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This country’s original people have something to say this midterm election season.

Besieged and terrorized by ICE. Marginalized by our government. And often reduced to symbols and slurs by a society that refuses to see them as full, complex human beings, Indigenous people are standing up and taking power into their own hands by pushing back against those who seek to keep them at the margins of our body politic.

“The whole idea behind tribal sovereignty, the whole idea behind culture and tradition, the whole idea behind Native languages and land back, these are issues that are very important to Native voters,” Michael Roberts, president and CEO of First Nations Development Institute, told Beyond Borders News. 

Historic push

This Indigenous Peoples Day, many are focused on mobilizing for a historic midterms, with a record 355 Native American and Indigenous candidates running for office. The candidates who are running or have run in local, state, federal primary, and general elections this year, top the previous number in 2024, when 263 Indigenous candidates ran. 

This year they include former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna) for governor in New Mexico, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (White Earth Band of Ojibwe) and former Alaska congresswoman Mary Peltola (Yup’ik), both running for the U.S. Senate.

All three are trying to make history. No Native American woman has ever been a governor, or held a seat in the Senate. 

But that could change come November 3rd. 

“My goal has always been to ensure more Native Americans have the opportunity to lead,” Haaland said in a report by The Washington Post. “Now I see more Native people running, winning, and leading in their communities, and I support them every step of the way.”

Historic voter suppression

But many Indigenous people face barriers to voting due to the non-Native population often seeking to control resources in near reservations. Rural and small town news site Barn Raiser reports communities on reservations often face gerrymandering and contend with election offices being set up far from reservations.

While Native populations may be small, in contentious elections that are close, they could tip the scales for a candidate, making the Native vote quite powerful. Because of this, they often face “hate crimes, murders and police shootings in white-inhabited areas bordering their reservations.”

Barn Raiser reports that data from the National Institute of Justice in 2016 and by Congress in 2023 back up these claims.

“Combined, the reports and Native advocacy groups make clear the stakes: the fight for equal justice and Native self-determination is bound together in the fight for tribal sovereignty and voting rights,” wrote Stephanie Woodard for Barn Raiser.

The problem with mail-in voting

Another barrier Native voters face? Mail-in voting. 

The Postal Service is often “unreliable” on tribal lands. Many Native voters don’t know if they’ll even receive their ballots on time, let alone if they’ll make it to their final destination. 

The Native American Rights Fund recently reported that rejections of voter registration applications by mail and at DMVs in areas with large Native populations have “skyrocketed.”

“Rejections rose by an average of 200% in counties where Native Americans are at least one-quarter of the population,” the report said, adding that, “Between 2020 and ’24, rejections for missed deadlines increased 134% in counties where Native Americans make up more than 25% of the population, compared to a rise of 55% nationally, strong evidence that USPS network disruptions had a significant impact in Indian Country.”

One state’s effort to disenfranchise Native voters

But there are other tactics at play to suppress the Native vote.

Alex Rate, deputy director and legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, told Buffalo’s Fire, a news site from the Native Media Freedom Alliance, how new rules could continue to disenfranchise Montana’s Indigenous voters this Midterm.

There’s a “new step” requiring voters to add their birth year outside of mail-in ballot envelopes, and there’s “a more restrictive list of acceptable forms of official identification during in-person voting.”

“These are basically just naked attempts to disenfranchise certain segments of the voting public,” Rate told Buffalo’s Fire. “In fact what they’re doing is making it more confusing and creating processes that are more byzantine that will result in potential inaccuracies.”

A movement that can’t be stopped

Despite these barriers, Native and Indigenous Voters are preparing to make sure their voices are heard this November.

They are organizing around these historic candidates, and mobilizing the vote, seeking to overcome a history with the U.S. government that is riddled with “broken treaties, forced assimilation, relocations and removals,” wrote Mariana Alfaro for The Washington Post.

The surge in candidates is attributed to many taking Haaland’s lead from when she became one of two Native American women to be elected to Congress in 2018. Rep. Sharice Davids, joined Haaland in the historic feat. 

Seeing themselves and their values reflected in Haaland and Davids caused a surge in interest from Native voters, inspiring many others to take their lead and run for office.

“Native people have some of the lowest trust in government of any group in the country … To be able to see ourselves in office — and believe that there was an impact — changed something fundamentally,” Jordan James Harvill, the senior director of national programs at Advance Native Political Leadership told The Washington Post.

Here’s to hoping that change continues. 

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