Indigenous Peoples Day celebrated with an eye on the election
Source: AP
Updated 12:01 AM EDT, October 14, 2024
As Native Americans across the U.S. come together on Monday for Indigenous Peoples Day to celebrate their history and culture and acknowledge the ongoing challenges they face, many will do so with a focus on the election.
From a voting rally in Minneapolis featuring food, games and raffles to a public talk about the Native vote at Virginia Tech, the holiday, which comes about three weeks before Election Day, will feature a wide array of events geared toward Native voter mobilization and outreach amid a strong recognition of the power of their votes.
In 2020, Native voters proved decisive in the presidential election. Voter turnout on tribal land in Arizona increased dramatically compared with the previous presidential election, helping Joe Biden win a state that hadn’t supported a Democratic candidate in a White House contest since 1996.
Janeen Comenote, executive director of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, which is involved with at least a dozen of these types of voting events across the country, said this year it’s especially important to mobilize Native voters because the country is selecting the president. But she cautioned that Native people are in no way a monolith in terms of how they vote.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/indigenous-peoples-day-election-native-voters-fb096986752c2a8f52a805335f2c66ee
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hopefully they won't have as many impediments to voting this time around. Some states, like North Dakota, were requiring they have voter I.D. containing an official home address, which many living on a reservation did not have. Those laws have been overturned, and people can indicate their place of residence on a map at the polls.
They overwhelmingly vote Democratic.
To all those who celebrate a murderous savage who, driven mad by greed, advocated the enslavement of an entire people, and the genocide of anyone who didn't submit.
So, happy day, I guess... 