it back to Sioux City, where she graduated from North High School. Her experiences, she said, taught her that everyone should have a say about their circumstances and that everyone’s voice matters.
“You really have to include everybody,” she said. “You can’t leave anybody out of the bigger conversation.”
As she grew into adulthood, she reconnected to her Native identity and culture and got involved in social issues affecting Native people, such as the missing and murdered Indigenous relatives crisis.
Today, she is a working mother of four and serves as the Siouxland project director for the Great Plains Action Society, a Native social justice organization. She also serves as the Native representative for the Sioux City Inclusive Committee, which was formed to advise Sioux City’s city council following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the social unrest caused by that event.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Northern Iowa.
She said the Inclusive Committee works to ensure the voices of minority, disabled and faith communities in Sioux City are heard. The committee, she said, asks tough questions of city leaders.
“How can we make our public education more inclusive to minority groups, historically marginalized groups of people?” Rivers said. “That’s something that we focus on in the Inclusive Committee. Now I’m extending that into the public education system.”
As a school board member, she said, she would work to ensure the school district works to increase diversity among its teachers and staff and that the needs of minority students are met. But she wouldn’t only focus on Native students, she said.
“We have to look at everybody in the community and make sure everybody is heard and felt and understood,” she said.
And while she hopes to win a seat on the school board, she’s happy to be running at all.
“This is already a win in itself because I can give my advice if somebody else from those communities wants to step up and step into that power,” she said.
Jessica Lopez-Walker
Lopez-Walker and her sister didn’t grow up together. The elder sister was raised by the sisters’ mother and later a stepfather, but she said she was often alone as a teenager and had to develop a support system beyond her immediate family.
She learned to watch people and take note of their behaviors, their values.
“I’m careful with what I say and how I say it,” she said.
When she was 15, Lopez-Walker moved to the Winnebago Reservation in northeast Nebraska and began learning about her culture. She’s worked to pass along her knowledge to her children, including the foster children that she and her husband have helped raise for the past seven years.
“They all know where they come from, regardless of what tribe they’re from,” she said.
She learned to sew and became a much sought after artisan in her community, eventually becoming a teacher of the craft for HoChunk Renaissance, a language preservation program in Winnebago, and Little Priest Tribal College.
She eventually opened a craft store of her own in nearby South Sioux City, Nebraska, called Shing Wing Visions and sells regalia, ribbon shirts, ribbon skirts and hand bags.
She holds an associates degree in psychology and art from Nebraska Indian Community College and is currently completing a Bachelor of Arts from Briar Cliff University.
As a city council candidate, she said, she brings her personal experience to bear on the issues she has prioritized, including the lack of affordable housing in Sioux City, Iowa.
“The rent rates have gone up way dramatically within the past year,” she said. “If it does look good, you’re paying close to like $2,000 a month.”
She said she and her husband struggle to get ahead, living paycheck to paycheck.
If elected, she would work to lower property taxes, to relieve the burden on families fighting poverty. She would also seek to find housing for the homeless and the poverty-stricken. And she would seek to establish more attractions to keep young people from leaving.
“A lot of people are leaving, especially since Tyson shut down,” she said.
Lopez-Walker serves on the parent advisory committee for Native students of Sioux City Community Schools. She hopes to bring her unique perspective as a Native woman to the city council.
“I want to be a role model for our kids to look up and see that oh somebody is taking that chance, and trying to make that change and is willing to stand up for everybody,” she said.
She said Natives in her community don’t vote and don’t believe that issues addressed by city leaders really affect them. She hopes to change that by getting Native people and others more engaged in the political process.
“I think once they see that someone like them is running, they tend to stand behind them and support them and not just Natives but other people of color,” she said.
Marguerite Cortez
Cortez was born and raised on the west side of Sioux City. Growing up, she never got to be in a classroom with a teacher who looked like her
“If I had an issue in school, I didn’t have anyone to turn to talk to about it,” she said.
But her mother pushed her to succeed, and Cortez determined herself to ensure at least some Native children would get to see a teacher who looked like them. She decided to go to the Omaha Reservation in northeast Nebraska to teach.
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She recently finished her 15th year as a teacher for Umonhon Nation Public School in Macy, Nebraska. While there, she said, she had high academic expectations for her students.
She sought to support her students with whatever challenges they faced, to be a good listener and someone they could turn to in hard times.
“They need someone there that supports them, and parents trust me,” she said.
As a candidate for the Sioux City school board, she said she brings not only her experience as a teacher but her knowledge as a student of education. She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Wayne State College and a master’s degree in curriculum instruction from Wayne State, and is finishing a second master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
She hopes to bring all the knowledge she’s learned in school and in the classroom to the Sioux City school board.
“I just know there is a need for, especially, a Native educator in Sioux City to really advocate for all kids, not just Native kids,” she said.
If elected, she said, she would work to ensure all students, teachers and staff are heard, including janitors, lunchroom workers and school secretaries.
“They are equally important to running a school as the teachers in the classrooms and principals are,” she said.
She said she understands the challenges facing schools, including reduced federal funding and other budget cutbacks.
“There are positions there that we have to figure out how we’re going to save and what cutbacks we’re going to have to do,” she said. “I’m not a stranger to what’s going on in the district.”
And while she taught in reservation schools, she said, she has always valued the quality education her children have received as students of Sioux City Community Schools.
“I felt at home on the reservation, but I left my children in Sioux City,” she said. “We do have some good teachers here in Sioux City so I was leaving them in good hands.”
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