Native American communities were critical voting blocs in crucial states in 2020, and with the 2024 race remaining tight, both campaigns have attempted to organize Native voters in the last weeks of the presidential election.
However, many Native voters stated that the two campaigns’ messaging could not be more different. It has been 100 years since Native Americans were granted the right to vote by the Snyder Act in 1924, and whichever campaign is able to harness their influence in this election has the potential to sway some of the most highly contested counties in America.
In swing states including Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan, and Nevada, candidates, particularly Vice President Kamala Harris, have targeted Native Americans with radio commercials and events on tribal lands featuring speakers such as Bill Clinton and Donald Trump Jr.
According to Gabriel R. Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Native American voters favor Democrats but are more likely to vote Republican than Latinos or African Americans. He claims they are one of the least partisan and youngest voting demographics in the country, driven by concerns that directly affect local communities, such as land rights and environmental safeguards.
In 2020, the Biden administration campaigned in several tribal nations in important states such as Wisconsin and Arizona, where precincts on tribal lands helped the Democrats barely win the election. “Arizona was kind of like a textbook example of what that could look like if you make those early investments,” Sanchez pointed out.
Harris said in a $370 million ad campaign unveiled this month, which included spots on numerous reservations, that the United States should respect treaty rights and indigenous sovereignty. According to Crystal Echo Hawk, CEO of Illuminative, a group dedicated to increasing Native American exposure, such commitments, along with the economy and environmental regulations, are the top priorities cited by Native voters in Illuminative’s surveys.
Echo Hawk believes those expenditures could pay out again for the Democrats. “I haven’t seen the same kind of targeted messaging and outreach from the Trump campaign,” she told me. Harris also stands to inherit some of the goodwill left by the Obama and Biden administrations, she said.
Obama strengthened consultation with tribes on issues such as land conservation and criminal justice, while Biden promoted more than 80 Native Americans to high cabinet positions.
“The minute that the announcement came that Harris was stepping into the race, you saw people organize overnight,” Echo Hawk told CNN. And Trump, she said, will have to deal with the 85% decrease of Bears Ears National Monument and the reinstatement of the Keystone XL project, both of which are controversial among Indigenous peoples. “I think a lot of these people remember that,” she told me.
Biden formally apologized on Friday for the country’s backing of Native American boarding schools, which left a legacy of torture and cultural loss. While some considered it long overdue, tribal leaders praised it. Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate and governor of Minnesota, will campaign in the Navajo Nation this Saturday.
The Trump campaign has not released any ads targeting Native Americans, but U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Nation citizen and Republican from Oklahoma, has campaigned for the former president in Native communities in North Carolina, a swing state decided by less than one point in 2020.
On a crisp evening earlier this month, Mullin sat on a small stage in front of several bales of hay with Donald Trump Jr. and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat who recently announced her decision to join the Republican Party, to take questions from an audience of a couple hundred. They discussed topics ranging from the economics to tribal self-determination.
The celebration was held on a tiny farm in Red Springs, North Carolina, which was part of Mullin’s ancestors’ traditional homelands and is now home to the Lumbee Tribe, a state-recognized tribe with approximately 55,000 people.
Several tribal nations, including Mullin’s own Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and the adjacent Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, have rejected federal recognition of the Lumbee people. The Lumbee’s fight for federal recognition has become a focal element for both campaigns, and it is an uncommon issue on which both parties agree. Last month, Trump stated that he would sign legislation granting official status to the Lumbee. Harris contacted the Lumbee tribal chairman last week to discuss the proposal.
“This is an injustice that needs to be fixed when it comes to Lumbees,” Mullin told the audience. “This is completely ludicrous. It has to be completed. I was ecstatic to hear President Trump announce he would sign it.”
But Mullin quickly addressed one of the major areas where the two candidates disagree: energy policy. Mullin set out Trump’s agenda in one memorable slogan that was echoed by the audience: “Drill, baby, drill.” He highlighted the fact that he believed a second Trump term would imply a better economy and reduced energy bills.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations pushed for more oil and gas production than ever before, including extractive energy projects opposed by Indigenous communities. However, Native leaders are concerned that Trump may weaken tribal land safeguards even further.
Mullin claimed that if tribal countries are truly independent, they should be able to perform energy extraction without the need for government participation. He stated that, similar to the Lumbee struggle for federal recognition, tribes’ rights to manage their own territories have been hampered by federal bureaucracy.
“Why is tribal land treated like public land?” Mullin questioned why the federal government should have any authority over tribal nations that extract natural resources on their own territory. “You have natural resources being extracted from the ground directly across the fence from reservations. “You have private land owners who are extremely wealthy, and you have people who are literally starving inside reservations,” he said, drawing parallels to third-world countries.
He assured that Trump would have a thorough knowledge of indigenous sovereignty.
That message resonated with Robert Chavis Jr., a physical education teacher and Army veteran who attended the rally and plans to vote for Trump. Chavis, a Lumbee Tribe member, stated that tribal countries are more than simply governments; they are companies, and the United States is no exception. “I don’t think you need a politician in there. We need a businessman to lead the country as it should be.
However, other Lumbee voters aren’t as sure. Janice Locklear, who owns an art gallery in Pembroke, said Trump pledged to federally recognize the Lumbee the last time he was in government, and she had no reason to expect he would do so again. But, looking beyond her town, she believes what Trump did on January 6, 2021, poses a national threat to democracy.
“He felt he could become a tyrant and take over. Even though he had lost the election, he was aware of the outcome. “So what do you think he’ll do this time?” she said.
Locklear, a woman of color, believes Harris will have a better grasp of the specific issues that Native Americans face. “I’m sure she’s faced the same issues we do,” Locklear remarked. “Discrimination, I’m sure she’s faced it.”
