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CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of International Studies Department of North American Studies

Master's Thesis

2021 Bc. Radka Štroblová

CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of International Studies Department of North American Studies

The Power of the Native Vote: Evaluation of the Influence of Native Americans on the Outcome of the 2020 Presidential Elections in the United States – A Case Study of Arizona

Master's thesis

Author: Bc. Radka Štroblová Study programme: International Area Studies Specialization: North American Studies Supervisor: Lucie Kýrová, M.A., Ph.D. Year of the defence: 2021

Declaration 1. I hereby declare that I have compiled this thesis using the listed literature and resources only. 2. I hereby declare that my thesis has not been used to gain any other academic title. 3. I fully agree to my work being used for study and scientific purposes.

In Prague on Bc. Radka Štroblová May 3, 2021

References

ŠTROBLOVÁ, Radka. The Power of the Native Vote: Evaluation of the Influence of Native Americans on the Outcome of the 2020 Presidential Elections in the United States – A Case Study of Arizona. Praha, 2021. 137 Master’s thesis (Mgr.). Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of International Studies. Department of North American Studies. Supervisor Lucie Kýrová, M.A., Ph.D.

Length of the thesis: 147,030

Abstract

More Americans voted in the 2020 elections than in any other in 120 years, and the majority supported the Democratic candidate - Joseph R. Biden, Jr. In 2020, Biden won 26 states, including Arizona, where he won as the first Democrat in the presidential elections since 1996. With a small margin of only 10,457 votes, every vote was essential. In Arizona, 412,256 people identify as American Indian and Alaska Native and their support for the Democratic candidate proved to be decisive in the 2020 elections. However, only little has been written about American Indians and Alaska Natives and their voting habits. Existing studies suffer from examining only one tribe or state, are old or ambiguous. American Indians and Alaska Natives are also often excluded from collecting and reporting data, and when included, the data is either inaccurate or put them in “the other” category. This work is the first to examine Native American voting in the 2020 presidential election. It aims to prove that the Native vote was one of the aspects that helped Biden win the elections since Native Americans traditionally support the Democratic candidates. To prove my thesis, I compared the results of the 2016 and 2020 elections from the precincts overlapping with tribal lands in Arizona and conducted a quantitative analysis of the assembled data. The results of the quantitative analysis find that Native Americans voted in larger numbers compared to previous elections, despite ongoing voter suppression and the Covid-19 pandemic, and that they overwhelmingly supported Joe Biden and thus contributed to his victory.

Abstrakt

V prezidentských volbách v roce 2020 hlasovalo nejvíce Američanů za posledních 120 let a většina z nich podpořila kandidáta Demokratické strany Josepha R. Bidena Jr. Biden zvítězil ve 26 státech včetně Arizony, kterou získal jako první demokratický kandidát v prezidentských volbách od roku 1996. O vítězi rozhodlo pouhých 10,457 hlasů. V Arizoně se 412,256 lidí identifikuje jako Indiáni (American Indian and Alaska Native) a jejich podpora demokratických kandidátů se ukázala být rozhodujícím faktorem ve volbách 2020. O Indiánech a o jejich volebních preferencích však bylo napsáno jen málo. Stávající studie často zkoumají pouze jeden kmen (tribe) či stát, jsou zastaralé nebo nejednoznačné. Indiáni jsou také často opomíjeni při sběru dat a informací. Jejich hlasování tak často spadá

do kategorie „ostatní.“ Tato práce je vůbec první, která zkoumá hlasování původních Američanů v prezidentských volbách v roce 2020. Jejím cílem je dokázat, že hlasování Indiánů bylo jedním z aspektů, které pomohly Bidenovi vyhrát volby, jelikož Indiáni tradičně podporují demokratické kandidáty. Pro potvrzení své teze jsem porovnala výsledky voleb v letech 2016 a 2020 z volebních okrsků překrývajících se s kmenovými územími v Arizoně, a provedla kvantitativní analýzu nashromážděných dat. Výsledky kvantitativní analýzy potvrdily, že Indiáni, navzdory omezování volebního práva a pandemii Covid-19, hlasovali ve větším počtu ve srovnání s předchozími volbami, že v drtivé většině podpořili Joe Bidena, a tím přispěli k jeho vítězství.

Keywords

United States, American Indian and Alaska Native, presidential elections, Biden, Trump, voting, voter suppression, Covid-19

Klíčová slova

Spojené Státy, Indiáni, prezidentské volby, Biden, Trump, hlasování, omezování volebního práva, Covid-19

Title

The Power of the Native Vote: Evaluation of the Influence of Native Americans on the Outcome of the 2020 Presidential Elections in the United States – A Case Study of Arizona.

Název práce

Význam Indiánského hlasování: Hodnocení vlivu Indiánů na výsledek prezidentských voleb ve Spojených státech v roce 2020 – případová studie Arizona.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Lucie Kýrová, M.A., Ph.D., not only for her assistance throughout the process of writing this thesis and for her constructive criticism but also for being there for me even in late night hours when I had panic attacks. I would also like to thank Mgr. Jiří Pondělíček for the consultations regarding the analytical part of my thesis, and my friends Honza Stárek, Kuba Štorek, and Eimear de Brún for helping me with formatting and translations. Finally, I would like to thank my family and my boyfriend Jiří for their love and support throughout my studies and my friend Honza Denemark for making the online semesters bearable. Thank you.

Obsah INTRODUCTION ...... 2

LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 3 METHODOLOGY ...... 7 TERMS DEFINITION ...... 10 OVERVIEW OF ARIZONA TRIBES ...... 11 1. HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF NATIVE VOTING IN THE UNITED STATES AND ARIZONA ...... 20

1.1 LEGAL STANDING...... 20 1.2 CITIZENSHIP ...... 23 1.3 ENFRANCHISEMENT ...... 25 1.4 MODERN VOTING OBSTACLES...... 28 1.5 THE ROLE OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, ACTIVISTS, AND VOLUNTEERS IN THE 2020 ELECTIONS ...... 35 2. THE PATH TOWARD BIDEN’S VICTORY ...... 40

2.1 THE PANDEMIC ...... 42 2.2 DONALD TRUMP AND NATIVE AMERICANS ...... 45 3. THE NATIVE VOTE IN THE 2016 AND 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS ...... 54

3.1 POPULATION OF AMERICAN INDIANS AND ALASKA NATIVES IN THE UNITED STATES ...... 56 3.2 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 2016 AND 2020 ...... 58 3.3 ELECTION RESULTS IN COUNTIES WITH SIGNIFICANT AMERICAN INDIAN AND ALASKA NATIVE POPULATION .. 62 1. Apache County...... 64 2. Coconino County ...... 71 3. Gila County ...... 76 4. Graham County ...... 80 5. La Paz County ...... 83 6. Maricopa County ...... 86 7. Mohave County ...... 90 8. Navajo County ...... 94 9. Pima County ...... 98 10. Pinal County ...... 102 11. Yuma County ...... 106 CONCLUSION ...... 110 SUMMARY ...... 112 LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 113

Introduction

Many dismissed the American Indian and Alaska Native population as too small to make a difference in elections, but the political power of Native Americans has been more visible in recent years. However, nobody paid attention until now. American Indians and Alaska Natives are often excluded from collecting and reporting data, and when included, the data is either inaccurate, ambiguous, or put them in “the other” category. The first American peoples’ vote is therefore analyzed last, if at all. Ongoing voter suppression and systematic disenfranchisement of Native Americans, Blacks, and other minorities have inhibited the creation of truly representative democracy, and Donald Trump’s almost all- white cabinet was proof of that. However, the victory of Joseph Biden could change that, so I decided to look at who helped him win. Of all the groups, I chose to analyze the voting of the most neglected one: The Native Americans’.

The aim of my master’s thesis is to prove that the Native vote was one of the aspects that helped Biden win the 2020 election since Native Americans mostly voted for the Democratic candidate. To prove my thesis, I will compare the results of the 2016 and 2020 elections from the precincts overlapping with tribal lands to see how their inhabitants voted. I asked whether Native Americans vote mostly for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections as well, and if so, was their vote less significant, or did it simply go unnoticed? To narrow the field of my study down, I chose to focus on Arizona since it was one of the

1 Jan Hornát, Lucie Kýrová et al., America First, Příčiny a kontext volebního vítězství Donalda Trumpa (Praha: Karolinum, 2020), 128.

five states that turned from “red” to “blue” and has a significant American Indian and Alaska Native population. I argue that the majority of Native Americans turned in large numbers compared to previous elections and that they overwhelmingly supported Joe Biden. For them, the elections were not just a question of the country’s political direction but also a question of their survival.

Literature Review

Only little has been written about American Indians and Alaska Natives and their voting habits. Existing studies suffer from examining only one tribe or state, are old or ambiguous. Therefore, they do not provide relevant and current information about Native voting; they offer only conceptual frameworks.

In 1970, Stephen Kunitz and Jerrold E. Levy published an article “Navajo Voting Patterns”2 examining the voting behavior of the Navajos. They found that individuals living on the reservation were more conservative and tended to vote more Republican than those off-reservation. Kunitz and Levy explained that Native Americans living in remote rural areas come into less contact with non-Natives and are therefore less influenced by the Democratic Party’s policies that aim at minorities. Nine years later, Leonard G. Ritt argued in his article “Some Social and Political Views of American Indians”3 that Native Americans were more Democratic than whites and more Independent than all other population groups and thus voted more for the Democratic Party than the Republican one. Jeonghun Min and Daniel Savage, for a change, focused on the voting of Native Americans in Oklahoma in the 2000s and concluded that they favor Democrats because of their depressed socio-economic status.4

2 Stephen J. Kunitz and Jerrold E. Levy, “Navajo Voting Patterns,” Plateau 43, no. 1 (Summer 1970): 1-8, https://uair.library.arizona.edu/item/259121. 3 Leonard G. Ritt, “Some Social and Political Views of American Indians,” Ethnicity 6, no. 1 (March 1979): 45-72, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ200616. 4 Jeonghun Min and Daniel Savage, “Why do American Indians vote Democratic?” The Social Science Journal 51, no. 2 (January 2013): 1-32, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259127311_Why_do_American_Indians_vote_Democratic.

Two research articles I found particularly interesting, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,”5 written by a scholar of Native American history and the Māori Willard Hughes Rollings and “You Gotta Fight For the Right To Vote: Enfranchising Native American Voters”6 by Jeanette Wolfley, an Assistant Professor of Law at University of New Mexico. Both articles provide a comprehensive analysis of the history of Native American enfranchisement, which is critical for understanding the Native vote. I used the information from the two texts in the first chapter of this work dealing with the historical context of Native voting in the United States. The issue of Native American voting further examined Danna R. Jackson in her “Eighty Years of Indian Voting: A Call to Protect Indian Voting Right”7 article from 2004 or Daniel McCool, Susan M. Olson, and J. L. Robinson in the 2007 book Native vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the right to vote.8 This book is one of the best-made publications about the Native voting I encountered. It explains the history and expansion of Native American voting rights. The authors describe the struggle to obtain citizenship and suffrage and analyze the seventy cases brought under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The book is thus the basis of my first chapter. McCool also published an article called “Voting Patterns of American Indians in Arizona,”9 examining voting by precinct in Arizona. This article may have served me well, but McCool focused on Native voting between 1932 and 1985 while I examine the 2016 and 2020 elections.

5 Willard Hughes Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” Nevada Law Journal 5, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 1-140, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=shib&custid=s1240919&direct=true&db=edshol&AN=eds hol.hein.journals.nevlj5.14&site=eds-live&scope=site&lang=cs. 6 Jeanette Wolfley, “You Gotta Fight For the Right To Vote: Enfranchising Native American Voters,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 18, no. 1 (October 2015): 265-303, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=shib&custid=s1240919&direct=true&db=edshol&AN=eds hol.hein.journals.upjcl18.9&site=eds-live&scope=site&lang=cs. 7 Danna R. Jackson, “Eighty Years of Indian Voting: A Call to Protect Indian Voting Rights,” Montana Law Review 65, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 1-65, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232671525.pdf. 8 Daniel McCool, Susan M. Olson, and Jennifer L. Robinson, Native vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the right to vote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1-232. 9 Daniel McCool, “Voting Patterns of American Indians in Arizona,” The Social Science Journal 19, no. 3 (1982): 101-113, http://apps.webofknowledge.com.ezproxy.is.cuni.cz/InboundService.do?product=WOS&Func=Frame&Dest Fail=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webofknowledge.com%3FDestParams%3DUT%253DWOS%25253AA1982N Z47500009%2526customersID%253Datyponcel%2526smartRedirect%253Dyes%2526action%253Dretrieve %2526mode%253DFullRecord%2526product%253DCEL%26SrcAuth%3Datyponcel%26SrcApp%3Dliterat um%26DestApp%3DCEL%26e%3D9eVdL2MzDeAX3PYrt37TBGXf2Ey0LGpGbN%252FldYPEiNzC9j7 0df4VgA%253D%253D&SrcApp=literatum&SrcAuth=atyponcel&SID=F4EbwDhLjo7U3fCgwmp&custom ersID=atyponcel&smartRedirect=yes&mode=FullRecord&IsProductCode=Yes&Init=Yes&action=retrieve& UT=WOS%3AA1982NZ47500009.

Moreover, many precincts have been redistricted since then. His findings are thus not applicable to my research, which therefore intends to fill the void.

However, to understand the Native vote, it is important to examine Native American party preferences. The most recent analysis of Native American political affiliations was made by Rebekah Herrick and Jeanette Mendez from Oklahoma State University.10 In 2018, they studied the political attitudes and behavior of Native Americans. They surveyed 300 AIAN people and found that those close to their indigenous heritage were strong Democrats because the Democratic Party has a stable image and policy favorable for racial and ethnic minorities. However, they did not study Native voting but based on their findings I assume, that the party affiliation indicates likely voting choice.

The most recent study of the Native vote concerning Arizona is Arizona Native Vote – Election Protection Project.11 Initiated by the National Congress of Americans Indians (NCAI), Arizona Native Vote is a local branch of the national non-partisan campaign Native Vote, which has been working with tribes to increase voter turnout among Native Americans. Its Election Protection Project examined the 2016 election data, voting obstacles, and Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I thus used some of its findings in my research. Since the project examined all Arizona tribes, it provided me with a conceptual framework for my analysis of the 2016 presidential elections.

More general studies about Native Americans also played a significant part in my research. One of them was the Indigenous Futures Survey (IFS).12 Released by The Center for Native American Youth (CNAY), IllumiNative, and Native Organizers Alliance in 2020 and conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley, the Indigenous Futures Survey report is the largest project ever to examine Indian Country with 6,460 participants representing 401 tribes from all 50 states. The Indigenous Futures Survey report unveiled the needs, priorities, and perspectives of AIAN people. Its findings shed light on the demographics, identification, and voting of

10 Rebekah Herrick, Jeanette Mendez, “American Indian party identification: why American Indians tend to be democrats,” Politics, Groups and Identities 8, no. 2 (March 14, 2020): 275-292, https://doi- org.ezproxy.is.cuni.cz/10.1080/21565503.2018.1457964. 11 Indian Legal Clinic, “Native Vote – Election Protection Project 2016 Election Report,” Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University (March 6, 2018), 1-107, https://law.asu.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/2016-native-vote-election-protection-report.pdf. 12 “From Protests, To the Ballot Box, and Beyond: Building Indigenous POWER,” Indigenous Futures Survey, 1-57, available on http://indigenousfutures.illuminatives.org.

Native Americans. The project’s data provided me with background information for my research.

It is also essential to examine the barriers Native Americans must overcome to cast their ballots to understand the importance of the Native vote. The Native American Voting Rights Coalition, founded by the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), concluded a report Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,13 that analyzed various barriers to political participation faced by Native American voters. Released in June 2020, the report provides detailed evidence of systemic and cultural obstacles that historically keep AIAN people from fully exercising their right to vote. More than 120 witnesses from dozens of tribes across the country described the obstacles from registering to vote to casting votes and having their votes counted. This document is the most comprehensive report addressing Native American disenfranchisement ever completed with contributing authors such as James Thomas Tucker, Jacqueline De León, or previously mentioned Daniel McCool.

Another report I used was Housing Needs Of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Tribal Areas: A Report from the Assessment of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Housing Needs,14 prepared for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by Nancy Pindus, G. Thomas Kingsley, Jennifer Biess, Diane Levy, Jasmine Symington, Christopher Hayes, and the Urban Institute in 2017. It is the first-ever national survey of American Indian and Alaska Native households in tribal areas, sampling 1,340 AIAN households from 38 tribes. Even though not directly examining Native voting, the survey offered critical information not available in existing census data and provided me with a context on demographic, social, and economic conditions of Native Americans indispensable for my research.

One of the most relevant surveys for my study of the 2020 elections was The American Election Eve Poll,15 conducted in the two weeks leading up to the elections by a

13 “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” Native American Rights Fund, accessed December 2020, 1-167, https://vote.narf.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/06/obstacles_at_every_turn.pdf. 14 Nancy Pindus, “Housing Needs Of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Tribal Areas: A Report from the Assessment of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Housing Needs,” Office of Policy Development and Research, accessed April 15, 2021, 1-167, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/HNAIHousingNeeds.html. 15 The American Election Eve Poll, “Arizona, American Indian,” available on https://electioneve2020.com/poll/#/en/demographics/native-american/az.

team of professors of political science from Latino Decisions, African American Research Collaborative, and Asian American Decisions organizations. The researchers completed a series of interviews to identify the 2020 electorate. From October 23 – 28, 2020, respondents were selected who affirmed that they had already voted, either by mail or early-in-person. From October 29 - November 2, respondents were selected if they had already voted early or, if not, they were 100% certain they would vote on or by November 3. According to their responses, the American Election Eve Poll presented results in eight categories based on Gender (Men or Women), Age (18-39 or 40 and above), Education (Non-college or College), Income (Less than $50k or $50k and above), Covid-19 (Covid- 19 in family or No Covid-19 in family), job loss (Lost job or Did not lose job), Location (Urban, Suburban, or Rural), and partisanship (Democrat, Independent, or Republican). The findings provided me with valuable data for my research regarding Native American party preferences in Arizona. The survey also identified the most critical issues for the AIAN community in the 2020 elections, which might have influenced the Native vote.

Finally, I also worked with various articles published by trustworthy media such as ABC, AP News, AZ Central, BBC, Indian Country Today, The New York Times, VOX, or The Washington Post to find additional information.

Methodology

To prove my hypotheses, I conducted a quantitative analysis of the 2016 and 2020 election data. I decided to focus on the state of Arizona since it voted for the Democratic candidate only for the second time in seventy years and has a significant American Indian and Alaska Native population. In Arizona, I determined eleven counties with a significant AIAN population - Apache, Coconino, Gila, Graham, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, and Yuma. Of those, I subsequently selected all 89 precincts overlapping with Indian reservations. To determine those precincts and the population, I worked with the United States Census Bureau data for years 2000-2010 and estimates for 2016-2019 since the 2020 census data are not yet available. The U.S. Census Bureau is the United States’ leading provider of quality data about its people and economy, operating under Title 13 and Title 26 of the U.S. Code. Its surveys provide periodic and comprehensive statistics

about the United States and its population. I used the U.S. Census Bureau data to determine the population of the United States and the Native American and Alaska Native population in the United States, Arizona, and the selected counties. To determine the number of tribal members, I used U.S. Census Bureau’s tool My Tribal Area, available on its website. It gives a quick and easy access to selected statistics from the American Community Survey (ACS), which provides detailed demographic, social, economic, and housing estimates every year for the U.S. communities. However, I was not able to find information about the population of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, and so I contacted the tribe’s chairwoman Gwendena Lee-Gatewood, who kindly provided me with the data I needed. I also used the Arizona Tribal Lands and Reservations map from the United States Environmental Protection Agency available on their official website. To provide the reader with maps of precincts overlapping with tribal lands for each county, I used Luke Knipe’s map of Arizona’s voting precincts16 and adjusted it to my needs.

In my research, I also took a look at the population growth of Native Americans. However, it would be difficult to incorporate the population growth into the data assembled. Therefore, my research neglects population growth and bases the arguments on the sheer numbers of registered voters in the given precincts and voter turnout change. Such data are sufficient to confirm my thesis that Native Americans voted in large numbers compared to 2016.

Additionally, I used official canvassed results of the 2016 and 2020 elections issued by selected Arizona counties on their official websites. As the data come from copies of certified results based on which the number of electoral votes was awarded, I consider the data highly reliable and thus applicable to my research. From each canvass, I gathered the data and organized them in tables to present the total number of registered voters in the county in a particular year, total ballots cast in the county for the presidential candidates, voter turnout in percent, total valid ballots accepted for presidential candidates, total votes for the Democratic candidate to highlight the total votes for Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Joseph Biden in 2020, the percentage of votes for the Democratic candidates, total votes for the Republican candidate to present the reader with the total votes for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020 elections, and the percentages of votes for him. I thus reduced the

16 Luke Knipe, “An Interactive Map of Arizona’s Voting Precincts,” Luke’s blog, accessed January 4, 2021, http://lukeknipe.com/arizona-voting-precincts/.

data, organized it, and created the tables called 2016 and 2020 County’s name Presidential election results.

Subsequently, I analyzed each county’s data from precincts with predominantly American Indian and Alaska Native population both in 2016 and 2020. I organized the assembled data into two tables containing the same type of information as the tables for whole counties and called them 2016 and 2020 Presidential election results from selected County’s precincts.

Based on the collected data from the 2016 and 2020 elections, I compiled a table for each county, providing the reader with a comparison of the 2016 and 2020 election data both in selected precincts and in selected counties. The tables demonstrate the increase and decrease in the number of registered voters, ballots cast, total valid ballots, voter turnout, votes for the Democratic and Republican candidate, and the percentage of votes for the Democratic and Republican candidate. These tables comparing the results of the 2016 and 2020 elections from precincts with predominantly AIAN population and selected Arizona counties present the research results proving my hypothesis.

Since less than a year has passed since the presidential election, my research is the first to deal in detail with the impact of the Native vote on the election outcome. Based on the assembled data, I put together tables for each county with a significant AIAN population and proved that the voter turnout among Native Americans gradually increased in most selected precincts, that Native American voters favored Democratic candidates, and that their voting helped Joseph Biden win in Arizona. As the access to resources and data has been severely limited by the Covid-19 pandemic, my research is not as thorough as I expected or wanted it to be. Other researchers can thus use my findings and the resulting tables for further study.

Terms Definition

American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) – A term used by the United States Census Bureau to describe a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, and South America and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.17

American Indians – A term used to describe persons belonging to the Indigenous tribes of the continental United States.

Black – A term used in my thesis to represent an ethnic group of Americans with ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. It is thus a more inclusive term for African- Americans.

Indian Country – is a broader term used to refer more generally to tribal governments, Native communities, cultures, and peoples.

Indian reservation – is defined by the U.S. Department of the Interior as an area of land reserved for a tribe or tribes under treaty or other agreement with the United States, executive order, federal statute or administrative action as permanent tribal homelands, and where the federal government holds title to the land in trust on behalf of the tribe. While some reservations include a tribal nation’s original land base, other reservations were established by the federal government to resettle Native people forcibly removed from original homelands and areas. However, not all federally recognized tribal nations have a reservation.18

Native Americans – A term used in my thesis to represent the American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States

Tribal Nations – Variously called tribes, nations, bands, pueblos, communities and native villages.19

17 “The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2010,” The United States Census Bureau, last modified January 2012, accessed May 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/c2010br-10.pdf. 18 “Why Tribes Exist Today in the United States,” U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs, accessed May 1, 2021, https://www.bia.gov/frequently-asked-questions. 19 “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” National Congress of American Indians, last modified February 2020, accessed March 13, 2021, 14, https://www.ncai.org/tribalnations/introduction/Indian_Country_101_Updated_February_2019.pdf.

In my research, I predominantly use the term Native Americans when speaking about the population of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. When possible, I use the name of the tribe or tribal affiliation instead of the general term Native Americans.

Overview of Arizona Tribes

It is estimated that in 2019, 5,665,200 Native Americans alone or in combination with one or more other races lived in the United States and thus comprised approximately 1.73% of the population.20 There are 574 federally recognized Indian Nations21 in the United States and 334 federally and state-recognized American Indian reservations located across 35 states.22 Arizona’s population is approximately 7,278,717, of which 412,256 people identify as American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination with one or more races, thus comprising 5.7 % of Arizona population.23 Exclusively as American Indian and Alaska Native identify 332,273 people.24 Currently, twenty-two tribes and twenty reservations are situated in Arizona.25 Tribal lands constitute 27.7% of the total land base of the state.26 The Indian tribes vary in culture, language, and history.27 Some communities are located near metropolitan areas, while others are located in rural parts of Arizona. This section covers the overview of Arizona tribes to provide the reader with the background information to better understand the tribes the research deals with.

20 “American Indian and Alaska Native Alone or in Combination with One or More Other Races,” United States Census Bureau, accessed March 29, 2021, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=native%20american&tid=ACSDT1Y2019.B02010&hidePreview=fals e. 21 Variously called tribes, nations, bands, pueblos, communities and native villages. National Congress of American Indians, “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction.” 22 Federal recognition of a tribal nation means the United States’ acknowledgement of a tribal nation’s political status as a government. Members of federally recognized tribes are eligible for a number of federal programs such as health care, education, or housing. “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” National Congress of American Indians, accessed April 26, 2021, 25, https://www.ncai.org/attachments/PolicyPaper_VmQazPEqbvZDMeaDvbupWTSZLmzyzBKOknQRXnUyo VMoyFkEWGH_Tribal%20Nations%20and%20the%20United%20States_An%20Introduction.pdf. 23 United States Census Bureau, “American Indian and Alaska Native Alone or in Combination with One or More Other Races.” 24 Ibid. 25 Indian Legal Clinic, “Native Vote – Election Protection Project 2016 Election Report,” 18. 26 “Appendix D: Indian Nations, Table D.2.—State With the Greatest Acreages of Indian Land,” Bureau of Indian Affairs Acreages of Indian Lands by State, accessed March 21, 2021, available on https://www.fs.fed.us/people/tribal/tribexd.pdf. 27 Indian Legal Clinic, “Native Vote – Election Protection Project 2016 Election Report,” 18.

Fig. 1 Map of Arizona tribal lands and reservations.28

28 “Arizona Tribal Lands and Reservations,” Environmental Protection Agency, accessed December 29, 2020, https://www3.epa.gov/region9/air/maps/az_tribe.html.

Ak-Chin Indian Community is located in the northwestern part of Pinal County (Ak Chin Community precinct). It has more than 1,439 people living on the reservation and off-reservation trust land, and a land base of over 22,000 acres.29 Based on the latest data, an estimated 1,264 people identified as American Indian and Alaska Native in the Ak-Chin community.30 The Maricopa Indian reservation was established in 1912, and the tribe gained federal recognition in 1961.

The Cocopah Indian Reservation is located in Yuma County, precincts 6 and 27, and was established in 1917. It is divided into three parcels where the Cocopah Reservation inhabitants reside: East Cocopah, West Cocopah, and North Cocopah.31 The Cocopah Reservation comprises approximately 6,500 acres.32 According to the latest data, an estimated 1,202 people lived on the reservation, of whom 635 identified as American Indian and Alaska Native.33

The Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation extends over almost 300,000 acres of land in western Arizona in La Paz County (Poston precinct). The Colorado River Indian Tribe include four distinct tribes: the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo.34 According to the latest data, 9,552 people lived on the reservation that extends beyond Arizona borders to California, of whom 3,062 identified as American Indian and Alaska Native.35 The Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation was established in 1865 originally for the Mohave and Chemehuevi, who had inhabited the area for centuries. In later years, people of the Hopi and Navajo tribes were relocated to the reservation as well.36

Fort McDowell Reservation, located in Maricopa County, was designated in 1903 when the Kwevikopaya, or Southeastern Yavapai, were granted 24,680 acres of the old Fort McDowell Military Reserve, one of the most important outposts in the southwest

29 “Ak-Chin Indian Community,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/ak-chin-indian-community/; “Maricopa (Ak Chin) Indian Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed March 31, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=2130. 30 My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, “Maricopa (Ak Chin) Indian Reservation and Off- Reservation Trust Land, AZ.” 31 “Cocopah Indian Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/ak-chin-indian-community/. 32 “About Us,” Cocopah Indian Tribe, accessed February 22, 2021, https://www.cocopah.com/about-us.html. 33 “Cocopah Reservation, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed March 31, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=0695. 34 “About the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo Tribes,” Colorado River Indian Tribes, accessed March 15, 2021, https://www.crit-nsn.gov/crit_contents/about/. 35 “Colorado River Indian Reservation, AZ—CA,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=0735. 36 Colorado River Indian Tribes, “About the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo Tribes.”

during the Apache Wars (1865-1891).37 Currently, the 25,600 acres reservation is a home to an estimated 1,053 people, of whom 887 identified as American Indian and Alaska Native.38

Fort Mojave Indian Tribe Reservation spans 23,699 acres of land in Mohave County (Mohave Valley precinct), Arizona, 5,582 acres in Nevada, and 12,633 acres in California. Fort Mojave Reservation is a home to a total of 1,616 people, of whom, based on the latest data, 774 identified as American Indian and Alaska Native.39 The reservation was founded in 1870.40

The Gila River Indian Community is composed of members of two tribes, the Pima and Maricopas, and is located in south-central Arizona. Established in 1859, the 372,000-acre reservation is a home to an estimated 10,879 people in 7 precincts in Maricopa and Pima Counties: Blackwater, Casa Blanca, Komatke, Lone Butte, Sacaton, San Tan, and Pee-Posh.41 Of those, 9,506 identified as American Indian and Alaska Native.42

The original inhabitants of the Grand Canyon are the people of the Havasupai Tribe. Their reservation makes up 188,077 acres of Havasupai’s former homelands and is located in Coconino County (Havasupai precinct). The tribe gained federal recognition in 1934 and its population is around 650 people.43 However, the U.S. Census Bureau does not provide any data about the tribe, so the number of tribal members might vary.

The Hopi people inhabit the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona in parts of Navajo and Coconino Counties. The reservation, which a much larger Navajo Reservation entirely surrounds, encompasses approximately 1,542,306 acres and is a home to the majority of enrolled Hopi members. Nowadays, around 17,679 Hopi tribal members live in

37 “Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/fort-mcdowell-yavapai-nation/. 38 “Fort McDowell Yavapai Reservation,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=1220. 39 “Fort Mojave Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ--CA—NV,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=1235. 40 “Fort Mojave Indian Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/fort-mojave-tribe/. 41 “Gila River Indian Reservation,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/gila-river-indian-community/; “Gila River Indian Reservation,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=1310. 42 My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, “Gila River Indian Reservation.” 43 “Havasupai Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/havasupai-tribe/.

the United States.44 On the Hopi Reservation and off-reservation trust land lives an estimated 9,222 people, of whom 8,891 identified as American Indian and Alaska Native.45

Another Arizona tribe is the Hualapai Tribe. Its reservation was created in 1883 and encompasses a million acres around the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon in Coconino, Mohave, and Yavapai Counties (Havasupai and Peach Springs precincts).46 The total population of the Hualapai Indian Reservation and off-reservation trust land is around 1,555 people, of whom 1,464 identify as American Indian and Alaska Native.47

The Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, organized under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, inhabit approximately 121,000 acres of land in northern Arizona (Moccasin precinct).48 There live around 246 people, of which 206 identify as American Indian and Alaska Native.49

The Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized Indian tribe in the United States. It is also the largest land‐based reservation extending into the states of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, covering over 17,280,000 acres of land.50 In the United States, the Navajo Nation’s population surpassed 340,000.51 The Navajo Nation Reservation in Arizona inhabits an estimated 172,813 people, of whom 166,464 identify as American Indian and Alaska Native.52

The Pascua Pueblo Yaqui Reservation is located in Pima County (236 precinct), adjacent to the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. It has 1,194 acres of land and a

44 “American Indian and Alaska Native Alone for Selected Tribal Groupings,” United States Census Bureau, accessed February 22, 2021, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=American%20Indian%20and%20Alaska%20Native%20Alone%20for %20Selected%20Tribal%20Groupings&tid=ACSSPP1Y2019.S0201. 45 “Hopi Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=1505. 46 “Hualapai Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/hualapai-tribe/. 47 “Hualapai Indian Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=1545. 48 “Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians,” Grand Canyon Trust, accessed March 14, 2021, https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/info/kaibab-band-paiute. 49 “Kaibab Indian Reservation, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 2, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=1720. 50 “History,” Official Site of the Navajo Nation, accessed March 19, 2021, https://www.navajo- nsn.gov/history.htm. 51 “25 Largest Tribal Groupings Among American Indians and Alaska Natives,” United States Census Bureau, accessed March 19, 2021, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/facts-for- features/2014/cb14-ff26_aian_graphic.pdf?eml=gd. 52 “Navajo Nation Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ--NM--UT,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 2, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=2430.

population of around 4,187 persons, of whom 3,498 identify as American Indian and Alaska Native.53

Federally recognized in 1877, the Pueblo of Zuni’s main reservation is located in the McKinley and Cibola Counties in the western part of New Mexico. However, the tribe has also land holdings in Catron County, New Mexico, and Apache County, Arizona, which are not adjoining to the main reservation.54 Zuni Reservation and off-reservation trust land is a home to an estimated 9,002 people, of whom 8,713 identify as American Indian and Alaska Native.55 However, since the Apache County precinct does not follow the Zuni reservation, which covers a broader area, it is impossible to distinguish Zuni from other voters. I thus omit the Zuni tribe in the final evaluation.

The home of the Quechan Tribe is Fort Yuma-Quechan Reservation established in 1884. With its 45,000 acres of land, the reservation borders the states of Arizona, California, Baja California, and Mexico. According to the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the Quechan population totals 10,000 tribal members.56 Fort Yuma Indian Reservation is a home to 1,277 people, of whom 787 identify as American Indian and Alaska Native.57

The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Community consists of 52,600 acres in Honda and Golden Shores precincts in Maricopa County, of which 19,000 acres are a natural preserve. It is a home to an estimated 7,727 people, representing the Pima (Akimel Au- authm) and Maricopa (Xalychidom Pipaash) people.58 The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community was created by an Executive Order in 1879.59

The reservation of San Carlos Apache Indian Tribe spreads across southeastern counties Gila, Graham, and Pinal (San Carlos, Bylas, and Peridot precincts). Established in

53 “Pascua Pueblo Yaqui Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 2, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=2680; “Pasqua Yaqui Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 15, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member- tribes/pascua-yaqui-tribe/. 54 “Pueblo of Zuni,” Pueblo of Zuni, accessed March 15, 2021, http://www.ashiwi.org. 55 “Zuni Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, NM--AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 2, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=4785. 56 “Quechan Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 15, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/quechan-tribe/. 57 “Fort Yuma Indian Reservation, CA--AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=1280. 58 “Salt River Reservation, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=3340. 59 “Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 15, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/salt-river-pima-maricopa-indian-community/.

1871 and separated from the Fort Apache Reservation in 1891, it encompasses 1,834,781 acres of land and is a home to approximately 10,710 Apache.60

The San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe is located in northern Arizona and southern Utah. In Arizona, the tribal members reside in and around the communities of Hidden Springs, Rough Rock, Willow Springs, Tuba City, and Cow Springs (Tonalea and Tuba precincts) in Coconino County. The San Juan Southern Paiute people continue to live in their traditional territory within the Navajo reservation along with Navajo and Hopi tribes, and thus it is impossible to distinguish their vote.61 I thus omit the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe from my final evaluation.

The Tohono O’odham Nation consists of four non-contiguous segments in south- central Arizona that total more than 2,8 million acres of land in Maricopa (Hickiwan precinct), Pinal (Chui Chu and Eloy South precincts), and Pima Counties (precincts number 3, 4, 71, 76, 135, 136, 137, 138). The reservation and off-reservation trust land inhabit an estimated 10,747 people.62

Tonto Apache Tribe resides in Gila County and its reservation is the smallest land base reservation in Arizona consisting of only 85 acres. The total population of the tribe is approximately 141 people, of whom 112 identify as American Indian and Alaska Native.63 Currently, based on the data from Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, legislation is pending which will provide Tonto Apache trust title to the land upon which they reside in the Payson precinct.64

White Mountain Apache Tribe is located in the heart of Arizona in the Apache, Gila, and Navajo Counties (Carrizo, Sunrise, Canyon Day, and Mcnary precincts) and resides on 1,67 million acres on the White Mountain Fort Apache Reservation established

60 “San Carlos Apache Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/san-carlos-apache-tribe/; “San Carlos Reservation, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=3355. 61 “San Juan Southern Paiute,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 15, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/san-juan-southern-paiute/. 62 “Tohono O’odham Nation Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?aianihh=4200. 63 “Tonto Apache Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?aianihh=4235. 64 “Tonto Apache Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 15, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/tonto-apache-tribe/.

in 1891.65 It originally included the San Carlos Apache Reservation but was separated in 1897.66 The White Mountain Apache are the direct descendants of the original tribes that lived in the area and they hold dearly to their traditions. The tribe has approximately 17,000 members located in nine major reservation communities.67 The majority of the population lives in and around Whiteriver and then in Cibecue, Carrizo, Cedar Creek, Forestdale, Hon-Dah, McNary, East Fork, and Seven Mile.68

The Yavapai-Apache Nation is located in the Verde Valley in central Arizona.69 The descendants of indigenous peoples now live in five communities totaling about 600 acres of land: Tunlii, Middle Verde, Rimrock, Camp Verde, and Clarkdale. The Yavapai- Apache Nation consists of two distinct people, the Yavapai and Apache. Of approximately 2,596 total enrolled tribal members, 1,207 people live in the Verde Valley.70 However, it is impossible to distinguish Yavapai-Apache voters from others based on their tribal lands. I thus omit the Yavapai-Apache Nation from the final evaluation.

The last tribe living in Arizona is the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe. Its reservation consists of approximately 1,400 acres and approximately 158 members belong to the tribe.71 The total population of the Yavapai-Prescott reservation, based on the latest data, is 235, of whom 120 people identified as American Indian and Alaska Native.72 Similarly to the Yavapai-Apache Nation, it is impossible to distinguish Yavapai-Prescott voters. I thus omit them from my final evaluation.

65 “White Mountain Apache Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 14, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/white-mountain-apache-tribe/. 66 Ibid. 67 Gwendena Lee-Gatewood, Chairwoman of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, Email to author, April 1, 2021. 68 “White Mountain Apache Tribe Today,” White Mountain Apache Tribe, accessed March 14, 2021, http://whitemountainapache.org/culture/. 69 “Yavapai-Apache Nation,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 15, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/yavapai-apache-nation/. 70 “Welcome to the Yavapai-Apache Nation Gah’nahvah: To Tell (Yavapai) | Ya Ti: To Talk (Apache),” Yavapai-Apache Nation, accessed March 15, 2021, https://yavapai-apache.org; “Yavapai-Apache Nation Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=4708. 71 “Yavapai- Prescott Indian Tribe,” Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, accessed March 15, 2021, https://itcaonline.com/member-tribes/yavapai-prescott-indian-tribe/. 72 “Yavapai-Prescott Reservation, AZ,” My Tribal Area, United States Census Bureau, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04&aianihh=4710.

In total, the tribal lands constitute 27.7% of the total land base of Arizona and approximately 400,000 people identify as American Indian and Alaska Native. The most populous Arizona tribes are Gila River Indian Tribe, Navajo and Hopi tribes, San Carlos Apache Tribe, Tohono O’odham Nation, and White Mountain Apache Tribe. Together, their members comprise more than half of all Native Americans in Arizona. The numbers indicate that individual reservations are not inhabited by a large number of Native Americans. However, when united, their votes have the power to influence the outcome of the elections.

1. Historical Context of Native Voting in the United States and Arizona

Native American enfranchisement and voting in the United States have a unique and complex history, different from other gender, racial, or language minorities stemming from centuries of annihilation, oppression, discrimination, and assimilation of Native Americans. To understand the power of the Native vote today, it is thus essential to recognize the long history of the fight over citizenship, suffrage, and representation of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States.

1.1 Legal Standing

We were a people before “We the People.”73

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, their idea of democracy was quite different from what it means to most Americans today. Beginning with the words “We the People,” the U.S. Constitution established a system in which the people have the right to choose their representatives in free and fair elections. The right to vote thus was and is the very foundation of American democracy. However, for decades, the country’s political direction had been decided by a small fraction of the population – propertied white men of a certain age. The rest, especially women and non-white men, gradually started gaining voting rights only from the beginning of the 19th century.

Native Americans are the direct descendants of people who first inhabited North America. An Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico Nick Estes describes the history of the United States as a history of settler colonialism, the specific form of colonialism whereby an imperial power seizes Native territory, eliminates the original people by force, and resettles the land with a foreign, invading population that

73 Jefferson Keel, 20th and 22nd President of the National Congress of American Indians, 2013, National Congress of American Indians, “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” 9.

completely replaces the Natives.74 Such colonization of North America was carried out within the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery.” 75As the number of settlers grew, so did the need for more land. From the original 1784 boundaries of the first thirteen colonies, the United States rapidly expanded, pressuring tribal nations to relocate further west onto reservations. In general, Indian reservations were established through treaties, which required tribes to trade tracts of their land for the continued right of self-governance under the protection of the United States.76 During Native American relocation,77 the United States annexed nearly 2 billion acres of tribal lands in less than a century.78 Not only were Native Americans deprived of the land they had inhabited for thousands of years and to which they had strong physical and spiritual connections, they were not even deemed worthy of becoming citizens of the newly created United States until the beginning of the 20th century.79

Native Americans first tried to defend their territory, sovereignty, and ways of life with treaties and compromises, then on the battlefields. Eventually, some moved their battles to courtrooms. However, the protections provided by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution did not apply to Native Americans, and therefore, many of their legal battles were lost. The Constitution mentioned Native Americans only in Article I, Section 2 where “Indians not taxed” were excluded from the right to vote and in Article I, Section 8, where Congress was given the power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes” recognizing that Indian tribes were distinct from the federal government, state governments, and foreign nations.80 The first law that established mutual relations between tribal nations and the federal government was the Indian Intercourse Act of 1790. By passing the Act, Congress proclaimed the treaty-

74 Nick Estes, Our History is the Future (London: Verso, 2019), 89. 75 The 1493 Papal bull justified European explorers’ claims on land they allegedly discovered. If an explorer proclaims to have discovered an empty land (terra nullius) in the name of a Christian European monarch, plants a flag in its soil and occupies the land, the land becomes his, even if someone else was there first. If there are people living on such land who are not Christians, they do not have a right of title to the land; they only have a right of occupancy. “Doctrine of Discovery,” Upstander Project, accessed March 28, 2021, https://upstanderproject.org/firstlight/doctrine. 76 National Congress of American Indians, “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” 14. 77 From the 1820s to 1934 when Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act. (author’s note) 78 National Congress of American Indians, “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” 67. 79 Nonetheless, only a few Native Americans indeed sought to become citizens of the nascent country because they were already “citizens” of the tribes that used to control most of North America’s land. Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” 126. 80 U.S. Const. art. I, § 2 and U.S. Const. art. I, § 8.

making policy81 and mandated that all interactions between Natives and non-Natives were under federal control, following the British practices.82 Therefore, treaty-making became a common form of contract between tribes and the federal and state governments. Only from 1778 to 1871, the United States made 370 treaties with tribal nations on a government-to- government basis.83 Tribal law, federal law, and state laws further defined the responsibilities, powers, limitations, and obligations of and between the tribal governments, the federal government, and state governments. However, Native American legal status remained ambiguous.

Another significant effort to legally define the relationship between Indian tribes and the United States government was a set of three Supreme Court cases known as the “Marshall Trilogy” - Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), and Worcester v. Georgia (1832). In a unanimous decision in Johnson v. McIntosh, the U.S. Supreme Court held that only the federal government had the right to negotiate land deals with Indian tribes. Since the federal government controlled the land, Native Americans possessed only a “right of occupancy.”84 Chief Justice Marshall based the decision on the “Doctrine of Discovery,” referring to the way colonial powers laid claim to newly discovered land.85 In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the relationship between Native Americans and the federal government “resembled that of a ‘ward to its guardian,’” and defined the Cherokee Nation in extension to all Native Americans as a “domestic dependent nation,” under the protection of the federal government.86 State laws, therefore, could not be enforced on an Indian tribe.87 Finally, Worcester v. Georgia case determined that tribes must be respected and treated as

81 Treaties between the federal government and tribal nations wary in their terms and provisions. They commonly included a guarantee of peace for tribes, a provision on land boundaries, hunting and fishing rights, tribal recognition of U.S. authority, or U.S. protection of the tribe. In addition, many treaties contain specific provisions concerning health care, education, housing, economic development, and agricultural assistance. National Congress of American Indians, “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” 18. 82 An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse With the Indian Tribes (1790) available on https://pages.uoregon.edu/mjdennis/courses/hist469_trade.htm. 83 National Congress of American Indians, “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” 18. 84 Johnson & Graham's Lessee v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823). 85 “1823: Supreme Court rules American Indians do not own land,” National Library of Medicine, Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness, Native Voices, accessed February 27, 2021, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/271.html. 86 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831). 87 “1831: Supreme Court rules Indian nations not subject to state law,” National Library of Medicine, Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness, Native Voices, accessed February 27, 2021, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/278.html.

nations.88 The Marshall trilogy cases redefined the relationship between states and Indian tribes for decades to come. The Supreme Court's rulings significantly reduced yet at the same time specified political sovereignty of Indian tribes while maintaining traditional treaty-making until 1871.89

1.2 Citizenship

The legal standing of Native Americans also influenced the debate over citizenship and suffrage. The inhabitants of the United States acquired citizenship in 1790 when Congress passed the first naturalization act. However, it did not apply to Native Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 186690 further reiterated the purposeful exclusion of Native Americans from citizenship and voting, and they did not become citizens after the approval of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 either. During Senate floor debates regarding the Fourteenth Amendment, Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan said on the address of Native Americans:

I am not yet prepared to pass a sweeping act of naturalization by which all the Indian savages, wild or tame, belonging to a tribal relation, are to become my fellow-citizens and go to the polls and vote with me…91

Senator James Rood Doolittle of Wisconsin agreed by saying:

Indians are not prepared for citizenship… [B]y a constitutional amendment you propose to declare the Utes, the Tabahuaches, and all those wild Indians to be citizens of the United States, the great Republic of the world, whose citizenship

88 Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 561 (1832). 89 In 1871, Congress passed a law ending the federal government’s practice of making treaties with Indian tribes. (author’s note) 90 The Civil Rights Act of 1866 states that all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, were hereby declared to be citizens of the United States. (author’s note) 91 Howard Gillman, Mark A. Graber, and Keith E. Whittington, “AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM VOLUME II: RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES, Chapter 6: The Civil War and Reconstruction—Equality/Native Americans, The Senate Debates Native American Citizenship (1866),” 4, available on https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/fdscontent/uscompanion/us/static/companion.websites/978019 9751358/instructor/chapter_6/thedebatescitizenship.pdf.

should be a title as proud as that of king, and whose danger is that you may degrade that citizenship.92

While the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and Fourteenth Amendment served to prevent or limit citizenship for the “Indian savages,” special dispensations granted citizenship to some individuals or tribes. The Fort Laramie Treaty from 1868 between the United States and Native American bands historically known as the Sioux (Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota) and Arapaho contained a provision whereby Native Americans could gain citizenship by “receiving a patent for land under the foregoing provisions…and be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of such citizens, and shall, at the same time retain all [their] rights to benefits accruing to Indians under [Fort Laramie] treaty.”93 The Fort Laramie Treaty's citizenship clause was just one of several laws and treaties that permitted selected Native Americans to become citizens. Otherwise, with few exceptions, citizenship was denied to those Native Americans who sought it. However, in attempts to avoid possible violence and gain more tribal land, the federal government began to offer citizenship in exchange for the land. Thus, citizenship was bestowed on those who accepted individual allotment under the Dawes Act of 188794 or later on those who served in World War I under the 1919 American Indian Citizenship Act, but not on whole tribes.95

In 1924, a landmark Indian Citizenship Act, together with the Nationality Act of 1940, made all the remaining Native Americans citizens.96 Ultimately, Native Americans, the first inhabitants of North America, were the last to receive U.S. citizenship. While some welcomed it, others refused it since they felt “citizens” of their tribes and not of the “settler” state, which tried to assimilate them and deprive them of their cultural identities.97

92 Gillman, Graber, and Whittington, “AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM VOLUME II: RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES, Chapter 6: The Civil War and Reconstruction—Equality/Native Americans, The Senate Debates Native American Citizenship (1866),” 2-3. 93 Treaty with the Sioux–Brulé, Oglala, Miniconjou, Yanktonai, Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, Cuthead, Two Kettle, Sans Arcs, and Santee–and Arapaho, 1868, available on https://dc.library.okstate.edu/digital/collection/kapplers/id/26839/. 94 Dawes General Allotment Act (1887) was an act providing for the distribution of tribal lands to individual Native Americans in an effort to break Indian reservations. More information about the Act in Daniel M. Cobb, Say we are nations: documents of politics and protest in indigenous America since 1887 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 34-35. 95 Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” 127. 96 “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” Native American Rights Fund, accessed December 2020, 11, https://vote.narf.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/06/obstacles_at_every_turn.pdf. 97 Cobb, Say we are nations: documents of politics and protest in indigenous America since 1887, 34-37.

However, this belated naturalization did not extend to them the constitutional civil rights guaranteed to other Americans. Native Americans were not allowed to testify in courts, attend public schools, or vote in the city, county, state, and federal elections.98 Frustrated with the unequal treatment, Native Americans, once again, set out to fight for their rights to the courtrooms.

1.3 Enfranchisement

As mentioned earlier, the right to vote is the foundation of American democracy embedded in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution granted the states great autonomy concerning suffrage since voting rights were the state’s purview, with limits placed upon them by the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments.99 Under the Election Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the states could set times, places, and manner of holding local, state, and federal elections, and many used their power to limit Native American voters.100 After the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, Western states with large Native American populations such as Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah but also states in the north like North and South Dakota or Minnesota found ways to circumvent the Constitution and resorted to tactics used in the South that prevented Blacks from voting by evading the provisions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.101 Some states required that Native Americans give up their indigenous identity and adopt the way of life of the dominant society to vote; others intimidated Native Americans or prevented them from voting with poll taxes.102 The states also used the claims that Native Americans were

98 Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,”, 127. 99 Fifteenth Amendment (1870) prohibited the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) enfranchised women. (author’s note); Katrina Phillips, “It’s time to recognize the forgotten Americans who helped elect Joe Biden,” The Washington Post, last modified November 9, 2020, accessed February 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/09/its-time-recognize-forgotten-americans-who-helped- elect-joe-biden/. 100 Wolfley, “You Gotta Fight For the Right To Vote: Enfranchising Native American Voters,” 265-303. 101 Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” 135. 102 The state of South Dakota, for example, prevented Native Americans from voting while “maintaining tribal relations.” In North Dakota, on the contrary, some Native Americans were granted the right to vote by the state Supreme Court because they “live the same as white people; they are law-abiding, do not live in tribes under chiefs; that they marry under the civil laws of the state the same as whites, and that they are

incompetent and “wards of the state” or “not taxed,” 103 or argued that Native Americans were not residents of the particular state if they resided on reservations.104 The reason why states did not want Native Americans to vote was simple; they were concerned about the potential shift in vote, and so they suppressed Native American voters.

Another way of limiting the Native vote were literacy tests because of lower rates of English literacy, especially on Indian reservations. In Arizona, for example, only those who could read the U.S. Constitution in English could pass the tests and vote. However, especially on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, where traditional culture and language remained strong, this measure prevented many from voting.105

One of the first cases addressing Native American voting rights after the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act was Porter v. Hall (1928). In 1928, Porter and Johnson, two Pima Indians living on the Gila River Reservation, Arizona, tried to register to vote in Pinal County, but the county recorder refused to enter their names because they were Indians.106 The dispute ended up in the Arizona Supreme court, which ruled that Porter and Johnson remained Indians and thus wards of the federal government107 despite their citizenship. As wards, they could not participate in any elections according to the Arizona Constitution.108 The Porter v. Hall decision thus prevented Arizona Native Americans from voting for another twenty years, and the situation had not changed until the outbreak of the Second World War.109

Native American veterans returning home from the battlefield played a pivotal role in the fight for the right to vote. As a historian of Cherokee descent W. H. Rollings aptly

Christians; that they have severed their tribal relations.” Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 12. 103 Native Americans did not directly pay local and property taxes while living on a federally recognized Indian reservation. States thus often used the infamous phrase “Indians not taxed” from Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution to prevent Native Americans from voting because they “did not pay the same taxes as whites.” 163 N.W. 988, 138 Minn. 42 (Minn. 1917), available on https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/163-n-w-988- 617887655. (author’s note) 104 Daniel McCool, Susan M. Olson, and Jennifer L. Robinson, Native vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the right to vote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1-232. 105 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 19. 106 Neil D. Houghton, “The Legal Status of Indian Suffrage in the United States,” California Law Review 19, no. 5 (1931): 507, https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1108931. 107 Reference to Cherokee v. Georgia (1831). (author’s note) 108 “No person under guardianship, non compos mentis or insane, shall be qualified to vote.” Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 13. 109 Houghton, “The Legal Status of Indian Suffrage in the United States,” 507.

remarks, Native Americans were drafted and served in all branches of the armed forces fighting in the Pacific and Europe for freedoms they still did not have at home in the United States.110 The then-President Harry Truman was aware of the inequality of minorities, and so, in 1947, he established a national committee to examine the status of their civil rights.111 The committee’s research primarily focused on Blacks’ civil rights, but Native Americans too appeared in the committee’s final recommendation. It called, among other states, on Arizona to grant suffrage to its Native American citizens. One year later, two Mohave-Apache Indians, Frank Harrison and Harry Austin from the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation tried to register to vote and were refused based on the same “wards of the government” argument as Porter and Johnson in 1928. However, this time they succeeded, and the Arizona Supreme Court reversed Porter v. Hall. Ultimately, Native Americans in Arizona gained the right to vote.112 Judge Levi S. Udall began his opinion with a statement:

We have, however, no hesitancy in re-examining and reconsidering the correctness of the legal principles involved because the civil liberties of our oldest and largest minority group (11.5% of State’s population) of whom 24,317 are over twenty-one years of age (1940 U.S. census) are involved, and it has ever been one of the great responsibilities of supreme courts to protect the civil rights of the American people, of whatever race or nationality, against encroachment.113

Thus, by 1948 only two states, Utah and Maine, continued to deny Native Americans the right to vote until 1957 and 1967, respectively since all the other states already enfranchised Native Americans by then.114 However, even after gaining the right to vote, Native Americans were continuously deprived of its exercise. The situation changed with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most prominent legal milestone for the voting rights of many racial and language

110 Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” 137. 111 “The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights,” Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum, accessed February 3, 2021, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/to-secure-these-rights. 112 Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” 137. 113 Harrison v. Laveen, 196 P.2d 456 (Ariz. 1948), available on https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3254299/harrison-v-laveen/. 114 Rollings, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” 137-139.

minorities across the United States since the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, and it had a profound impact on Native Americans as well.115 The Act proclaims:

“No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”116

Moreover, the addition of Section 203 in 1975 provided tribes with yet another tool with which they could fight for equal treatment; the language assistance provision. Section 203 introduced bilingual election programs that directly increased voter registration and general turnout among Native Americans. States have to provide "any registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots," in both English and the appropriate minority language.117 In the case of American Indian and Alaska Native communities with oral or unwritten languages, they have to receive "oral instructions, assistance, or other information relating to registration and voting."118 That led to establishing language information programs, employment of workers assisting in all aspects of voting, providing assistance and translators at the polls, and materials in Native languages.

The Voting Rights Act continues to play a vital role in protecting the voting rights of Native voters; however, it did not abridge all obstacles.

1.4 Modern Voting Obstacles

Even with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Native Americans did not gain equal access to the ballot box. According to the director of Indian Legal Clinic and Associate Clinical Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Patty Ferguson- Bohnee, modern voting obstacles include socio-economic disparities, lack of access to

115 McCool and Olson and Robinson, Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the Right to Vote, 175. 116 Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437, available on https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-79/pdf/STATUTE-79-Pg437.pdf. 117 “Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act,” The United States Department of Justice, accessed February 11, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/crt/language-minority-citizens. 118 Wolfley, “You Gotta Fight For the Right To Vote: Enfranchising Native American Voters,” 269.

transportation, language barriers, lack of access to mail, lack of residential addresses, and lack of broadband connection.119 The ability of Native Americans to participate in the electoral process is also determined by where they live. American Indian and Alaska Natives live both in urban and rural areas. Urban Native Americans are often overlooked despite their sizable population in major metropolitan areas such as New York City (111,000), Phoenix (43,724), or Oklahoma City (36,572).120 However, my focus will be on Native Americans living on reservations since I intend to analyze their voting in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Isolation contributes to the political exclusion of AIAN people from the majority population. Native Americans living on reservations must often travel long distances to the off-reservation towns while overcoming various physical barriers such as mountains, rivers, vast expanses of unoccupied land, or canyons.121 For example, the Grand Canyon, a majestic natural monument attracting millions of tourists a year, impedes the movement of the Havasupai Indian Tribe,122 Hopi, Navajo, Kaibab Paiute Band of Indians, and Zuni tribe. Distance and physical barriers are compounded by an absence of paved roads connecting tribal lands with off-reservation communities, but also by a scarcity of cars and public transportation among rural Native Americans. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2016, 13.4% of all occupied AIAN households lacked access to a vehicle, making it difficult to travel to distant election sites to register and vote.123 The current situation is further exacerbated by the fact that many Native Americans living on reservations do not possess a driver’s license. To secure a driver’s license, one must travel to the driver’s license sites, pay a fee associated with obtaining necessary documentation and pass the driver’s test, which is complicated for many Native Americans.124

119 Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, “Testimony Before the House Committee on Administration Subcommittee on Elections Hearing on Native American Voting Rights: Exploring Barriers And Solutions,” Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, 3, available on https://law.asu.edu/sites/default/files/faculty-research/centers/ilp/hhrg-116-ha08-wstate-ferguson-bohneep- 20200211.pdf. 120 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 27. 121 Ibid., 29. 122 The Havasupai Reservation is located even at the bottom of the Canyon. (author’s note) 123 “Facts for Features: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2017,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 3, 2021, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/facts-for- features/2017/cb17-ff20.pdf. 124 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 32.

Persisting illiteracy and lower educational attainment rates in general among the AIAN population make it harder for Native Americans to participate in the electoral process and the off-reservation life. In Arizona, the illiteracy rate among limited English proficient American Indians and Alaska Natives of voting age125 was 25% for Navajo speakers and 6.8% for Apache speakers in 2016.126 Overall, according to the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there were over 370,000 Native American language speakers in 2013- 2017, and of those, 23% spoke English “less than very well.”127 Moreover, only a handful of Native languages are written and not every Native language speaker can read.128 Therefore, without adequate translations of election information, both oral and written, Native Americans are at a disadvantage when voting. For example, some audio recordings explaining the electoral process for non-English speakers are over two hours long if they cover all the information and thus too long to follow. The translations might also be distributed on compact disks, such as was the case with the Tohono O’odham tribe, but many Native Americans do not own a CD player on which they could play the recording.129 Moreover, for example, Navajo voters who needed language assistance because they were not fluent in English had to travel several hours to the sole in-person voting location to obtain assistance.130 Those examples demonstrate that language barriers can discourage many AIAN voters from voting.

Other voting obstacles, high poverty and unemployment rates, are prevalent throughout Indian Country. According to the 2016 U.S. Census Bureau data, American Indians and Alaska Natives had the highest poverty rate of any population group, 26.6%, which was nearly double the nation’s poverty rate as a whole.131 On Indian reservations,

125 In Arizona, one must be 18 or older on or before the next general election to register. “Voter Registration Age Requirements by State,” USAGov, accessed April 4, 2021, https://www.usa.gov/voter-registration-age- requirements. 126 “Section 203 Determinations - Published December 05, 2016,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 3, 2021, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about/voting-rights/voting-rights- determination-file.html. 127 Ferguson-Bohnee, “Testimony Before the House Committee on Administration Subcommittee on Elections Hearing on Native American Voting Rights: Exploring Barriers And Solutions,” 6. 128 Ibid., 6. 129 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 54-55. 130 Ibid., 55. 131 “Facts for Features: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2016,” United States Census Bureau, accessed March 27, 2021, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2016/cb16- ff22.html.

the poverty rate was even higher, 38.3%.132 Nearly half of the Gila River Indian Community and the San Carlos Apache Tribe members live below the official poverty line, which is more than triple the Arizona rate.133 The median household income of all single- race AIAN families in the United States was $39,719, which is $17,898 less than the national median household income.134 Poverty and lack of housing units leave many Native Americans homeless or near homeless.135 In the 2017 report, the Department of Housing and Urban Development stated that 99.8% of tribes surveyed claimed their members experienced near homelessness and that nearly 16% of AIAN households living on reservations experience overcrowding compared to the national rate of 2%.136 And based on the Native American Rights Fund’s findings, poor people tend to vote less since the voting obstacles are further exacerbated for them by the lack of money. For example, since some do not have money to spare, they cannot afford to buy a car or enough fuel to drive to the nearest polling station. Indian reservations often lack job opportunities too, which contributes to the increase of the unemployment rate among Native Americans and deteriorates the socio-economic situation of AIAN families. Moreover, unemployment leaves about 21.7% of Native Americans without health insurance; in Arizona, the rate is 26.4%.137 For overcrowded communities in rural and remote areas, often lacking access to running water and electricity, having no health coverage increases health risks, as revealed by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.138 The anti-epidemic measures combined with the depressed socio-economic situation and isolation of Native communities create a

132 “Table B17001C: Poverty Status in the Past 12 Months (American Indian and Alaska Native Alone), 2016: ACS 1-Year Estimates Detailed Tables,” United States Census Bureau, accessed March 23, 2021, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=ACSDT1Y2015.B17001C&g=0100000US&tid=ACSDT1Y2016.B17 001C. 133 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 38. 134 United States Census Bureau, “Facts for Features: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2017.” 135 “Near homeless” described as living in a place that is not one’s own i.e., not having their own home – couch surfing, living with a friend, doubling up, etc. Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 39. 136 Pindus, “Housing Needs Of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Tribal Areas: A Report from the Assessment of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Housing Needs,” 76-77. 137 “Uninsured Rates for the Nonelderly by Race/Ethnicity,” Kaiser Family Foundation, accessed March 4, 2021, https://www.kff.org/uninsured/state-indicator/nonelderly-uninsured-rate-by- raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&selectedDistributions=american-indianalaska- native&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D. 138 More information on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Native Americans is in chapter 3. (author’s note); Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 38.

unique set of voting barriers that limit Native American participation in the electoral process.

Technological barriers are yet another obstacle which Native Americans have to overcome. The lack of broadband and cellular services on Indian reservations complicates, besides other things, access to information. Even where some broadband access may be available, depressed socio-economic conditions, service denials, or poor quality of the connection often prevent Native Americans from using online resources.139 AIAN communities, therefore, depend on the mail. Nonetheless, only 18% of Arizona reservation voters outside of the urban Maricopa and Pima areas receive mail at home due to the prevalence of non-traditional mail addresses.140 Many Native Americans thus use post office boxes (P.O. Boxes) on or near tribal lands. They share those by multiple families, oftentimes including unrelated people from different households either because they want to save money or there are a few P.O. Boxes available and they have no other choice.141 However, some states and counties do not accept tribal post office box addresses, such as on the Gila River Indian Community in Pinal County, and in 2018, voter ID law requiring a regular residential address went into effect in North Dakota. This law expressly excluded the use of P.O. Boxes as residential addresses and was settled only in early 2020, when North Dakota agreed to a binding consent decree ensuring that Native Americans could vote without an ID that showed a residential address.142 As states increasingly move toward requiring identification to register or vote, the lack of traditional addresses and the insufficient number of P.O. Boxes create substantial barriers related to voter registration, voter identification requirements, and access to voting by mail.143 Moreover, obtaining a state-issued ID is difficult for many Native Americans since they often lack the supporting documents, such as birth certificate, or have to travel off the reservation to state-run

139 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 35. 140 Many people on the reservations do not have a traditional address containing house number and/or a street name, and their homes can only be identified by a geographic location using directions or landmarks. (Pindus, “Housing Needs Of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Tribal Areas: A Report from the Assessment of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Housing Needs”, 24.) 141 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 40. 142 Bohnee, “Testimony Before the House Committee on Administration Subcommittee on Elections Hearing on Native American Voting Rights: Exploring Barriers And Solutions,” 12. 143 “Voting Barriers Encountered by Native Americans in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and South Dakota,” Native American Rights Fund, accessed April 15, 2021, 6, https://www.narf.org/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/2017NAVRCsurvey-summary.pdf.

authorities to acquire such a card.144 Native Americans thus use tribal identification cards issued by tribal governments as proof of enrollment and membership in the tribe. Tribal identification cards often contain the same information as state ID cards, including address, photograph, signature of individual, and other information such as height, weight, and eye color.145 A federally recognized, tribal-issued card is also a valid form of identification. However, they are not automatically accepted for registration and voting purposes by some state authorities, especially if the tribal member has a tribal card issued outside of the state in which he tries to register to vote, or if they lack a residential address or a photo.146 Thirty-six states have laws requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls. Of those, only nine, including Arizona, allow tribal identification cards as a form of identification.147 Arizona requires voters to present photo identification or two forms of non-photo identification while voting. Accepted forms of identification include driver’s license, U.S. federal, state, or local government-issued identification, utility bills, bank statements, valid Arizona vehicle registration or insurance card, property tax statement, recorder’s certificate, but also Indian census card, tribal enrollment card or another form of tribal identification.148 However, misinformed poll workers often scrutinize and do not accept tribal cards. They demand additional identification from AIAN voters, forcing Native Americans to use provisional ballots or, in some cases, even turn them away.149

The voting barriers often arise from the insufficient funding of small and rural election systems, which tend to be understaffed and underfunded. Consequently, such election administrations do not have the capacity to deal with the costs, including money for personnel, polling places establishing, ballot printing, voter information dissemination, cybersecurity protection, and pursuing state legislation changes.150 Native Americans also face unequal access to early voting. In the 2016 general elections in Arizona, there were a

144 Native American Rights Fund, “Voting Barriers Encountered by Native Americans in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and South Dakota,” 6. 145 Wolfley, “You Gotta Fight For the Right To Vote: Enfranchising Native American Voters,” 300-301. 146 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 75. 147 Bohnee, “Testimony Before the House Committee on Administration Subcommittee on Elections Hearing on Native American Voting Rights: Exploring Barriers And Solutions,” 11. 148 However, not all tribes issue tribal IDs, so a tribal member would still need to obtain another form of qualifying ID. “Voter Identification Requirements | Voter ID Laws,” National Conference of State Legislatures, accessed April 12, 2021, https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id.aspx. 149 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 27. 150 “Election Costs: Who Pays and with Which Funds,” National Conference of State Legislatures, accessed April 11, 2021, https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-costs-who-pays-and-with- which-funds.aspx.

total of 89 early voting locations, of which 23 were on reservations. While off-reservation locations were opened for multiple days, ranging from being open and operating from October 12th to November 3rd, early-voting locations on the White Mountain Apache and San Carlos Apache reservations only had the opportunity to vote early in-person for one day for four hours.151 Moreover, many Native Americans living on reservations in Arizona had to travel between 60 to 200 miles to access the closest early voting location.152 AIAN people thus often used the opportunity to have their ballots “harvested” by another person, who would gather and submit completed absentee or mail-in voter ballots. However, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013153 and freed nine states to change their election laws without advance federal approval, Arizona implemented controversial Ballot Harvesting law in 2016. The legislation bars anyone but a family member or caregiver from returning another person’s early ballot to election officials.154 In January 2020, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ban on the so-called “ballot harvesting” and Arizona policy of discarding provisional ballots of out-of-precinct voters as they were enacted with discriminatory intent to affect minority voters disproportionately.155 However, the laws remained in place for the 2016 and 2020 elections as the state appealed the ruling.156

General distrust and skepticism among Native Americans persist because of past and ongoing discriminating actions. Not only do many AIAN people not trust the local, state, and federal governments, they also do not feel supported by these institutions. They

151 Unfortunately, I was not able to find this information about the 2020 elections. (author’s note); Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 92. 152 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 92. 153 In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (1965) – Section 4 – as unconstitutional. The decision terminated a preclearance coverage formula that has subjected numerous jurisdictions with discriminatory voting rights histories to the U.S. Department of Justice’s oversight. Wolfley, “You Gotta Fight For the Right To Vote: Enfranchising Native American Voters,” 266. 154 Jessica Gresko and Mark Sherman, “Supreme Court to review Arizona ‘ballot harvesting’ law,” AP News, accessed April 14, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/arizona-voting-rights-elections-us-supreme-court-courts- ae65d2e2a9b6498ab010441653aec18c. 155 Grace Oldham, “Arizona has suppressed Black, Latino and Native American voters for more than a century,” AZ Central, accessed April 14, 2021, https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2020/09/13/arizonas-history-suppressing-black-latino- native-american-voters/5771359002/. 156 The petition for a writ of certiorari in No. 19-1258 was granted and the Supreme Court of the United States is about to review the case in 2021. (author’s note)

tend to trust each other and that is why many volunteers, activists, and grassroots groups took action in 2020 to empower Native Americans to participate in the electoral process.

1.5 The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations, Activists, and Volunteers in the 2020 Elections

Many non-profit organizations, grassroots groups, and volunteers strived for voter registration and turnout increase. One of the prominent was Bii’Nalwod157 which started as a tribal sisterhood where women came together to empower themselves and the community.158 It also helped get the White Mountain Apache members involved in the census. In early 2020, Bii’Nalwod transitioned its focus to Native voting and discussion of the importance of casting votes. Bii’Nalwod is just one example of several Native initiatives across the state of Arizona.159 Another one, the Indivisible Tohono grassroots group, helped spread information about candidates, while the Rural Arizona Project, a non- profit organization that advocates and performs outreach to underrepresented voters, succeeded in one-on-one voting efforts.160 Its members went door to door to register AIAN voters, and when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, they reverted to calling people or dropped off voting information inside resealable plastic bags at the door.161

On the Gila River Indian Community, volunteers used social media and the community’s internal TV station to ensure that people have all the necessary information. These efforts paid off, with an increase of 24% in Gila River Indian Community voter registration compared to 2016.162 The Navajo Nation launched the Diné163 Vote Matters campaign through the Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (C.A.R.E.) organization and reached out to AIAN voters by creating videos and ads in Navajo and English showing environmental impacts on Indigenous communities since climate change and nature

157 Meaning “strong person” in Apache. (author’s note) 158 Bii’Nalwod, group description, Facebook, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/biinalwod/. 159 I will not discuss other initiatives that tried to get out the Native vote in other states since the focus of my research is primarily Arizona. (author’s note) 160 A sister organization of the Rural Utah Project. (author’s note) 161 Rachel Ramirez, “How the Navajo Nation helped Democrats win Arizona,” VOX, last modified November 12, 2020, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.vox.com/21559183/navajo-nation-arizona-biden-indigenous- voters. 162 Tab. 14. 163 Meaning “Navajo People.” (author’s note)

preservation had been one of the most important topics for Native Americans.164 C.A.R.E. also teamed up with other organizations working to mobilize voters on the Navajo Nation, including the Native Organizers Alliance, which is the training and organizing network long-term supporting Native candidates and fighting against projects endangering tribal lands.165 The InterTribal Council of Arizona (ITCA), a non-profit organization obtaining, analyzing, and disseminating information vital to the Indian community, reportedly reached out to over 50,000 Native voters in Arizona and attracted over 200,000 Facebook users, according to its Executive Director Maria Dadgar.166 However, not only groups and non-profit organizations participated in the efforts to get out the Native vote. Allie Young, a Diné advocate, launched a Ride to the Polls event when she rode on Election Day on the back of her horse with a dozen Navajo voters to the polls.167 She did so to motivate other Navajo and honor her ancestors who “rode [even] longer miles to make their voices heard by voting at the polls.”168 Young has been leading voter registration and other voting and census efforts through her Protect the Sacred initiative, which educates Navajo youth and young people throughout Indian Country.

Pasqua Yaqui member J. Mendoza informed her people about the importance of voting and candidates’ programs because she felt that not many people campaigned in her community.169 She got permission from the Pascua Yaqui Tribal Council to canvass on tribal land, and by the end of her efforts, she claimed she was able to register nearly 2,000 new voters who would otherwise not register.170 On Election Day, several volunteers ran the Arizona Native Vote Election Protection hotline. They answered questions in English, Apache, Hopi, and Navajo. Volunteers helped voters find their polling places and checked if voters’ absentee ballots were counted. 171 While there were reportedly

164 Shondiine Silversmith, “‘Indigenous DNA’: Native voters help turn Arizona blue, led by grassroots workers,” USA Today News, accessed April 18, 2021, https://eu.usatoday.com/ story/news/local/arizona/2020/11/30/native-voters-help-turn-arizona-blue-led- grassroots-workers/6235396002/. 165 “About Us,” Native Organizers Alliance, accessed April 19, 2021, https://nativeorganizing.org/about-us/. 166 Silversmith, “‘Indigenous DNA’: Native voters help turn Arizona blue, led by grassroots workers.” 167 “Meet Allie Young, the 30-year-old activist leading trail rides through Navajo Nation to get out the vote,” CNBC, last modified October 28, 2020, accessed April 18, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/28/meet- allie-young-a-native-american-activist-empowering-voters.html. 168 Ibid. 169 Silversmith, “‘Indigenous DNA’: Native voters help turn Arizona blue, led by grassroots workers.” 170 Ibid. 171 Alexia Fernández Campbell and Carrie Levine, “Native Americans, Hit Hard by Covid-19, Faced Major Barriers to Vote,” The Center for Public Integrity, last modified November 9, 2020, accessed March 29, 2021, https://publicintegrity.org/politics/elections/ballotboxbarriers/native-americans-faced-major-barriers- to-vote-turnout/.

more calls about voter intimidation than in past elections, none of the problems seemed to keep voters from getting to the polls, said the director of the Indian Legal Clinic at Arizona State University Patty Ferguson-Bohnee.172

The majority of organizations, groups, and activists did not favor a particular party. They only wanted to mobilize AIAN people, get out their vote, inform them about candidates and their policies, or raise election awareness. However, some initiatives were strictly partisan such as the Native Americans for Trump coalition, headlined by the president’s eldest son Donald Trump, Jr. Its campaign was paid by Turning Point USA, the prominent conservative youth group which The Washington Post labeled as a “troll farm” and accused of distributing misinformation on social media.173 Turning Point USA also financed the “Navajos for Trump” ad campaign that was launched in August 2020.174 The fact that such an organization supports the Native Americans for Trump coalition suggests that synergy between Turning Point USA and the Native Americans for Trump leads to the subsequent compromising of the group and its political campaign. During the Native Americans for Trump rally, where cowboy hats seemed to outnumber face masks, roughly 200 Native and non-Native Trump supporters gathered and chanted “Four more years!” referring to Trump’s reelection.175 Among the most prominent Native American Trump supporters, also participating in the rally, were Republican U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin (Cherokee), Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Cole (Chickasaw), Crow Tribal Chairman Alvin Not Afraid Jr., former U.S. congressional candidate for New Mexico Karen Bedonie (Navajo), or former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate for New Mexico Elisa Martinez (Navajo).176

Native American advocates for Trump have also promoted their views in a short documentary “A Long Walk in Socialism.”177 The video used the argument of failed

172 Campbell and Levine, “Native Americans, Hit Hard by Covid-19, Faced Major Barriers to Vote.” 173Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter,” The Washington Post, last modified September 15, 2020, accessed April 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/turning-point-teens-disinformation- trump/2020/09/15/c84091ae-f20a-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html. 174 Cindy Yurth, “Who are ‚Navajos for Trump’?” Navajo Times, last modified August 20, 2020, accessed March 28, 2021, https://navajotimes.com/reznews/who-are-navajos-for-trump/. 175 “Trump administration releases vision for Native Americans,” Navajo-Hopi Observer, last modified October 27, 2020, accessed April 2, 2021, https://www.nhonews.com/news/2020/oct/27/trump- administration-releases-vision-native-americ/. 176 Ibid. 177 Turning Point USA, “A Long Walk In Socialism,” uploaded November 1, 2020, YouTube video, 14:07, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m-RDFUQBeY.

socialism, which was also the argument for the policy of “Termination”178 during the 1950s, to criticize the policy of previous Democratic administrations.179 It linked the roots of poverty and poor health conditions on the Navajo Nation to what they called “federal and tribal-government sponsored socialism.”180

Nevertheless, probably the most influential Native American supporter of Trump was the Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer, who believes that “Native American values – hard work, family and ranching – align more with the GOP181 than with Democrats.”182 As one of the top officials on the country’s largest Native American reservation, he was in the Oval Office in November 2019 when Trump signed an executive order establishing a task force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, attended an event hosted by Students for Trump in Phoenix, Arizona, was a part of the group of tribal leaders who met with Trump during his May trip to Phoenix mask factory and spoke on the second night of the Republican National Convention in August.183 Unlike Lizer, his superior, Navajo President Jonathan Nez endorsed Joe Biden together with more than 200 tribal leaders, including chairpersons of the Ak-Chin Indian Community (Robert Miguel), Colorado River Indian Tribes (Dennis Patch), Gila River Indian Community (Stephen Lewis), Hopi Tribe (Timothy Nuvangyaoma), San Carlos Apache Tribe (Terry Rambler), and Tohono O’odham Nation (Ned Norris), all chairmen of Arizona tribes.184 However, unlike the Native Americans for Trump, no such group was formed to support Biden.

178 The Indian termination policy (from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s) sought to assimilate selected Native American tribes into the dominant American society. The policy eliminated much government support for Indian tribes and ended the protected trust status of all Indian-owned lands leading to relocating Native Americans from rural areas to metropolitan such as Chicago, Denver, or Los Angeles where they struggled to adjust to urban life, faced unemployment, discrimination, homesickness and the loss of the traditional culture. For more information on this topic see for example Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins, an Indian Manifesto (University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1988), 54-78. (author’s note) 179 Underwritten by the right-wing group Turning Point USA, the document describes federal social welfare programming and the trust relationship with tribes as liberalism that functions as a steppingstone to socialism that eventually will lead to communism. Annette Mary Pember, “Native Americans for Donald Trump,” Indian Country Today, last modified October 17, 2020, accessed April 9, 2021, https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/native-americans-for-donald-trump. 180 Turning Point USA, “A Long Walk In Socialism.” 181 Grand Old Party is a traditional nickname for the Republican Party. (author’s note) 182 Felicia Fonseca and Morgan Lee, “Minority pushes Trump agenda largely unpopular among tribes,” AP News, last modified October 24, 2020, accessed April 2, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/election-2020- donald-trump-politics-virus-outbreak-native-americans-35b2de8c4d2e8856e759ac59994265ed. 183 “Tribe’s vice president, Myron Lizer, among 17 people set to speak at Republican National Convention Aug. 25,” Navajo-Hopi Observer, accessed April 18, 2021, https://www.nhonews.com/news/2020/aug/25/tribes-vice-president-myron-lizer-among-17-people-/. 184 “Hundreds of tribal and Indian Country leaders endorse Joe Biden for president,” Indianz, October 15, 2020, accessed April 12, 2021, https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/10/15/hundreds-of-tribal-and-indian- country-leaders-endorse-joe-biden-for-president/.

Many politicians, grassroots organizations, and activists tried to get out the Native vote in the 2020 elections. Even though mostly non-partisan, some of them showed support for either Republican or Democratic candidate, such as the Native Americans for Trump coalition or six chairpersons of Arizona tribes. I examine the results of their efforts in subsequent chapters.

2. The Path Toward Biden’s Victory

In the second chapter, I will analyze the various factors that potentially influenced the Native vote in the 2020 elections apart from the grassroots groups and activists. I will explore whether the voters voted for Biden or against Trump. Judging by Trump’s previous unfriendly policy and attitudes toward Native Americans, which will be presented in the chapter, I argue that the voters did not particularly favor Biden or the Democratic Party, but they rather gave their vote to anyone but Trump.

The Democratic Party and its candidates’ dominant, long-term approach is that minority groups such as Blacks, Latinos, or immigrants need to be protected by the government against systemic discrimination. Democrats thus fully embraced multiculturalism and movements such as Black Lives Matter to prove they are the party that stands behind often omitted racial and ethnic minorities. However, surprisingly little research has examined the political attitudes of Native Americans, and of those studies that have been made, many suffer from examining only one tribe or state, or are too old. Based on the Indigenous Futures Survey, Native Americans nowadays in battleground states predominantly identify as Democrats and Independents, even more than AIAN people in other historically “red” and “blue” states.185 Regarding political orientation, Native Americans primarily identify as Liberal or Moderate, indicating that they tend to vote for Democratic candidates in presidential elections.186 In Arizona, 58% of AIAN people identify as Democrats, 29% as Independents, 5% as Democratic Socialists, and 4% as Republicans suggesting that Native Americans vote mostly for the Democratic candidates in the presidential elections.187 These numbers show that the traditional two party system does not apply as much on the current Native American population. However, the focus of this study is only on Democratic and Republican candidates, mainly due to the scope of the work, which provides an opportunity for further research.

As the election results reveal, Native Americans indeed tend to vote for the Democratic candidates as both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden received the majority of the Native votes. Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton

185 Indigenous Futures Survey, “From Protests, To the Ballot Box, and Beyond: Building Indigenous POWER,” 43. 186 Ibid., 41. 187 Ibid., 43.

addressed Native American issues. During his presidential campaign in 2008, Obama told the Crow Nation in Montana that “Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans — the first Americans”188 and promised he would pay special attention to Native American grievances. When president, Obama received praise from tribal leaders for delivering on his pledge.189 In 2016, Clinton addressed Native Americans during her campaign too since she considers herself their longtime advocate.190 In general, her plan “Vision for Building a Brighter Future for Native Americans”191 was similar to Biden- Harris 2020 plan in many ways but Biden-Harris plan was more elaborate. The main difference worth mentioning was the timing of the release of their plans; while Clinton released her policy proposal for Native Americans eight months before the elections, Joe Biden released his just less than a month before the November elections. In the 15-page document “Biden-Harris Plan for Tribal Nations,”192 Biden depicted the most critical issues for Native Americans. Notably, he addressed the problematic Nation-to-Nation relationship, called for a restoration of tribal lands and preservation of natural and cultural resources, acknowledged the problem of violence against American Indians and Alaska Natives, especially against Native women and youth, highlighted the lack of economic development opportunities and decaying infrastructure, but also focused on underfunded and insufficient education, promised attention to omitted Native veterans, denounced continuing disenfranchisement, and lastly, he criticized inadequate and inaccessible health care.193 However, the campaign promises of candidates do not have such an effect on voters as real politics. I thus expect that Biden-Harris’ plan did not have much influence on the voters’ decision, and I will not further analyze it since Biden pledged to continue in Obama’s favorable policy to Native Americans. While there had been many positive changes for the Indian Country under Biden’s Vice-presidency (2009-2017), the situation had not improved for Native Americans during the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, quite the contrary. During his presidency, Trump did little to improve the

188 “Candidate Obama Kept His Promise to Native Americans,” The New York Times, last modified September 30, 2016, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/opinion/candidate- obama-kept-his-promise-to-native-americans.html. 189 Since my focus is on the 2016 and 2020 elections, I will not discuss Obama’s successes and failures. It only serves as a context for the long-term Democratic support of the AIAN community. (author’s note) 190 Hillary Clinton, “Growing Together: Hillary Clinton's Vision for Building a Brighter Future for Native Americans,” accessed March 5, 2021, available on http://www.indigenouspolicy.org/index.php/ipj/article/view/385/380. 191 Ibid. 192 Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris, “Biden-Harris Plan for Tribal Nations,” accessed April 18, 2021, available on https://joebiden.com/tribalnations/. 193 Ibid.

depressed socio-economic conditions of AIAN people across the United States or fight racism. As Hopi tribal member Tommy Suetopka said:

I was so disgusted with Trump. Anybody who would want to run [against him] was going to get my vote.194

Moreover, a pandemic hit the world and the United States in early 2020.

2.1 The Pandemic

The American Election Eve Poll195 by Latino Decisions, African American Research Collaborative, and Asian American Decisions, conducted in the two weeks leading up to the election, identified the Covid-19 pandemic as the most critical issue among Native voters combined with the overall health and health care situation on reservations. Out of the surveyed Native Americans, 45% viewed the pandemic as the most important issue that the candidates should address, 41% were concerned about jobs and the economy, and 28% of responders viewed education as the most important issue their community has to face.196 All of those issues were addressed in both Biden’s and Trump’s plans.

The first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus was confirmed in the United States on January 21, 2020.197 At the end of the year, the United States surpassed 20 million infections and more than 346,000 death related to SARS-CoV-2.198 The pandemic has disproportionately hit minorities, especially Native Americans. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) data, American Indians and Alaska Natives are dying of Covid-19 at twice higher rates and younger ages than other groups. However, the death toll is undoubtedly higher as multiple states and cities provide insufficient or no data on Native

194 Felicia Fonseca and Angeliki Kastanis, “Native American voters helped secure Biden’s win in Arizona,” AP News, last modified November 19, 2020, accessed April 4, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/election- 2020-joe-biden-flagstaff-arizona-voting-rights-fa452fbd546fa00535679d78ac40b890. 195 The American Election Eve Poll, “Arizona, American Indian,” available on https://electioneve2020.com/poll/#/en/demographics/native-american/az. 196 Ibid. 197 “A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020,” AJMC, last modified January 1, 2021, accessed April 12, 2021, https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020. 198 Ibid.

Americans.199 From what we know, nationwide one in every 475 Native Americans has died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, compared with one in every 825 white Americans and one in every 645 Black Americans.200 Arizona has been one of the hardest- hit states. Native Americans there account on average for 11% of all coronavirus deaths despite representing less than 6% of the population.201 The federal response to the pandemic was inadequate and took too long. Tribal leaders were thus forced to spend millions of dollars of tribal money to bolster the response by enacting curfews, enforcing social distancing, distributing posters and materials informing about Covid-19, and taking other preventive measures. However, for many rural Native Americans, social distancing in overcrowded houses and frequent hand washing when, for example, 30-40% of Navajos do not have running water was impossible.202 The virus thus spread quickly among the AIAN communities.

American Indian and Alaska Native tribes are eligible for services provided by the Indian Health Service (IHS), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that provides a comprehensive health service for Native Americans.203 According to the National Congress of American Indians, Indian Health Service oversees the delivery of health services in more than 2,000 facilities through direct IHS, tribally operated, and urban health clinics.204 The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)205 and the

199 Randall Akee and Sarah Reber, “American Indians and Alaska Natives are dying of COVID-19 at shocking rates,” Brookings, last modified February 18, 2021, accessed March 28, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/research/american-indians-and-alaska-natives-are-dying-of-covid-19-at- shocking-rates/. 200 AJMC, “A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020.” 201 Mark Walker, “Native Americans Reliant on Hospital Feel Abandoned by U.S. During Pandemic,” The New York Times, last modified January 3, 2021, accessed March 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/indian-health-service-hospital.html. 202 Hollie Silverman, Konstantin Toropin, Sara Sidner and Leslie Perrot, “Navajo Nation surpasses New York state for the highest Covid-19 infection rate in the US,” CNN, last modified May 18, 2020, accessed April 3, 2021, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/18/us/navajo-nation-infection-rate-trnd/index.html. 203 “Disparities,” Indian Health Service, accessed March 4, 2021, https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/. 204 “Health Care,” National Congress of American Indians, accessed April 10, 2021, https://www.ncai.org/policy-issues/education-health-human-services/health-care. 205 Signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, it represents the U.S. healthcare system’s most comprehensive healthcare reform since the passage of Medicare (primarily providing health insurance for people 65 and older) and Medicaid (primarily providing health insurance for people with low incomes) in 1965. The ACA, besides other things, extended health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, expanded Medicaid eligibility, created a Health Insurance Marketplace, prevented insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions, and required plans to cover a list of essential health benefits. Will Kenton, “Affordable Care Act (ACA),” Investopedia, last updated March 13, 2021, accessed April 19, 2021, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/affordable-care-act.asp.

permanent reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (IHCIA)206 in 2010, offered Native Americans improved insurance protections, such as no-cost preventative services, elimination of lifetime caps on health coverage, and prohibitions on denial of insurance coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.207 However, the Acts did not solve the long-lasting underfunding of IHS, lower quality of health care compared to the rest of the U.S. population, inadequate access to health services, or shortage of medical personnel, especially in remote rural communities.208 The result is that Native Americans experience lower life expectancy than the average American.

Even before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Native Americans had a 5,5 years shorter life expectancy than all other ethnic groups in the United States and suffered from higher rates of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease, and asthma.209 Native Americans also experience higher rates of suicide, which is the second leading cause of death among 10-34 year old and the eighth among Native Americans across all ages.210 Besides, according to Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), Native Americans are more likely to be uninsured than any other racial or ethnic group, with a total of 21.7% in the United States and a 26.4% rate in Arizona alone.211

206 The Indian Health Care Improvement Act (IHCIA), along with the Snyder Act of 1921, provide the basis of health care for American Indians and Alaska Natives pursuant to the treaty and trust obligations of the United States government. U.S. Congress passed the IHCIA in 1976 to address the health status of Native Americans, who ranked far below the general population. President Obama signed a bill including the permanent reauthorization of the IHCIA as part of the ACA in 2010. “Brief History of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act,” Tribal Health Reform Resource Center, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.nihb.org/tribalhealthreform/ihcia-history/. 207National Congress of American Indians, “Health Care.” 208 Mary Smith, “Native Americans: A Crisis in Health Equity” American Bar Association, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of- healthcare-in-the-united-states/native-american-crisis-in-health- equity/?q=&fq=(id%3A%5C%2Fcontent%2Faba-cms- dotorg%2Fen%2Fgroups%2Fcrsj%2F*)&wt=json&start=0. 209 Indian Health Service, “Disparities.” 210 “10 Leading Causes of Death, United States,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed March 3, 2021, https://wisqars- viz.cdc.gov:8006/lcd/home?lcd=eyJjYXVzZXMiOlsiQUxMIl0sInN0YXRlcyI6WyIwMSIsIjAyIiwiMDQiL CIwNSIsIjA2IiwiMDgiLCIwOSIsIjEwIiwiMTEiLCIxMiIsIjEzIiwiMTUiLCIxNiIsIjE3IiwiMTgiLCIxOSIsIj IwIiwiMjEiLCIyMiIsIjIzIiwiMjQiLCIyNSIsIjI2IiwiMjciLCIyOCIsIjI5IiwiMzAiLCIzMSIsIjMyIiwiMzMiL CIzNCIsIjM1IiwiMzYiLCIzNyIsIjM4IiwiMzkiLCI0MCIsIjQxIiwiNDIiLCI0NCIsIjQ1IiwiNDYiLCI0NyIsIj Q4IiwiNDkiLCI1MCIsIjUxIiwiNTMiLCI1NCIsIjU1IiwiNTYiXSwicmFjZSI6WyIzIl0sImV0aG5pY2l0eSI6 WyIxIiwiMiIsIjMiXSwic2V4IjpbIjEiLCIyIl0sImZyb21ZZWFyIjpbIjIwMTkiXSwidG9ZZWFyIjpbIjIwMTk iXSwibnVtYmVyX29mX2NhdXNlcyI6WyIxMCJdLCJhZ2VfZ3JvdXBfZm9ybWF0dGluZyI6WyJsY2QxY WdlIl0sImN1c3RvbUFnZXNNaW4iOlsiMCJdLCJjdXN0b21BZ2VzTWF4IjpbIjE5OSJdLCJ5cGxsYWdlcyI 6WyI2NSJdfQ%3D%3D. 211 Kaiser Family Foundation, “Uninsured Rates for the Nonelderly by Race/Ethnicity.”

The pandemic has exacerbated Native American health care problems contributing to disproportionately high infections and death rates among the AIAN community. On March 27, 2020, Congress approved $8 billion as tribal assistance for Covid-19 relief under the $2 trillion Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.212 However, the Trump administration delayed distributing the money for weeks until it was finally forced to do so by a federal judge. By that time, in the vice-chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Sen. Udall’s words, it was “too little, too late.”213 The President’s mishandling of the pandemic – his denial of its seriousness, refusal to impose basic public health measures, and denigration of health experts inevitably led to the suffering of Native Americans. The rising number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, Covid-19 deaths, and Trump’s inattention became one of the main topics of the 2020 elections, including among Native Americans.

2.2 Donald Trump and Native Americans

Donald Trump released his policy proposal for Native Americans two weeks before the November elections which indicates that AIAN people were not at the center of his political interest. He called his plan “Putting America’s First Peoples First: Forgotten No More!”214 The document included a list of promises, similar to Biden’s. However, the content of the 3-page document was overshadowed by Trump’s previous four years as president.

One of Trump’s first acts as President was to sign an executive order authorizing the Dakota Access Pipeline215 and Keystone XL Pipeline216 endangering tribal water

212 Matt Gutman, Robert Zepeda, Tenzin Shakya, and Allie Yang, “Navajo community left to fight COVID- 19 with limited resources,” ABC News, last modified May 5, 2020, accessed April 19, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/Health/navajo-community-left-fight-covid-19-limited-resources/story?id=70490722. 213 Andrea Shalal, “U.S. Treasury to distribute $4.8 billion in pandemic funds to tribal governments,” Reuters, last modified May 5, 2020, accessed April 14, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-tribes-idUSKBN22H1WN. 214 Donald Trump, “Putting America’s First Peoples First: Forgotten No More!”, available on https://www.indianz.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Putting-Americas-First-Peoples-First.pdf. 215 Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a 1,172 mile-long oil pipeline running from North Dakota to Illinois. It was completed in April 2017 and became operational on June 1, 2017. The Dakota Access Pipeline project caught international attention in 2016 when large protests near Standing Rock Sioux reservation broke. Opposition was led by Native Americans, especially from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, but attracted Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from across North America. The dissenters contended the pipeline’s route under Lake Oahe on unceded lands near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation would threaten the tribe’s

reserves and lands. Native Americans have always shared a strong connection to the land of their ancestors. For them, the land is a foundation of tribal sovereignty and self- determination, conserving tribal histories and culture for future generations. Even though the preservation of natural and cultural resources is one of the top priorities for Native Americans, Trump did not include it in his plan. In addition, during his presidency, instead of protecting, he endangered Native lands and sacred sites. Trump reduced the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, created at the request of Native Americans, that included land sacred to several tribes such as Hopi, Navajo, or Zuni.217 He also signed a directive ordering an end to protracting environmental reviews, which resulted in accelerating the land transfer of the Oak Flat area, sacred for San Carlos Apache and other tribes, to an international mining company.218 The Tohono O’odham tribe’s sacred burial grounds then had to make way for President Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” on the borders with Mexico. In 2019, Trump tweeted against the H.R.312 (Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act), reaffirming the Mashpee Wampanoag reservation lands awarded to the tribe, and a year later, he successfully revoked the reservation status of 321 acres on which

drinking water, which could be contaminated by potential spillage. Timothy Cama, “Dakota Access pipeline now in service,” The Hill, last modified June 1, 2017, accessed April 17, 2021, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/335898-dakota-access-pipeline-now-in-service; Estes, Our History is the Future, 6. 216 Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL) is a planned 1,179 mile-long oil pipeline running through the heart of the Oceti Sakowin (or the Great Sioux Nation) territory from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would join an existing pipe. It could carry 830,000 barrels of oil each day. An increased oil supply from Canada would mean a decreased dependency on Middle Eastern supplies, and an increased availability of oil would mean lower prices for consumers. In February 2013, more than 40,000 people gathered outside the White House to protest the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, bringing together Indigenous and non- Indigenous movements committed to halting extraction and transportation of highly toxic and volatile tar sands from Canada. Another big demonstration took place in 2014, which brought together a historical coalition of ranchers and Native Americans. For the first time ever, the "Cowboys" and "Indians" stood together to reject the pipeline and protect the land for future generations. Ultimately, Obama’s administration rejected the development of the Keystone XL Pipeline in 2015. “Keystone XL pipeline: Why is it so disputed?” BBC, last modified January 21, 2021, accessed April 19, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world- us-canada-30103078; Estes, Our History is the Future, 30; Mark Hefflinger, “Reject and Protect: Cowboy and Indian Alliance to Set Up Camp in D.C. April 22-27,“ Bold Nebraska, last modified March 15, 2014, accessed May 1, 2021, https://boldnebraska.org/rejectandprotect/. 217 Fonseca and Lee, “Minority pushes Trump agenda largely unpopular among tribes.” 218 Peter Baker and Coral Davenport, “Trump Revives Keystone Pipeline Rejected by Obama,” The New York Times, last modified January 24, 2017, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/keystone-dakota-pipeline-trump.html; Douglas Main, “Sacred Native American land to be traded to a foreign mining giant,“ National Geographic, last modified January 15, 2021, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/oak-flat- exchange-arizona-sacred-site-mining-company.

the tribe wanted to build a $1 billion casino.219 It would mark the first time Native land has been taken out of trust since the federal policy called “Termination ” of the 1950s when the U.S. government intentionally attempted to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant society. In fact, Trump was the only president in U.S. history to have removed the protection of more public lands than he protected, discontinuing the long history of bipartisan efforts to protect national treasures.220 What also could influence Native American voting was the recommendation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture backed by the president to re-open more than 1 million acres of lands adjacent to the Grand Canyon for uranium mining where Havasupai, Hopi, Hualapai, Kaibab-Paiute, Navajo, Yavapai and Zuni tribes reside or have their sacred lands.221 Biden disagreed with the Trump administration’s steps against nature conservation, and he promised to defend federally recognized tribal lands, protect reservation boundaries and sacred sites, and respect land sovereignty. As Biden has taken such a different approach to nature preservation, it was evident who the Native Americans from reservations affected by Trump’s policy would vote for.

Trump’s administration did have some positive impact on Indian Country, even though the majority of the accomplishments stemmed from long-term bipartisan efforts. In 2018, Trump signed into law the Thomasina E. Jordan Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act, granting federal recognition to six Virginia Indigenous nations and thus providing them with access to federal funds for healthcare, education, and housing. A year later, he signed three bills to support tribal sovereignty; one compensating the Spokane Tribe for the loss of their lands in the mid-1900s, one reauthorizing funding for Native language initiatives, and the last one federally recognizing the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Montana. In 2019, President Trump also signed Executive Order 13898, establishing a 2-year Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indian and

219 Rory Taylor, “Trump administration revokes reservation status for Mashpee Wampanoag tribe amid coronavirus crisis,” VOX, last modified April 2, 2020, accessed April 18, 2021, https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/2/21204113/mashpee-wampanoag-tribe-trump-reservation-native- land. 220 “The Most Anti-Nature President in U.S. History,” Center for American Progress, accessed March 5, 2021, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2020/05/21/485260/anti-nature-president-u-s- history/. 221 “Mining next to the Grand Canyon? Yes, if the Trump administration has its way…” The Wilderness Society, last modified November 3, 2017, accessed April 18, 2021, https://www.wilderness.org/articles/blog/mining-next-grand-canyon-yes-if-trump-administration-has-its- way#.

Alaska Natives called Operation Lady Justice (OLJ).222 The OLJ had focused on meeting with tribal leaders and communities and addressing both new and unsolved cases of missing or murdered AIAN women. However, this initiative was not Trump’s. In 1994, as a U.S. Senator, Joe Biden fought – unsuccessfully – to get funding to support tribal governments’ efforts to protect AIAN women and girls.223 As a Vice-president, he successfully pushed for a narrowing of the gap in tribal jurisdictions so that non-Natives could no longer abuse Native wives or girlfriends with impunity on tribal lands.224 The Obama-Biden Administration also held the first-ever trilateral meeting with Canada and Mexico on violence against Indigenous women and girls, officially acknowledging the issue.225 In 2019, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) also reintroduced a bill addressing the alarming number of missing or murdered women after former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) proposed it two years earlier. The bill was named for Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a member of the Spirit Lake Nation whose body was found floating in the Red River near the North Dakota-Minnesota border in 2017. She was 22 years old and eight months pregnant when she was murdered by a white woman, who later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole.226

Unanimously passed on December 10, 2020, and signed by President Trump, the Savanna’s Act directs the Department of Justice to review, revise, and develop law enforcement and justice protocols to address missing or murdered Native American women.227 The Act also requires federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies to update and create protocols. The U.S. Department of Justice must provide training to law enforcement agencies on data entry, educate the public on the database, help tribes and Native communities enter information in the database, develop guidelines for response to missing or murdered Native American people, provide technical assistance to tribes and law enforcement agencies and report data on missing or murdered Native

222 “Executive Order Establishes Task Force,” Operation Lady Justice, accessed January 28, 2021, https://operationladyjustice.usdoj.gov/about/executive-order. 223 Cathy Russell, “Justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and their families must be a priority,” Indian Country Today, last modified October 18, 2019, accessed April 30, 2021, https://indiancountrytoday.com/opinion/justice-for-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-their- families-must-be-a-priority?redir=1. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid. 226 Jenni Monet, “A Native American woman’s brutal murder could lead to a life-saving law,” The Guardian, accessed March 28, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/01/savanna-act-native-women- missing-murdered. 227 S. 227 – Savanna’s Act, available on https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/227.

Americans.228 Donald Trump tweeted: “I was proud to sign Savanna’s Act & the Not Invisible Act. We have also provided $295 Million to support public safety & crime victims. Forgotten NO MORE!”229 addressing Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act, which aims to establish a joint commission to come up with ideas for better identifying, reporting, and responding to missing persons, murder and human trafficking cases.230

Based on the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey published in the National Institute of Justice Research Report, more than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women (84.3%) have experienced violence in their lifetime – that is more than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native women.231 Native American women are sexually assaulted at four times the national average.232 The Department of Justice reports that non-Native men in often brutal ways commit at least 86% of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against AIAN women.233 While a quarter of reported sexual violence toward Native American women is suffered at the hands of an intimate partner, 41% of rapes are reportedly committed by strangers.234 AIAN women are also murdered, vanished, or found dead without explanation at rates well above the national per capita averages.235 In fact, AIAN women are ten times as likely to be murdered than other American women, and murder is also the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women.236 The National Crime Information Center reports that in 2016 there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls, though the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database only

228 S. 227 – Savanna’s Act 229 Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), “I was proud to sign Savanna’s Act & the Not Invisible Act. We have also provided $295 Million to support public safety & crime victims. Forgotten NO MORE!” Tweet, October 11, 2020, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1315091217533882368. 230 S. 982 – Not Invisible Act of 2019, available on https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/982/text. 231 National Institute of Justice, “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men,” Washington, D.C., May 2016, 2, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/249736.pdf. 232 Ibid., 2. 233 Ibid., 2. 234 Apart from environment threats, projects like Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline are also linked to violence against Native American women and girls, due to installation of temporary housing for incoming predominantly male pipeline workers, known as “man camps.” Non-indigenous oil workers are coming to the construction sites, often doubling or quadrupling the population in a particular town. However, while violent assaults against Native women are frequent in these areas, prosecutions are not since the tribal law enforcement has little or no jurisdiction over non-Natives. For more information on this topic see Estes, Our History is the Future or National Institute of Justice Research Report, “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men.” 235 Monet, “A Native American woman’s brutal murder could lead to a life-saving law.” 236 National Institute of Justice Research Report, “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men,” 2.

logged 116 cases.237 However, experts, some human-rights organizations, and activists believe the number to be considerably higher.238 Advocates blame the crisis on a lack of specialized investigative policing and extreme gaps in government oversight.239 Nationwide, Native Americans have united to raise awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). The signature of the Savanna’s Act and Not Invisible Act were thus huge accomplishments for the AIAN community.240 However, long-term bipartisan support is behind these Acts. Therefore, while important for Native Americans, the signature of the Savanna’s Act and Not Invisible Act did not bring Trump the coveted merit since the Acts were not his initiatives.

During the last months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the U.S. Department of Justice also invested almost $300 million in grants to improve public safety, serve crime victims in AIAN communities and support youth programs. Trump also signed the Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert in Indian Country.241 The act was born out of the tragic abduction and murder of an 11-year-old Navajo Ashlynne Mike in 2016. At the time, tribal law enforcement officers did not have an AMBER Alert242 to notify people living on reservations that a child was abducted and in imminent danger. Thus, the legislation represents significant progress since it makes federally recognized tribes eligible for AMBER Alert grants and enables immediate notification about missing children.

When Donald Trump visited Phoenix in May 2020, he claimed that his administration was working to “improve the lives of Native American families and tribes more than any administration has done so far.”243 However, the tribal leaders say the opposite. The National Congress of American Indians, the oldest and largest group

237 “Missing and Murdered Women & Girls,” Urban Indian Health Institute, accessed March 5, 2021, 2, http://www.uihi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Missing-and-Murdered-Indigenous-Women-and-Girls- Report.pdf. 238 Mary Annette Pember, “On National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women, Here’s What We Don’t Know,” Rewire News, last modified May 4, 2018, accessed April 8, 2021, https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2018/05/04/national-day-awareness-missing-murdered-native-women- heres-dont-know/. 239 Monet, “A Native American woman's brutal murder could lead to a life-saving law.” 240 The results of the Acts are yet to be seen. (author’s note) 241 “Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert in Indian Country Act,” U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, accessed April 8, 2021, https://amberalert.ojp.gov/amber-alert-indian-country. 242 AMBER Alert instantly galvanizes communities to assist in the search for and safe recovery of an abducted child. The alerts are broadcast through radio, TV, road signs, cell phones, and other data-enabled devices. “AMBER Alert,” U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, accessed April 8, 2021, https://amberalert.ojp.gov. 243 Acee Agoyo, “‘A slap in the face for Indian Country’: Tribes decry Trump administration’s delay in $8 billion in coronavirus relief,” Indianz, last modified May 6, 2020, accessed March 22, 2021, https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/05/06/a-slap-in-the-face-for-indian-country-tr.asp.

representing Native Americans and Alaska Natives, claims that it has urged Trump to talk to them about his policy as his predecessors did – in vain.244 After becoming president, Trump canceled a White House Tribal Conference, a platform created by the Obama-Biden Administration for conversations between tribal leaders and governments.245 The Trump administration also called for cuts in funding that have adversely affected the already underfunded police forces on reservations. He neither reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)246, which allowed tribes to prosecute and investigate non-Indians for violent crimes against women committed on reservations. And so, although Trump established a special task force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives, with the further steps he did not support the tribal police, which is crucial for the fight against the violence on Native women. Native Americans could also be concerned about Trump’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare), leading to cutbacks at Indian Health Service. Especially during the pandemic, when most Native Americans face higher contagion risks, this would further aggravate their situation. And it is not just about Trump’s policy.

Trump has long been criticized for his rhetoric toward the AIAN community. In 1993, he testified before a House subcommittee against Indian-operated casinos that rivaled his own gaming business because of tax exemptions. In his speech, Trump famously suggested that some of the tribes running casinos were not Indian because their owners simply “didn’t look like Indians” to him.247 Trump maintained his hateful and mocking language up until today. When one of his most vociferous critics, Democratic

244 Anita Kumar, “‘Complete disaster’: Trump’s fraught ties with Native Americans on display at Mount Rushmore,” Politico, last modified July 3, 2020, accessed April 14, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/03/trump-mount-rushmore-347982. 245 Acee Agoyo, “‘Forgotten no more!’: Trump team puts Native people last on important call,” Indianz, last modified October 21, 2020, accessed April 14, 2021, https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/10/21/forgotten- no-more-trump-team-puts-native-people-last-on-important-call/. 246 The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) addressed domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. When President Obama signed legislation reauthorizing the Act, it included a new provision allowing tribes to arrest and prosecute non-Indians who committed acts of domestic violence against AIAN women, bringing attention to the problem. The Act also provided $1,6 billion over six years toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against AIAN women and established the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice. Monica N. Modi, MD, Sheallah Palmer, BA, and Alicia Armstrong, MD, MHSCR, “The Role of Violence Against Women Act in Addressing Intimate Partner Violence: A Public Health Issue,” Journal of Women’s health, 3, available on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3952594/. 247 MSNBC, “Trump - 1993 - Testifying in front of Native American affairs Committee They Don’t look In,” filmed October 5, 1993, YouTube video, 2:50, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFi0EHh1f0I.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), claimed to possess a small fraction of Native American DNA, Trump mockingly called her “Pocahontas.”248. He even used the slur during a 2017 event at the White House with Navajo Code Talkers, who used their native language to encrypt and transfer important messages during the battles of the Second World War.249 Such behavior infuriated many.

The “blood quantum”250 seems to influence Trump’s thinking, especially concerning tribes of the eastern coast. For Trump, eastern tribes remained largely illegitimate for tribal sovereignty because they lacked the required level of “racial purity” in the president’s eyes.251 In contrast, the western tribes, among whom he appears to have found at least some allies, such as previously mentioned Myron Lizer, seemed to satisfy Trump’s ill-defined criteria for Indigenous legitimacy.252 He has also defended the Washington, D.C., NFL franchise’s refusal to stop using a slur for Native Americans as its name, and in the Oval Office, he hung a portrait of former President Andrew Jackson, who first made his name as an Indian fighter during the First Seminole War (1817-1818) and who forced thousands of Native Americans to relocate from the Southeast to the West on the “Trail of Tears“ under the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Trump’s admiration of one of the greatest enemies of Native Americans certainly did not add to his popularity among them. Trump also did not name any Native Americans in his cabinet. For them, however, representation is important. In 2018, the first AIAN women were elected to Congress, Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids, and Paulette Jordan became the first Native American to be a major party nominee for Governor in Idaho.253 They set an example for other Native Americans to run for office and change their communities.

This chapter provided the reader with an overview of Biden’s and Trump’s political approaches toward Native Americans and mentioned some of the most pressing issues for Native Americans. While the Democratic candidates Obama, Clinton, and Biden addressed

248 Pocahontas was a daughter of Chief Powhatan. As a girl, she was captured, baptized and married to John Rolfe, with whom she had a child. In 1616, she travelled with her husband to London where was presented as an example of the “civilized savage”. She died a year later of unknown causes aged 20 or 21. Even though her name itself is not a slur, Trump’s usage is considered a racial stereotype. (author’s note) 249 Jessica Taylor, “Trump Brings Up ‘Pocahontas’ At Event Honoring Navajo Code Talkers,” NPR, last modified November 27, 2017, accessed April 11, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2017/11/27/566783261/trump- brings-up-pocahontas-at-event-honoring-navajo-code-talkers. 250 Blood quantum is the amount of “Indian blood” one possess. (author’s note) 251 Darren R. Reid, Native American racism in the age of Donald Trump: historical and contemporary perspectives (Palgrave Pivot, 2020), 19. 252 Ibid., 19. 253 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 126.

Native American grievances and problems during their campaigns, Trump did not strive for their votes in 2016 and released the first plan for tribal nations only two weeks before the 2020 election. Based on Trump’s unfriendly policy toward the AIAN community, cabinet lacking AIAN representatives, his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and long-term Native Americans inclination to Democratic candidates, I conclude that Native Americans voted against Trump rather than for Biden. For many, the elections were not just a question of the country’s political direction but also a question of their survival.

3. The Native Vote in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential Elections

The previous chapters provided the reader with the historical context of Native American enfranchisement, presented the obstacles Native American voters face, the problems American Indian and Alaska Native communities long-term deal with, and the political approaches of the two presidential candidates – Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden, Jr. All these factors potentially influenced Native Americans and their voting in the 2020 presidential elections.

This chapter is the central part of my research. Here, I will analyze the assembled data to demonstrate my thesis that the Native American voters played an important part in gaining the decisive 10,457 votes that turned Arizona “blue” in the 2020 presidential elections. Since the Democratic Party and its candidates are known for the support of minorities, protection of the environment, and social welfare programs, I argue that Native Americans favored Joe Biden because they share common values. I further claim that the presumptive increase in voter turnout among Native Americans living on reservations could lead to the increased support of the Democratic candidate.

To support my arguments, I chose to compare eleven Arizona counties with a significant AIAN population: Apache, Coconino, Gila, Graham, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, and Yuma, in which I observed the number of registered voters, the number of ballots cast, voter turnout, total valid ballots cast, the number of ballots cast for the Democratic and Republican candidate, and the percentage of the ballots cast for the Democratic and Republican candidate. I then looked at the 89 precincts overlapping with Indian reservations in each of these counties and made the educated guess that the registered voters in such precincts are predominantly American Indians and Alaska Natives based on the available numbers of tribal members, the United States Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and Environmental Protection Agency map of tribal lands.254 Subsequently, I collected the same data for those precincts as for the eleven counties, compared the results and verified

254 See section “Overview of Arizona tribes”; “My Tribal Area,” United States Census Bureau, accessed January 28, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/?st=04; “Tribal Reservations,“ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed January 28, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/tribal/tribes-organizations- health/tribes/reservations.html; “Arizona Tribal Lands and Reservations,” Environmental Protection Agency, accessed December 29, 2020, https://www3.epa.gov/region9/air/maps/az_tribe.html

if Native Americans in Arizona voted in sufficient numbers to influence the outcome of the presidential election in favor of the Democratic candidate and if they voted in larger numbers compared to the previous elections.

Fig. 2 Map of Arizona election result Fig. 3 Map of Arizona tribal lands and details by precinct.255 reservations.256

255 Garrett Archer, “MAP: Arizona election result details by precinct,” ABC 15 Arizona, last updated November 4, 2020, accessed December 29, 2020, https://www.abc15.com/news/election 2020/map-arizona- election-result-details-by-precinct. 256 Environmental Protection Agency, “Arizona Tribal Lands and Reservations.”

3.1 Population of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States

According to the United States Census Bureau, the U.S. population in the election year 2016 was 323,127,515, of which 2,676,399 people identified as American Indian and Alaska Native alone.257 Together with those who identified as American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination with two or more races, there lived an estimated 5,586,703 Native Americans in 2016.258 Constituting 1.7% of the U.S. population, Native Americans tend to be omitted compared to larger Black or Latino minorities. Moreover, the American Indian and Alaska Native population is reportedly the most undercounted group of the United States Census due to the persisting obstacles analogous to the voting barriers described in chapter 1.259 Contributing to this fact is that approximately one-third of all AIAN persons in the United States live in specific rural areas called Hard-to-Count Census Tracts,260 which is roughly 1,7 million people.261 Hard-to-Count Census Tracts thus have a distorting effect on the results of the Native American census, which may explain inaccurate and often differing Native American population numbers. The states with the

257 “ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates; 2016: ACS 1-Year Estimates Data Profiles,” United States Census Bureau, accessed February 27, 2021, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=United%20States&g=0400000US04&tid=ACSDP1Y2016.DP05&mo e=false&hidePreview=true. 258 United States Census Bureau, “ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates; 2016: ACS 1-Year Estimates Data Profiles.” 259 In 2010, American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations were undercounted by 4.9% — that is more than twice the next undercounted group, African Americans, who saw an undercount rate of 2.1%. (Ben Kesslen, “Native Americans, the census’ most undercounted racial group, fight for an accurate 2020 tally,” NBC News, last modified December 29, 2020, accessed April 16, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/native-americans-census-most-undercounted-racial-group-fight- accurate-2020-n1105096. 260 A census tract is considered hard-to-count (HTC) if its self-response rate in the 2010 decennial census was 73% or less. If 73% or fewer of the tract's households that received a census questionnaire mailed it back to the Census Bureau, it is determined to be a hard-to-count tract. “Hard To Count Definition,” Illinois Department of Human Services, accessed April 6, 2021, https://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?item=118178. 260 Self-response rate is calculated by dividing the number of self-responses collected online, by phone, and by mail by the number of mailable housing units in Self Response enumeration areas and the number of housing units in Update Leave enumeration areas and multiplying by 100. More information available on “2020 Census Self-Response Rate Map FAQs,” United States Census Bureau, https://2020census.gov/content/dam/2020census/materials/partners/2020-03/2020-response-rate-map- FAQs.pdf. 260 Illinois Department of Human Services, “Hard To Count Definition.” 261 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 27.

greatest percentage of the AIAN population in Hard-to-Count Census Tracts are New Mexico (78.6%), Arizona (68.1%), and Alaska (65.6%).262

In 2016, 21 states had reportedly 100,000 or more American Indian and Alaska Native residents, alone or in combination with another race.263 Alaska had the largest percentage of AIAN population (19.9%), while other three states reached the 10% threshold: Oklahoma (13.7%), New Mexico (11.9%), and South Dakota (10.4%).264 With nearly 1,1 million residents, the largest estimated AIAN population lives in California, with approximately 54,236 Native Americans living in Los Angeles alone.265 In Arizona, 306,247 people identified as AIAN alone in 2016.266 Together with those who identified as two or more racial, they consisted of 392,975 and comprised 5.7% of the Arizona population.267 Other states with a significant Native American population are Colorado, North Dakota, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.268

The American Indian and Alaska Native population is one of the fastest growing population groups in the United States and thus one of the important demographic groups for politicians and media to consider.269 The report “Every Native Vote Counts,”270 initiated by the National American Rights Fund271 and conducted by a nonpartisan campaign Native Vote, followed the increase in AIAN population across the United States. Based on its findings, there lived an estimated 1,9 million Native Americans272 in 1990, 4,1 million in 2000, and ten years later, an estimated 5,2 million Native Americans in the United States identifying themselves as AIAN alone or in combination with one or more

262 See “The Leadership Conference Education Fund, Table 1b: States Ranked by Percent of American Indian/Alaska Natives (race alone or combination) living in Hard-to-Count (HTC) Census Tracts,” The Leadership Conference Education Fund, accessed April 18, 2021, available on http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/census/2020/Table1b-States-Percent-AIAN-HTC.pdf. 263 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 27. 264 Ibid., 27. 265 Ibid., 27. 266 United States Census Bureau, “ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates; 2016: ACS 1-Year Estimates Data Profiles.” 267 Ibid. 268 Ibid. 269 Native American Rights Fund, “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,” 11. 270 “Every Native Vote Counts,” Native Vote, accessed March 28, 2021, http://www.nativevote.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/05/2020-Native-Vote-Infographic.pdf. 271 Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is a non-profit organization. Since 1970, it has provided legal assistance to Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide. “About Us,” Native American Rights Fund, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.narf.org/about-us/. 272 Identifying themselves as AIAN alone or in combination with one or more other races. (author’s note)

other races, constituting 1.7% of the population.273 Between 2000-2010, the AIAN population thus increased approximately by 27%, and between 2010-2019 by almost 10%.274 In comparison, the total U.S. population grew by 9.6% between 2000 and 2010 and between 2010-2019 by 6.3%.275

In Arizona, the population increased by almost 9% between 2010-2019, while the Native American population there reportedly grew by 23.5%.276 Of the eleven counties I examined, five had an increase in population below 5% between 2010-2019; Apache, Gila, Graham, La Paz, and Navajo, two counties significantly exceeded the state average – metropolitan counties Maricopa and Pinal – with 17.50% and 23.20% increase. The rest followed either the national (6.3%) or state (8.99%) population-change pattern.277 Subsequently, to see its influence, I will analyze how the AIAN population, as one of the fastest growing minorities in the United States, voted in 2016 and 2020.

3.2 Presidential Elections 2016 and 2020

In November 8, 2016 general election competed the candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the candidate of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton. While Donald Trump got 62,984,828 (46.09%) votes, Hillary Clinton received 65,853,514 (48.18%), 2,868,691 more votes than her opponent.278 However, even though Clinton received more votes than her opponent, Trump won on the number of electoral votes, which is the number that decides the elections.279 While Trump gained 306 electoral votes,

273 Native Vote, “Every Native Vote Counts.” 274 United States Census Bureau, “Quick Facts, United States.” 275 “Last Census Population Estimates of the Decade Preview 2020 Census Count,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 9, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/04/nations-population-growth- slowed-this-decade.html. 276 “Quick Facts, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 3, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/AZ,US/PST045219. 277 “Quick Facts, Apache, Coconino, Gila, Graham, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, Yuma,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 3, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/lapazcountyarizona,grahamcountyarizona,gilacountyarizona,co coninocountyarizona,AZ,US/PST120219; https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/yumacountyarizona,pinalcountyarizona,pimacountyarizona,nav ajocountyarizona,mohavecountyarizona,maricopacountyarizona/PST120219. 278 “Federal Election 2016, Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives,” Federal Election Commission, United States of America, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2016.pdf. 279 Every four years, American voters cast their ballots to elect the president of the United States. Their votes determine electors, who formally choose the president through the so-called electoral college. The number of

Clinton received only 232. The race was decided by eleven states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, in which the resulting difference in the number of votes was minimal.280 Together, those so-called battleground states281 delivered 146 electoral votes. Trump won all consistently Republican states282 and succeeded in turning some of the “blue” ones “red” when he gained the majority of votes in Florida, Iowa, and the so-called Rustbelt states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.283

Arizona was not labeled by the media as a battleground state in previous elections. In 2016, 3,588,466 eligible voters registered with 74.71% turnout and cast 2,661,497 ballots of which 1,252,401 (48.67%) went to Trump and 1,161,167 (45.13%) to Clinton.284 The difference between the candidates was 91,234 votes. Thus, Arizona’s 11 electoral votes went to Trump, and Arizona stayed “red” for four more years without further attention to the results.

In the 2020 presidential elections, Donald Trump did not succeed in defending the presidency from his Democratic opponent Joseph Biden. Of the total 158,383,403 votes, Trump received 74,216,154 (46.86%).285 Even though it was the highest number of votes ever received by any presidential candidate, it was not enough for Trump to win since Biden got 7,052,770 votes more. With 81,268,924 and 51.31% of votes, Biden beat Trump and became the 46th president of the United States.286 Thirteen battleground states decided the elections, two more than in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan,

electors a state appoints equals to the combination of the number of the state’s members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Of the current 538 electors, an absolute majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president of the United States. (author’s note) 280 “2016 Presidential Election Results,” The New York Times, last updated February 2017, accessed December 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president. 281 Battleground states are not constant, they change every elections based on the various current topics, and are identified before each elections based on the polls, trends and estimates. Battleground states have split support for Democratic and Republican candidates, and they are critical to a candidate’s campaign strategy since the majority of states consistently vote for the same presidential party and are thus not competitive (such as Arizona until this year). (author’s note) 282 Trump won the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, North and South Carolina, North and South Dakota, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming. (author’s note) 283 The New York Times, “2016 Presidential Election Results.” 284 “State of Arizona Official Canvas, 2016 General Election,” Official Website of the State of Arizona, accessed March 9, 2021, https://apps.azsos.gov/election/2016/General/Official%20Signed%20State%20Canvass.pdf. 285 “Official 2020 Presidential General Election Results,” Federal Election Commission, United States of America, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms- content/documents/2020presgeresults.pdf. 286 Federal Election Commission, “Official 2020 Presidential General Election Results.”

Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.287 Newly added states to the list compared to 2016 were Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, and examined Arizona. Biden succeeded in winning Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania back for Democrats. Moreover, he gained two traditionally Republican states: Arizona and Georgia, while Trump won only five of the 2020 battleground states: Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. The number of electoral votes was ultimately the same as four years ago, except that 232 electoral votes were this time for the Republican candidate and the winning 306 for the Democratic one.288

Compared to the 2016 elections, I noticed an upward trend in the number of registered voters and turnout. Currently, an estimated 328,239,523 people live in the United States, of which 2,847,336 people identify as Native Americans alone.289 Together with those who identify as AIAN alone or in combination with one or more races, there live an estimated 5,665,200 American Indian and Alaska Native in the United States, comprising 1.7% of the U.S. population.290 Arizona’s population is approximately 7,278,717, of which 412,256 people identify as American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination with one or more races, thus comprising 5.7 % of Arizona population.291 Exclusively as American Indian and Alaska Native identify 332,273 Arizona inhabitants.292 In 2020, of the 4,281,301 eligible voters, 3,420,565 cast their ballot with a voter turnout of 79.90%. Compared to the 2016 elections, it meant 692,835 more registered voters and a 19.31% increase in voter turnout in Arizona.293 Arizona also became one of the five flipped states of the 2020 presidential elections. Only for the second time in 70 years, its voters gave more votes to the Democratic candidate than the Republican one. Of

287 Colorado and Virginia, two of the 2016 battleground states, were not labeled as battleground states in 2020. (author’s note) 288 “Presidential Election Results: Biden Wins,” The New York Times, accessed December 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results- president.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections- 2020®ion=TOP_BANNER&context=storyline_menu_recirc. 289 “ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates; 2019: ACS 1-Year Estimates Data Profiles,” United States Census Bureau, accessed March 31, 2021, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=United%20States&g=0400000US04&tid=ACSDP1Y2019.DP05&mo e=false&hidePreview=false. 290 United States Census Bureau, “ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates; 2019: ACS 1-Year Estimates Data Profiles.” 291 Ibid. 292 Ibid. 293 “2020 General Election Official State Canvass,” Official Website of the State of Arizona, accessed January 4, 2021, https://azsos.gov/sites/default/files/2020_General_State_Canvass.pdf.

the total 3,420,565 ballots cast, 1,672,143 (48.89%) went to Biden whereas 1,661,686 (48.58%) to Trump, resulting in a minimal margin worth examining.294

Right after the elections, various foreign and domestic media, experts, and scholars began to seek the cause of Biden’s victory and Trump’s defeat. In 2016, they identified the working-class white people who felt overlooked by the establishment and left behind by the coastal elite as one of the groups that helped Trump win.295 In 2020, it was reportedly the Native Americans who contributed to Biden’s win. The Internet was deluged with articles about Native voting and how Native American voters helped swing the elections for Biden. The majority of them proceeded from the Arizona Republic reporter Shondiine Silversmith’s tweet296 and High Country News article called “How Indigenous voters swung the 2020 election”297 by Anna V. Smith. Both claimed that a record-high voter turnout among Native Americans played a major role in key battleground states, especially then in Arizona and Wisconsin. According to them, precinct-level data shows that outside of heavily blue metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Tucson, which also have high numbers of Native voters, much of the rural blue spots on the map were on tribal lands (Fig. 2).298 First reports from November 6, 2020, claimed that Native Americans in Arizona tended to vote for Biden in 90% of cases.299 However, later revisions broadened the scale to 60- 90%.300 I thus decided to look at Arizona counties and their precincts overlapping with Indian reservations, according to the maps shared by Mrs. Silversmith (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3) to verify the statements about Native American influence on the election outcome. According to my thesis, the data should prove that Native Americans turned out in large numbers in the 2020 presidential elections and that they heavily supported the Democratic candidate. I argue that the increasing number of registered voters and voter turnout among Native

294 Official Website of the State of Arizona, “2020 General Election Official State Canvass.” 295 Anthony Zurcher, “US Election 2016 Results: Five reasons Donald Trump won,” BBC, last modified November 9, 2016, accessed April 7, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37918303. 296 Shondiine Silversmith (@DiinSilversmith), “With a lot of talk about Native voting in Arizona. I thought I would share 2 maps. The left is a map showcasing all 22 tribes in the state. The right an updated 2020 voting results maps by precinct. This give you an idea of how Indigenous communities voted in the 2020 election (two images included),” Twitter, November 6, 2020, https://twitter.com/DiinSilversmith/status/1324752536121716736?s=20. 297 Anna V. Smith, “How Indigenous voters swung the 2020 election,” Hight Country News, last modified November 9, 2020, accessed January 5, 2021, https://www.hcn.org/articles/indigenous- affairs-how-indigenous-voters-swung-the-2020-election. 298 Ibid. 299 However, those articles had been modified since and are not available anymore. Camille Caldera, “Fact check: There was strong Navajo support for Biden, but numbers cited in claim have changed,” USA Today News, accessed February 2, 2021, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/11/fact-check- navajo-voters-backed-biden-but-not-broadly-claimed/6223660002/. 300 Smith, “How Indigenous voters swung the 2020 election.”

Americans living on reservations decided the tight race and contributed to Biden’s win in Arizona.

3.3 Election Results in Counties with Significant American Indian and Alaska Native Population

The subsequent section will analyze the results of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in eleven Arizona counties and 89 precincts overlapping with tribal lands. Of the selected eleven counties, three voted for the Democratic candidate in both 2016 and 2020 presidential elections (Apache, Coconino, and Pima), seven for the Republican candidate in both 2016 and 2020 elections (Gila, Graham, La Paz, Mohave, Navajo, Pinal, and Yuma), and Maricopa County shifted its support from the Republican candidate to the Democratic in 2020. In all precincts with a predominantly AIAN population, the Democratic candidate gained the majority of votes in both 2016 and 2020 elections except four precincts: Golden Shores, Moccasin and Mohave Valley in Mohave County, and Sunrise in Navajo County.

Fig. 4 Map of Arizona 15 Counties.301

301 “Arizona County Map,” GIS Geography, accessed March 18, 2021, https://gisgeography.com/arizona- county-map/.

1. Apache County

Fig. 5 Map of Apache County precincts with significant AIAN population: 3 – Canyon De Chelley, 5 – Chinle, 9 – Concho, 10 – Cornfields, 11 – Cottonwood, 13 – Dennehotso, 19 – Ft. Defiance, 22 – Ganado North, 23 – Ganado South, 27 – Houck, 29 – Kinlichee, 31 - Klagetoh, 33 - Lukachukai, 35 - Lupton, 37 - Mcnary, 39 - Many Farms, 41 - Mexican Water, 43 - Nazlini, 46 - Oak Springs, 48 - Puerco East and Puerco West (Puerco), 51 - Red Mesa, 52 - Red Valley, 54 - Rock Point, 56 - Rough Rock, 58 - Round Rock, 65 - St. Michaels, 67 - Sawmill, 74 - Steamboat, 76 - Sweetwater, 78 - Tachee, 80 - Teec Nos Pos, 84 - Wheatfields, 86 - Wide Ruins, 88 - Window Rock.

Tab. 1 Apache County Population.302

The first selected county is Apache County in the northeast of Arizona. Apache County is the sixth-largest county in the United States, comprising over 11,218 square miles.303 It is also the county where American Indians and Alaska Natives represent three-quarters of the population, which is the most among counties examined.304 Three federally recognized tribes reside in Apache County: White Mountain Apache Tribe, a small section of the New Mexican Zuni tribe, and Navajo Nation, the largest Arizona tribe.

The tribal lands spread over 33 out of 44 precincts: Canyon De Chelley, Chinle, Cornfields, Cottonwood, Dennehotso, Ft. Defiance, Ganado North, Ganado South, Houck, Kinlichee, Klagetoh, Lukachukai, Lupton, Many Farms, Mcnary, Mexican Water, Nazlini, Oak Springs, Puerco East and Puerco West, Red Mesa, Red Valley, Rock Point, Rough Rock, Round Rock, Sawmill, St. Michaels, Steamboat, Sweetwater, Tachee, Teec Nos Pos, Wheatfields, Wide Ruins, and Window Rock. Navajo tribe’s land covers most of those precincts, White Mountain Tribe resides in Mcnary and a part of the New Mexican Zuni tribe in a small Concho precinct. Of those 33 precincts, only Concho voted for Trump by a majority. However, since this precinct does not follow the Zuni reservation boundaries, as is the case with most precincts in other counties, and covers a broader area of Apache County, it is impossible to distinguish Zuni from other voters and the results would be skewed. I thus omit Concho from the final evaluation of the Native American voting.

302 “Quick Facts, Apache County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed March 31, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/apachecountyarizona,AZ,US/PST045219. 303 “Apache County,” Arizona Commerce Authority, accessed March 29, 2021, https://www.azcommerce.com/a/profiles/ViewProfile/2/Apache+County/. 304 Over one-half of the land area is a home to the Navajo Nation alone. (author’s note) United States Census Bureau, “Quick Facts, Apache County, Arizona.”

Tab. 2 2016 Presidential election results from selected Apache County precincts.305

Table 2, containing Apache County 2016 presidential election results, supports my argument that precincts with a predominantly AIAN population voted for Democratic candidates. In 2016, the precinct with the smallest number of registered voters of the overall 44 was Mcnary (188). Most registered voters were in the Canyon De Chelley precinct (3,664), and 1,387 (82.31%) gave their vote to the Democratic candidate. Overall, 38,507 predominantly AIAN voters registered in 2016 in Apache County with a voter turnout of 52.95%. It was 6% lower than the county’s general turnout, but voters there supported Clinton by 18% more than the rest of the county. The majority of voters were from the Navajo and Hopi tribes. Thus, it is evident that Native Americans started to form a significant voter block in Apache County even in 2016.306

305 “2016 General Election Official Results,” Official Website of Apache County, accessed February 26, 2021, https://tb2cdn.schoolwebmasters.com/accnt_591117/site_591118/Documents/ER_2016-General- Election.pdf. 306 Official Website of Apache County, “2016 General Election Official Results.”

The precinct with the lowest turnout was remote Red Mesa with 34.10% of registered voters who cast a ballot in the 2016 elections. From 390 registered voters, only 133 cast their ballots, of which 98 went to Clinton and Kaine. The highest turnout had Sawmill precinct (65.33%), exceeding the county’s turnout by more than 6%. Seventeen precincts voted in over 80% for Clinton and Kaine: Canyon De Chelley (82.31%), Cornfields (84.50%), Cottonwood (84.87%), Dennehotso (85.15%), Ganado North (82.08%), Kinlichee (85.53%), Lukachukai (84.62%), Many Farms (85.92%), Mexican Water (82.08%), Nazlini (82.22%), Rock Point (85.96%), Rough Rock (89.44%), Round Rock (86.41%), Steamboat (88.86%), Tachee (85.96%), Wheatfields (85.87%), and Wide Ruins (82.72%). It demonstrates that half of the 33 selected precincts voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate in 2016, and only four precincts (Houck, Puerco East & West, Red Valley, and Sweetwater) voted for Clinton in less than 70% of cases. Of the total 19,870 valid ballots, predominantly AIAN voters in Apache County cast 15,840 to Clinton (79.80%) and 2,096 (10.33%) to Trump.307

In total, Apache County voters cast 27,661 valid ballots for the presidential candidates in 2016; 17,083 for Clinton (61.76%) and 8,240 for Trump (29.79%), which shows less support for the Democratic candidate in comparison to the precinct-level results.308

307 Tab. 2. 308 Tab. 4.

Tab. 3 2020 Presidential election results from selected Apache County precincts.309

In 2020, the support for the Democratic candidate further increased not only in precincts with a predominantly AIAN population but in the whole Apache County as well. However, the support of Donald Trump increased too. The smallest number of voters registered again in White Mountain Apache Tribe’s precinct Mcnary, 220, which was 32 people more than four years ago. For such a small population, the 17% increase in voter registration is considered a success. In ten precincts, the number of registered voters lessen compared to 2016. The most voters registered in Canyon De Chelley (3,842), 178 more than in 2016, of whom 1,982 cast their ballots to Biden. Two thousand one hundred forty- four more predominantly AIAN voters registered in comparison to 2016 (5.57% increase) and cast 6,001 more valid ballots. Of the 25,871 valid ballots, 83.19% (21,645) went to

309 Official Website of Apache County, “2020 General Election.”

Biden and 15.38% (3,828) to Trump, suggesting that the voters of Apache County cast twice as many ballots for Biden as was the final margin between the two candidates (10,457). This scheme corresponds with my argument that the number of registered voters increased in precincts with a predominantly AIAN population compared to 2016 and that voters in such precincts voted in majority for the Democratic candidate.310 However, it is interesting that the percentage of the ballots cast for Trump increased in 2020 by 48.89% compared to 4.26% for Biden. It suggests that even though Biden gained the majority of votes, Trump did not do as badly as I expected based on the reasons explained in the previous chapter.311

The voter turnout in precincts overlapping with tribal lands increased by 20.79% compared to the 2016 elections, confirming my argument. The lowest turnout was again in Red Mesa, yet in comparison to 2016, the turnout here increased by almost 30% to 44.32% when 68 more people registered. The precinct with the highest turnout was different from 2016; it was redistricted Puerco (76.60%) that saw a 34% increase in voter turnout.312 Overall, 14 precincts reached higher voter turnout than Sawmill in 2016: Ganado North (66.44%), Steamboat (66.49%), Nazlini (67.64%), Houck (67.78%), Cornfields (68.20%), St. Michaels (68.53%), Window Rock (69.19%), and Klagetoh (69.73%), and some even exceeded 70% threshold: Rough Rock (70.06%), Wide Ruins (70.80%), Ft. Defiance (73.27%), Sawmill (73.97%), Oak Springs (75.23%), and already mentioned Puerco (76.60%). General voter turnout in Apache County increased by 16.69% to 68.92%. In 2020, 51,906 registered voters cast a total of 35,268 legitimate ballots for the presidential candidates in Apache County, of which 23,293 (66.05%) went for Biden and 11,442 (32.44%) for Trump. In 2020, 26 precincts inhabited predominantly by Native Americans voted for Biden in over 80%, and Wheatfields precinct even exceeded 90% of ballots cast for Biden and Harris (91.48%).313

I conclude that the majority of voters cast their ballots to the Democratic candidates both in 2016 and 2020. The number of registered voters increased by 5.57%, which is lower than the county’s 7.60% and the state’s 19.31% increase, but the voter turnout increased in precincts with a predominantly AIAN population compared to the 2016 elections by 20.79%, surpassing Apache County’s 16.69% and 7.73% increase in voter

310 Tab. 3. 311 Ibid. 312 However, the results might be skewed by the fact that Puerco was redistricted. (author’s note) 313 Official Website of Apache County, “2020 General Election.”

turnout in Arizona. With the increased number of voter registration, more ballots were cast for both candidates. Surprisingly, Trump gained more ballots than in 2016 despite his unfriendly policy toward Native Americans, which may be subject to further research, but the resulting number of ballots cast to Trump was five times lower than the number of ballots cast to Biden in precincts with predominantly Native American population. The results thus correspond with my thesis that Native Americans voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.

Tab. 4 2016 and 2020 Apache County Presidential election results.314

Tab. 5 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Apache County as a whole.

314 “2016 General Election Official Results,” Official Website of Apache County; “2020 General Election,” Official Website of Apache County, accessed February 27, 2021, https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ZK8uLUq_fMeum2scTmWlEChIQ0EcXAC/view.

2. Coconino County

Fig. 6 Map of Coconino County precincts with significant AIAN population: 42 – Bodaway, 43 – Cameron, 47 – Coppermine, 48 – Coalmine, 60 – Havasupai, 61 – Inscription House, 65 – Kaibeto, 67 – LeChee, 69 – Leupp, 70 – Moenkopi, 71 – Navajo Mountain, 88 – Tolani Lake, 90 – Tonalea, 93 – Tuba City Northeast, 94 – Tuba City Northwest, 95 – Tuba City South

Tab. 6 Coconino County Population.315

315 “Quick Facts, Coconino County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/coconinocountyarizona,apachecountyarizona,AZ/RHI325219.

Coconino is the second-largest county in the United States, comprising 18,661 square miles and 16.4% of the total land base in Arizona.316 Its territory inhabits five federally recognized tribes whose people account for around one-fourth of Coconino’s population: the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Indian Tribe, the Hopi Tribe, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, and the Navajo Nation. Native Americans of those tribes live in 16 precincts out of 71: Bodaway, Cameron, Coalmine, Coppermine, Havasupai, Inscription House, Kaibeto, LeChee, Leupp, Moenkopi, Navajo Mountain, Tolani Lake, Tonalea, Tuba City Northeast, Tuba City Northwest, and Tuba City South. All those precincts voted for the Democratic presidential candidate by a majority ranging between 61% - 90%. Subsequent data further confirm my initial argument that precincts overlapping with tribal lands voted mainly for the Democratic candidates.

Tab. 7 2016 Presidential election results from selected Coconino County precincts.317

316 “Coconino County,” Arizona Commerce Authority, accessed March 14, 2021, https://www.azcommerce.com/a/profiles/ViewProfile/4/Coconino+County/. 317 “2016 General Election, Final Election Results,” Official Website of Coconino County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.coconino.az.gov/DocumentCenter/View/13602/2016-General-Election-SOVC-REPORT- 11-8-16-Vote-Methods?bidId=.

In 2016, the precinct with the smallest number of registered voters was Havasupai (129), and the highest number of predominantly AIAN voters registered in Tuba City South (3,645). Thus, we can see the stark difference in the numbers of registered voters between metropolitan areas and remote rural ones. In total, 15,614 people from the 16 precincts overlapping with Indian reservations registered and cast 8,654 legitimate ballots, 6,439 to Clinton and 1,267 to Trump. The lowest turnout had the Havasupai precinct with only 29.46%, followed by the Moenkopi precinct (37.58%). The highest turnout had Coalmine precinct, and it was also the only precinct in Coconino County that got over 70% threshold with 70.81%. Altogether, the voter turnout in the 16 precincts inhabited predominantly by Native Americans was 57.74% compared to the county’s 74.57%. In total, 81,461 voters registered in Coconino County as a whole in 2016 and cast 59,784 valid ballots, of which 32,404 (54.20%) to Clinton and 21,108 (35.31%) to Trump.318

Tab. 8 2020 Presidential election results from selected Coconino County precincts.319

318 Tab. 7. 319 Official Website of Coconino County, “Coconino County, AZ, 2020 General Election, November 3, 2020.”

The 2020 elections in Coconino County had a similar pattern to those in Apache County. Voters, too, favored the Democratic candidate both on precinct-level and county- level, and the number of registered voters and voter turnout increased on both levels as well compared to 2016. The precinct overlapping with tribal lands with the smallest number of registered voters in 2020 was Navajo Mountain (135), and the highest number of registered voters (4,031) recorded Tuba City South as well as in 2016. In total, 17,154 voters from Indian reservations registered, 1,540 more than in 2016, which is a 9.86% increase in voter registration. Of the total 11,833 valid ballots, 79.83% (9,458) went for Biden and 17.42% (2,081) for Trump. Altogether, the majority of ballots ranging between 65-90% was for the Democratic candidate with nine counties exceeding the 80% threshold: Cameron (80.32%), Coalmine (86.92%), Havasupai (90.48%), Moenkopi (87.71%), Tolani Lake (85.67%), Tonalea (80.11%), Tuba City Northeast (81.54%), Northwest (84.30%), and Tuba City South (85.03%).320

Coconino’s overall voter turnout grew by 9.40% from 74.57% in 2016 to 81.58% in the 2020 election, and Biden gained 12,294 more votes than Clinton did while Trump received only 5,944 more than in the previous elections. As well as in 2016, all 16 precincts with a predominantly AIAN population went for the Democratic candidate, proving that its inhabitants favor Democratic candidates over Republican. Interestingly, in the Havasupai and Moenkopi precincts, there was exactly the same number of voters for Trump in 2020 as in 2016 (5 and 26 respectively). However, these were the only precincts where the Republican candidate did not get any new voters. Havasupai and Moenkopi precincts also saw a significant increase in voter turnout compared to the rest of the county: 40.70% in Havasupai and almost 60% in Moenkopi. In total, the voter turnout in Indian reservations increased by 18.27%, surpassing the county’s 9.40% increase.

In total, 90,669 registered voters cast 73,632 ballots in 2020 in Coconino County as a whole of which 44,698 (60.71%) for Biden and 27,052 (36.74%) for Trump. Nine precincts inhabited predominantly by Native Americans voted for Biden in over 80%, in the Havasupai reservation, the support for the Democratic candidate exceeded 90%. Even though Trump’s support, expressed as a ratio increase, seemed high, it was still low in terms of the number of ballots cast for him.

320 Tab. 9.

Overall, the Native American support of the Democratic candidates is evident both in the 2016 and 2020 elections. The number of registered voters increased by 9.86%, compared to county’s 11.30% and state’s 19.30% and the voter turnout in precincts with a predominantly AIAN population increased by 18.27% compared to the county’s 9.40% and state’s 7.73% increase. My thesis thus applies to Coconino County as well as to Apache County since the number of registered voters and voter turnout increased, and Native Americans voters favored the Democratic candidates heavily.

Tab. 9 2016 and 2020 Coconino County Presidential election results.321

Tab. 10 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Coconino County as a whole.

321 Official Website of Coconino County, “2016 General Election, Final Election Results;” “Coconino County, AZ, 2020 General Election, November 3, 2020,” Official Website of Coconino County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.coconino.az.gov/DocumentCenter/View/42208/SOVC-11-3-20-General- Election?bidId=.

3. Gila County

Fig. 7 Map of Gila County precincts with significant AIAN population: 400 – Canyon Day, 405 – Carrizo, 410 – San Carlos

Tab. 11 Gila County Population.322

In central Arizona, Gila County is a home to three tribes: White Mountain Apache Tribe, San Carlos Apache Tribe, and Tonto Apache Tribe. However, there are only four precincts

322 “Quick Facts, Gila County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/gilacountyarizona,US/PST045219.

where those tribes reside: Canyon Day, Carrizo, Payson, and San Carlos. Due to the small population and the precinct’s size, I will not include Tonto Apache Tribe (Payson precinct) in my detailed analysis because I cannot specify and distinguish the data, similarly to the Concho precinct in Apache County. Contrary to the previous counties, Gila County went for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. However, the support for the Democratic candidate in counties with an AIAN majority was overwhelming.

Tab. 12 2016 Presidential election results from selected precincts.323

In 2016, in Carrizo and San Carlos, identically 83.33% of ballots cast went to Clinton, in Canyon Day even an astonishing 90.56% when out of 352 ballots went 307 to Clinton- Kaine ticket. For comparison, Trump won almost 63% (14,182) of all the ballots cast in Gila County while Clinton only 31.10% (7,003). Out of 7,003 ballots cast for Clinton, 1,282 were cast from precincts with a Native American majority, indicating the power of the Native vote and its inclination to the Democratic candidates.324

It is evident that the three selected precincts’ population is not large. The smallest number of registered voters in 2016 was only 56 in Carizzo, the highest number in San Carlos, 2,377. In total, 2,988 people from Indian reservations registered to vote and cast 1,563 ballots, 85.74% (1,282) for Clinton and Kaine, and only 7.83% (149) for Trump and Pence. San Carlos reservation had the lowest turnout, just below 50%, Carizzo had the highest (64.29%), both below the county’s 77.63%.325

323 “Canvass of Election Results, General Elections, November 8, 2016,” Official Website of Gila County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.gilacountyaz.gov/government/elections/docs/2016%20GE%20Certified%20Canvass.pdf. 324 Ibid. 325 Tab. 12.

Tab. 13 2020 Presidential election results from selected precincts.326

In comparison to 2016, 49 more people registered in Gila Indian reservations in 2020, yet the voter turnout dropped to 56.46%. This was due to a decrease in the number of registered voters in Canyon Day and Carrizo.327 In Gila as a whole, the turnout increased by 6%. In 2020, apart from having the lowest number of registered voters, Carrizo had the lowest turnout, only less than 36%. Carrizo’s low turnout might be a subject for further examination. The three precincts once again supported the Democratic candidate; on average, 84% of the votes coming from Canyon Day, Carrizo, and San Carlos went to Biden and Harris. On the contrary, in Gila as a whole, the Democratic candidate received 8,943 (32.23%) votes, and the incumbent president the majority 18,377 (66.26%).328

Even though the Gila County voters preferred Donald Trump, data from the three precincts with a dominant AIAN population indicate that Gila Native Americans favor Democratic candidates. My thesis is thus applicable to Gila County’s precincts overlapping with Indian reservations as well. However, it would be interesting to examine why Donald Trump gained almost once as many votes as in 2016 since I did not find any evidence to explain it.

326 Official Website of Gila County, “Canvass of Election Results, November 3, 2020.” 327 Reason unknown. (author’s note) 328 Tab. 13.

Tab. 14 2016 and 2020 Gila County Presidential election results.329

Tab. 15 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Gila County as a whole.

329 Official Website of Gila County, “Canvass of Election Results, November 8, 2016;” “Canvass of Election Results, November 3, 2020,” Official Website of Gila County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.gilacountyaz.gov/2020%20GE%20Canvass.pdf.

4. Graham County

Fig. 8 Map of Graham County precincts with significant AIAN population: 11 – Bylas, 16 – Peridot.

Tab. 16 Graham County Population.330

330 “Quick Facts, Graham County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/grahamcountyarizona,US/PST045219.

The data for Graham County were not readily available. I tried to contact Graham County’s Election Office to acquire more election results data but with no success. Despite that, the available data, even though limited, provide us with another example of a county that as a whole went for Donald Trump, but its precincts overlapping with tribal lands supported the Democratic one overwhelmingly.

Located in southeast Arizona, Graham County is one of the counties inhabited by the San Carlos Indian Tribe. Of its 22 precincts, San Carlos Indian tribal members inhabit two: Bylas and Peridot. Graham County voted for Trump both in the 2016 and 2020 elections. However, Native Americans, even though in small numbers, favored the Democratic candidates in over 85%, supporting my thesis.

Tab. 17 2016 Presidential election results from selected Graham County precincts.331

In Bylas, 665 ballots were cast in 2016, of which 605 went for Clinton and 42 for Trump. Peridot voters cast 349 ballots for Clinton and 40 for Trump. However, in 2020, the numbers grew for Trump, especially in the Bylas precinct without a particular reason.332 While Biden gained only one more vote than Clinton in 2016, Trump received twice as many from San Carlos members. Still, 85.32% of votes were for Biden and Harris in 2020. Overall, the voter turnout in Graham County increased in 2020 by 8.14% to 76.13%. 19,851 people registered to vote in the county and cast 15,029 ballots, of which 4,034 (26.84%) were for Biden and 10,749 (71.52%) for Trump. Based on the data assembled, we can conclude that the AIAN population in Graham County is not large but should not be omitted because it votes predominantly for the Democratic candidates.

331 “Graham County Elections, November 8, 2016, Official,” Official Website of Graham County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.graham.az.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/168. 332 Tab. 17.

However, Trump gained more votes than expected, as in previous counties, but I did not find any particular reason why so further research is needed.333

Tab. 18 2020 Presidential election results from selected Graham County precincts.334

Tab. 19 2016 and 2020 Graham County Presidential election results.335

Tab. 20 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Graham County as a whole.

333 Tab. 18. 334 Official Website of Graham County, “Graham County Elections, November 3, 2020, Official.” 335 Official Website of Graham County, “Graham County Elections, November 8, 2016, Official;” “Graham County Elections, November 3, 2020, Official,” Official Website of Graham County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.graham.az.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/324.

5. La Paz County

Fig. 9 Map of La Paz County precincts with significant AIAN population: 52 – Poston.

Tab. 21 La Paz County Population.336

336 “Quick Facts, La Paz County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/lapazcountyarizona,US/PST045219.

On La Paz’s territory lies only one federally recognized tribal reservation: the Colorado River Reservation situated on California’s borders. While the county voted in both elections for Trump, in the Poston precinct, where the tribe resides, 60-67% of ballots were cast for the Democratic candidates, which confirms my initial thesis.

Tab. 22 2016 Presidential election results from selected La Paz County precincts.337

Voter turnout in the reservation precinct increased in 2020 by 6.57% to 62.59% compared to a 1.14% increase county-wide. Of the total 249 ballots cast in 2020, 167 (67.07%) gained Biden and 73 (29.32%) Trump. Altogether, Biden’s support compared to Clinton increased by almost 11%. Overall, La Paz County’s results support my argument that the AIAN population voted for the Democratic candidates, even though in smaller numbers than in other counties. Moreover, the Poston precinct’s AIAN population is not as significant as, for example, San Carlos or Navajo Nations’ community and therefore does not affect the outcome of the elections as much.338

Tab. 23 2020 Presidential election results from selected La Paz precincts.339

337 “General Election, County of La Paz, AZ, November 8, 2016,” Official Website of La Paz, accessed April 8, 2021, http://www.co.la-paz.az.us/DocumentCenter/View/413/2016-General-Final-Official-Results-as- CanvassedPDF. 338 Tab. 22. 339 Official Website of La Paz, “General Election November 3, 2020, Official Results as Canvassed.”

Tab. 24 2016 and 2020 La Paz County Presidential election results.340

Tab. 25 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and La Paz County as a whole.

340 Official Website of La Paz, “General Election, County of La Paz, AZ, November 8, 2016;” “General Election November 3, 2020, Official Results as Canvassed,” Official Website of La Paz, accessed April 8, 2021, http://www.co.la-paz.az.us/DocumentCenter/View/5236/2020-General---Final-Official- Results-as-Canvassed-PDF.

6. Maricopa County

Fig. 10 Map of Maricopa County precincts with significant AIAN population: 238 – Fort McDowell, 299 – Hickiwan, 314 – Honda, 349 – Komatke, 376 – Lone Butte, 493 – Pee-Posh.

Tab. 26 Maricopa County Population.341

341 “Quick Facts, Maricopa County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/maricopacountyarizona,US/PST045219.

Maricopa County, located in central Arizona, is interesting because it is the only county in the state that turned from “red” to “blue” in 2020. Even though the six precincts where the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Community, the Tohono O’odham Nation, and the Fort McDowell Reservations are located supported Clinton and Kaine in 2016, Maricopa County as a whole went tightly for Trump.

Tab. 27 2016 Presidential election results from selected Maricopa precincts.342

As we can see in Tab. 26, Hickiwan, Komatke, and Pee-Posh’s support of the Democratic nominee went above 80%. Hickiwan reached an astonishing 94.44% when out of 37 ballots cast, only one went for Trump. Hickiwan also had the highest voter turnout among those six precincts of 75.51%, but very few registered voters (49). The highest number of registered voters had Honda precinct (3,581), Lone Butte the lowest (23). Altogether, 5,322 people from precincts overlapping with tribal lands registered to vote and cast 2,553 valid ballots. The voter turnout in the precincts with a significant Native American population was around and below 50% compared to 74.43% turnout in Maricopa County in general. Overall, in Maricopa County, Trump and Pence received 747,361 (47.67%) votes and Clinton with Kaine 702,907 (44.83%), resulting in a small margin between the candidates of 44,454 votes in the metropolitan county of Maricopa.343

342 “General Election, November 8, 2016,” Official Website of Maricopa County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://recorder.maricopa.gov/electionarchives/2016/11-08- 2016%201%20Canvass%20BOS%20SUMMARY%20NOV%202016.pdf. 343 Tab. 27.

Tab. 28 2020 Presidential election results from selected Maricopa precincts.344

In 2020, Maricopa County cast 1,040,774 ballots for the Democratic candidate and only 995,655 for the incumbent president. The county thus turned “blue”. Donald Trump lost his only vote in the Hickiwan precinct and did not get many new voters in the other precincts with a predominantly AIAN population either unlike in previous counties. 5,793 people from Indian reservations registered in 2020 and cast 3,228 valid ballots: 2,512 (80.16%) for Biden and 656 (16.13%) for Trump. The biggest change in voter turnout was in the Lone Butte precinct. In 2016, the voter turnout there was 34.78%. In 2020, it was 67.86% when out of 28 registered voters, 19 cast their ballots. In general, the voter turnout in the selected precincts increased by more than 20% to 60.14%. Altogether, the voter turnout in Maricopa County was around 80%.345

As the most populous county in Arizona, Maricopa County undoubtedly contributed to Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential elections when 433 thousand more voters registered than in 2016 and of those 337,867 cast their ballots to the Democratic candidate. Since American Indians and Alaska Natives constitute only 2.8% of the population, their population is often neglected. However, in the 2020 elections, every vote counted, and 2,512 predominantly Native American voters cast their ballots to Biden.

344 Official Website of Maricopa County, “General Election, November 3, 2020.” 345 Tab. 28.

Tab. 29 2016 and 2020 Maricopa County Presidential election results.346

Tab. 30 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Maricopa County as a whole.

346 Official Website of Maricopa County, “General Election, November 8, 2016;” “General Election, November 3, 2020,” Maricopa County, accessed April 18, 2021, https://recorder.maricopa.gov/electionarchives/2020/11-03-2020- 0%20Canvass%20COMPLETE%20NOV2020.pdf.

7. Mohave County

Fig. 11 Map of Mohave County precincts with significant AIAN population: 212 – Mohave Valley, 222 – Golden Shores, 223 – Moccasin, 224 – Peach Springs.

Tab. 31 Mohave County Population.347

347 “Quick Facts, Mohave County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/mohavecountyarizona,US/PST045219.

Mohave County, bordering on California and Nevada, is attractive because it is the only county where precincts overlapping with Native American reservations showed Trump’s favor with only one exception: Hualapai Tribe’s precinct Peach Springs where the Democratic candidates gained more than 80% of votes.

Tab. 32 2016 Presidential election results from selected Mohave County precincts.348

In both 2016 and 2020, Mohave County went for Trump when over 70% of ballots were cast for the Republican candidate. The Moccasin precinct, which is a home to the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, cast around 50% of votes for Trump, the Mohave Valley and Golden Shores precinct, where the Fort Mohave is located, cast for him more than 70% in both 2016 and 2020 elections showing him such support as the only tribe of those examined. In total, 14,439 people from Indian reservations registered and cast 9,601 legitimate ballots, 17,455 for Clinton and 58,282 for Trump, with a voter turnout of 55.42%.349

348 “General Election 2016,” Official Website of Mohave County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://resources.mohavecounty.us/file/Elections/PastElectionResults/2016/Statement%20of%20Votes%20C ast/November%208,%202016%20- %20General%20Election/Precinct%20Canvass%20Report/(Precincts%20201-224).pdf. 349 Tab. 32.

Tab. 33 2020 Presidential election results from selected Mohave County precincts.350

In 2020, 78,535 people voted for Trump and only 24,831 for Biden in Mohave County. Of those, 17,151 ballots were cast predominantly from Native Americans, of which 3,324 for Biden and Harris and 9,431 for Trump and Pence. Voter turnout increased both on the precinct and county level. On the tribal lands, it increased by 23.60%, in Mohave County by 10.86%. What is interesting is the support of Trump among the Kaibab Paiute Indian Tribe. I could not find any particular reasons why the tribe would endorse Trump. On the contrary, the Kaibab National Forrest and its reservations’ surroundings were endangered by Trump’s commercial exploitation of public lands when in 2017 the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommended re-opening of the greater Grand Canyon area to new uranium mining operations.351 Moreover, any potential alignment of the Lake Powell pipeline352 would pass through lands with spiritual and cultural significance to the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians. Since Biden is a candidate calling for nature preservation, I would expect the tribe to vote overwhelmingly for him. Mohave County thus only partially proves my argument. There is one precinct overlapping with tribal lands that voted in over 80% for the Democratic candidates. There are also three where Trump gained the majority of votes, even though I did not find any possible explanation why. However, despite the loss of several registered voters, the voter turnout in Indian reservations grew, supporting my argument that Native Americans voted in larger numbers compared to 2016.353

350 Official Website of Mohave County, “General Election 2020.” 351 The Wilderness Society, “Mining next to the Grand Canyon? Yes, if the Trump administration has its way…” 352 Lake Powell Pipeline is a proposed diversion of the Colorado River to provide water to Washington County, Utah. “Lake Powell Pipeline,” Utah Rivers Council, accessed April 18, 2021, https://utahrivers.org/lake-powell-pipeline. 353 Tab. 33.

Tab. 34 2016 and 2020 Mohave County Presidential election results.354

Tab. 35 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Mohave County as a whole.

354 Official Website of Mohave County, “General Election 2016;” “General Election 2020,” Official Website of Mohave County, accessed April 12, 2021, https://resources.mohavecounty.us/file/Elections/PastElectionResults/2016/Election%20Summary%20Result s/November%208,%202016%20-%20General%20Election/Summary%20Report.pdf.

8. Navajo County

Fig. 12 Map of Navajo County precincts with significant AIAN population: 1 – Red Butte, 2 – Painted Desert, 4 – Black Butte, 5 – Cedar Valley, 6 – Stone Butte, 14 – Sunrise.

Tab. 36 Navajo County Population.355

355 “Quick Facts, Navajo County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/navajocountyarizona,US/PST045219.

Navajo County, located in Arizona’s upper-right hand corner, was “red” both in 2016 and 2020. However, of all six precincts where Native American tribes of White Mountain, Navajo, and Hopi have their reservations, only Sunrise went for the Republican candidate.

Tab. 37 2016 Presidential election results from selected Navajo County precincts.356

In 2016, Clinton and Kaine got the highest percentage of votes (above 80%) from Stone Butte and Cedar Valley precincts that are part of the Navajo and Hopi tribal lands. The data indicate that Navajo and Hopi members predominantly supported the Democratic candidate in all counties where the tribes reside; Apache, Coconino, and Navajo. Sunrise precinct, where Trump received only seven more votes than Clinton, overlaps with tribal lands of White Mountain Apache Tribe. As we have previously seen in Apache and Gila Counties, White Mountain Apache Tribe also tends to favor Democratic candidates. I thus could not explain why the Sunrise precinct voted differently based on the assembled data.357

In 2016, 37,645 voters registered on tribal lands and supported the Democratic candidate by an average of 71%. The smallest number of registered voters inhabited Stone Butte, the highest Sunrise and Red Butte. Voter turnout was lower than the county-wide turnout; 56.20% to 64.57%, and also one of the lowest among other studied counties.358

356 “General Election, Navajo County, State of AZ, November 8, 2016,” Official Website of Navajo County, accessed April 18, 2021, https://www.navajocountyaz.gov/Portals/0/Departments/Elections/Documents/Results/2016/2016%20Combi ned%20SOVC%20Complete%20Official.pdf. 357 Tab. 37. 358 Ibid.

Tab. 38 2020 Presidential election results from selected Navajo County precincts.359

Despite Trump receiving 227 more votes than Biden in the most populous precinct Sunrise, the Biden-Harris ticket gained more than 80% of all voters in the other five precincts thus supporting my thesis that Native Americans tend to vote for Democrats. However, we can see that their vote is not monolithic. Overall, 23,383 people voted for Biden and 27,657 for Trump in Navajo County, with the voter turnout around 74%. On Indian reservations, the turnout increased by 20.91% to almost 68%, when 18,333 people cast their ballots for Biden and 8,184 for Trump. We can say that the number of registered voters grew (2,950 more compared to 2016) and that the majority of precincts overlapping with tribal lands voted for the Democratic candidate with only one exception – the Sunrise precinct.360

359 Official Website of Navajo County, “General Election 2020, Complete Official Results.” 360 Tab. 38.

Tab. 39 2016 and 2020 Navajo County Presidential election results.361

Tab. 40 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Navajo County as a whole.

361 Official Website of Navajo County, “General Election, Navajo County, State of AZ, November 8, 2016;” “General Election 2020, Complete Official Results,” Official Website of Navajo County, accessed April 18, 2021, https://navajocountyaz.gov/Portals/0/Departments/Elections/Documents/Results/2020/Prec%20Comp%20O. pdf?ver=2020-11-16-094616-510×tamp=1605545296622.

9. Pima County

Fig. 13 Map of Apache County precincts with significant AIAN population: 3, 4, 71, 76, 135, 136, 137, 138, 236.

Tab. 41 Pima County Population.362

362 “Quick Facts, Pima County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/pimacountyarizona,US/PST045219.

Southern county Pima was a “blue” county in 2016 as well as in 2020. Nine out of 249 precincts overlap with Indian reservations of Tohono O’odham Nation and Pascua Yaqui Tribe. In all of them, the Republican candidate did not receive much support.

Tab. 42 2016 Presidential election results from selected Pima County precincts.363

In most examined precincts voted only a small number of voters. The smallest number of registered voters was in precinct number 137 (180), the highest, 1,299, in precinct number 4. Altogether, 4,370 people from Indian reservations registered and cast 2,593 ballots. The majority of them (2,196) went for Clinton. In precinct number 137, only eight voters voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020. In precinct number 3, he even lost one vote when only four people voted for him in his second elections. In 2016, apart from precinct number 236, all precincts voted for Clinton in more than 84% of cases. Voter turnout on the reservations was 63.17% compared to 78.47% county-wide.364

363 “Pima County, Official Canvass, General Election, November 8, 2016,” Official Website of Pima County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://webcms.pima.gov/UserFiles/Servers/Server_6/File/Government/Elections%20Department/Past%20Re sults/2016%20SOVC/Pima%20Canvass.pdf. 364 Tab. 42.

Tab. 43 2020 Presidential election results from selected Pima County precincts.365

The 2020 election showed us a similar trend: all nine precincts cast more than 80% of ballots for Biden, and seven precincts showed more than 90% support for the Democratic candidate. The Biden-Harris ticket gained an astonishing 92.29% of Native American voters from Pima County’s precincts overlapping with tribal lands, while the Trump-Pence ticket got only 6.79%. Pima County is thus the best example proving my initial thesis that Native Americans predominantly support Democratic candidates and that they voted in larger numbers compared to 2016.366

Tab. 44 2016 and 2020 Pima County Presidential election results.367

365 Official Website of Pima County, “General Election, November 3, 2020.” 366 Tab. 42. 367 Official Website of Pima County, „Pima County, Official Canvass, General Election, November 8, 2016;” “General Election, November 3, 2020,” Official Website of Pima County, accessed April 18, 2021, https://webcms.pima.gov/UserFiles/Servers/Server_6/File/Government/elections/Election%20Results/Genera l%202020%20Results.pdf.

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Tab. 45 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Pima County as a whole.

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10. Pinal County

Fig. 14 Map of Pinal County precincts with significant AIAN population: 14 – Eloy South, 29 – Sacaton, 53 – Chui Chu, 60 – Blackwater, 61 – San Tan, 62 – Casa Blanca, 77 – Ak Chin Community.

Tab. 46 Pinal County Population.368

368 “Quick Facts, Pinal County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/pinalcountyarizona,US/PST045219.

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Pinal County consists of 102 precincts, of which seven overlap with the Indian communities of Ak-Chin, Gila River Indians, San Carlos Apache Indian Tribe, and the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Tab. 47 2016 Presidential election results from selected Pinal precincts.369

While the whole county voted for Trump by more than 50%, those seven precincts favored the Democratic candidates around 80% in both elections. In 2016, 5,094 predominantly Native American voters registered and cast 2,449 valid ballots to the presidential candidates. Of those, 82.43% went to Clinton and 10.44% to Trump. The precinct with the smallest number of registered voters was Chui Chu; however, voters here cast over 90% of ballots to both Clinton and Biden. The most populous precinct was Eloy South. It cast 442 ballots for Clinton. Due to the remoteness and other voter obstacles, as discussed in chapter 1, voter turnout was lower on tribal lands than in the rest of the county; 51% to 69.5%.370

369 “General Election Results, November 8, 2016,” Official Website of Pinal County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://acclaim.pinalcountyaz.gov/AcclaimWeb/Details/GetDocumentbyInstrumentNumber/DOC/2016- 079404. 370 Tab. 47.

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Tab. 48 2020 Presidential election results from selected Pinal County precincts.371

Overall, in 2020, 6,196 people from Indian reservations registered to vote and cast 3,268 ballots, with a voter turnout of 54.97%. With the average 84.66% (2,692) of ballots cast for Biden in 2020, Native Americans in Pinal County have the potential to become significant power if they succeed in enhancing voter participation in the electoral process. Even though it increased in 2020, the voter turnout among Native Americans in Pinal County is still one of the lowest among the examined counties.372 I conclude that Pinal County supports my thesis as well as previous counties.

Tab. 49 2016 and 2020 Pinal County Presidential election results.373

371 Official Website of Pinal County, “General Election Results, November 3, 2020.” 372 Tab. 47. 373 Official Website of Pinal County, “General Election Results, November 8, 2016;” “General Election Results, November 3, 2020,” Official Website of Pinal County, accessed April 17, 2021, https://www.pinalcountyaz.gov/elections/pages/electionresults.aspx.

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Tab. 50 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Pinal County as a whole.

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11. Yuma County

Fig. 15 Map of Yuma County precincts with significant AIAN population: 6, 27.

Tab. 51 Yuma County Population.374

374 “Quick Facts, Yuma County, Arizona,” United States Census Bureau, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/yumacountyarizona,US/PST045219.

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The last county whose precincts overlap with tribal lands is Yuma, located in Arizona’s lower left-hand corner. Out of 44 precincts, I looked at 2 with predominantly Native American population; precincts number 6 and 27.

Tab. 52 2016 Presidential election results from selected Yuma County precincts.375

Even though the whole county went for Trump both in 2016 and 2020, the precincts overlapping with Cocopah Tribe’s reservations voted for the Democratic candidates in almost 60% of cases. While Clinton received 1,178 votes, Trump received 583. In 2016, 3,197 predominantly AIAN voters registered with 60.35% voter turnout compared to 84,254 registered voters in Yuma County and 63.99% turnout.376

Tab. 53 2020 Presidential election results from selected Yuma County precincts.377

375 “Yuma County General Election, November 8, 2016,” Official Website of Yuma County, accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.yumacountyaz.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=28480. 376 Tab. 52. 377 Official Website of Yuma County, “County of Yuma, State of Arizona, General Election, November 3, 2020.”

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Four years later, 638 more voters registered, and the voter turnout increased to 69.49%, which exceeded the county-wide turnout (68.36%). The support of the Democratic candidates in Yuma County is not as evident as in other counties, yet Democrats still gained the majority of votes. Thus, even Yuma County confirmed my initial thesis that people living on Indian reservations would favor Democratic candidates and that the number of registered voters increased as well as voter turnout.378

Tab. 54 2016 and 2020 Yuma County Presidential election results.379

Tab. 55 Difference between 2016 and 2020 results in selected precincts and Yuma County as a whole.

378 Tab. 54. 379 Official Website of Yuma County, “Yuma County General Election, November 8, 2016;” “County of Yuma, State of Arizona, General Election, November 3, 2020,” Official Website of Yuma County, accessed April 17, 2021, https://www.yumacountyaz.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/45113/637441622402870000.

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This chapter analyzed the 2016 and 2020 presidential election results in eleven Arizona counties. The assembled data proved my initial thesis that the Native American voters played an essential part in gaining the decisive 10,457 votes that turned Arizona “blue” in the 2020 presidential elections. After comparing the 2016 and 2020 election results, I concluded that, in general, Native Americans voted in larger numbers in 2020 than in 2016 and most of their votes went for the Democratic candidate both in the 2016 and 2020 elections. After rounding, in seven out of eleven selected counties, the precincts with a predominantly AIAN population cast over 80% of ballots for Biden while only four precincts voted for Donald Trump. Ultimately, Joe Biden won the 2020 election and became the 46th president of the United States.

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Conclusion

The support for Democratic candidates was evident among Native Americans both in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Native Americans already significantly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, yet nobody paid attention since Arizona stayed “red.” While their support was not enough for Clinton in 2016 to flip Arizona, their votes contributed to Biden’s victory four years later when they voted in larger numbers compared to 2016 and mostly for the Democratic candidate. After rounding, in seven out of eleven selected counties, the precincts with a predominantly American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) population cast over 80% of ballots for Biden. Similarly, the most populous Arizona tribes, the Navajo and Hopi tribes, San Carlos Apache, and Gila River Indian Tribes, voted in more than 80% for Joseph Biden. Twice as many voters voted in 2020 than in 2016 on the Havasupai reservation, where more than 90% of the ballots received Biden. Tohono O’odham Nation alone cast more than 5,500 ballots, of which more than 90% for the Democratic candidate as well.

The results of the quantitative analysis thus prove the overwhelming majority of voters choosing the Democratic candidate over the Republican in 2020 which corresponds with my thesis. However, I found out that it is essential to look at the numbers of registered voters, not only at voter turnout because the actual numbers of Native Americans registered and voting are not that large, yet when expressed in percent, they look impressive as well as the increase in ballots cast for particular candidates. In some precincts where more than 90% of ballots cast went for Biden, such as Chui Chu, Havasupai, or Hickiwan, less than three hundred voters registered. Such precincts also tend to have low voter turnout, meaning fewer registered voters actually cast their ballots in the elections. The high electoral preferences of Democrats expressed as a percentage in

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precincts with a significant AIAN population thus can be ultimately disadvantageous for Native Americans. They may give the impression that Native American support for Democratic candidates is stable, and therefore there is no need to lead an election campaign in such communities. The American Indians and Alaska Natives thus might be again at risk of even greater neglect instead of visibility. Even though the 2016 and 2020 results indicate long-term Democratic support, the candidates should not take their votes for granted. The comparison of the 2016 and 2020 results shows that Donald Trump did better than I expected based on his presidency. Even though his support remains low compared to Biden’s, he did not lose many voters, quite the contrary. Some precincts, especially in Mohave County, favored Donald Trump both in 2016 and 2020 and in some precincts, such as San Carlos in Gila County, he gained surprisingly twice as many votes as in 2016. It suggests that the Native vote is not monolithic. Moreover, Native American future participation in the electoral process is questionable. Based on the findings, I argue that Native Americans voted in large numbers mostly because they have their reasons to vote against Trump. His mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic and support for projects endangering tribal lands and sacred sites were directly threatening their existence.

However, more Americans voted in the 2020 elections than in any other in 120 years, and so the increase in Native American participation in the electoral process fits into the trend of the 2020 presidential election. Nonetheless, if the numbers of registered Native Americans and their turnout continue to increase, they will be a decisive factor in future elections, especially when united. Such a show of force is now translating into leverage for Native Americans seeking more representation in top levels of the federal government. Of the fourteen candidates running at the national level in 2020, six Native Americans were elected. While two of the candidates were newly elected, four are returning members to Congress. One of them is Debra Haaland. Confirmed as Interior Secretary, she became the first Native cabinet secretary in U.S. history. She will oversee over 500 million acres of public land, much of which was once seized from her ancestors. The Department of the Interior also houses the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which services the 574 federally recognized tribes as well as the 5,6 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. Nonetheless, general mistrust toward the federal government and skepticism prevails. The history of violated treaties and broken promises continues to affect the lives of many and thus their electoral preferences. Biden administration will now have to work hard to turn

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election promises into real politics since his predecessor did little for Native Americans. Now it is about time to put America’s first peoples first.

Summary

Following a long history of the fights over citizenship, suffrage, and representation, Native Americans played a significant part in the 2020 presidential election. Various non- profit organizations, grassroots groups, and activists worked tirelessly to get out the Native vote, and their efforts paid off. Native Americans voted in significant numbers despite various obstacles and the Covid-19 pandemic decimating their communities. The support for Democratic candidates was evident among Native Americans both in the 2016 and 2020 elections suggesting their long-term inclination to the Democratic Party. Native Americans already significantly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, yet nobody paid attention since Arizona stayed “red.” While their support was not enough for Clinton in 2016 to flip Arizona, their votes contributed to Biden’s victory four years later when they voted in larger numbers compared to 2016 and mostly for the Democratic candidate. After rounding, in seven out of eleven selected counties, the precincts with a predominantly American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) population cast over 80% of ballots for Biden. Similarly, the most populous Arizona tribes, the Navajo and Hopi tribes, San Carlos Apache, and Gila River Indian Tribes, voted in more than 80% for Joseph Biden. Twice as many voters voted in 2020 than in 2016 on the Havasupai reservation, where more than 90% of the ballots received Biden. Tohono O’odham Nation alone cast more than 5,500 ballots, of which more than 90% for the Democratic candidate as well.

The results of the quantitative analysis further prove that the Native vote is not monolithic since there were four precincts out of 89 that mainly voted for Donald Trump. However, his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his unfriendly policy toward American Indian and Alaska Native communities described in this work undoubtedly contributed to his defeat.

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ZÁVĚREČNÉ TEZE MAGISTERSKÉ PRÁCE NMTS Závěrečné teze student odevzdává ke konci Diplomního semináře III jako součást magisterské práce a tyto teze jsou spolu s odevzdáním magisterské práce do SIS předpokladem udělení zápočtu za tento seminář. Jméno: Radka Štroblová E-mail: [email protected] Specializace (uveďte zkratkou)*: SAS Semestr a školní rok zahájení práce: zimní 2020 Semestr a školní rok ukončení práce: letní 2021 Vedoucí diplomového semináře: Lucie Kýrová, M.A., Ph.D. Vedoucí práce: Lucie Kýrová, M.A., Ph.D. Název práce: The Power of the Native Vote: Evaluation of the Influence of Native Americans on the Outcome of the 2020 Presidential Elections in the United States – A Case Study of Arizona Charakteristika tématu práce (max 10 řádek): More Americans voted in the 2020 election than in any other in 120 years, and the majority supported the Democratic candidate - Joseph R. Biden. In 2020, Biden won 26 states, including Arizona, as the first Democrat in the presidential election since 1996. There he gained 10,457 votes more than his Republican opponent – the incumbent president Donald J. Trump. With such a small margin, every vote was essential. In Arizona, 412,256 people identify as American Indian and Alaska Native. Even though belonging to a minority race or ethnicity is not in itself a strong enough predictive factor for electoral preferences, Native American support for the Democratic candidate proved to be decisive in the 2020 elections. American Indian and Alaska people are often excluded from collecting and reporting data, and when included, the data is either inaccurate or put them in "the other" category. I thus decided to analyze the Native vote and its influence on the outcome of the 2020 elections. Vývoj tématu od zadání projektu do odevzdání práce (max. 10 řádek): At first, I wanted to compare the resemblances and differences of approaches of African Americans and Native Americans in the 1950s-1970s during the Civil Rights Movement. However, I decided to choose a current topic, namely how Native Americans influenced the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections in the United States, as no one has dealt with this topic so far. Struktura práce (hlavní kapitoly obsahu): Introduction 1. Historical Context of Native Voting in the United States and Arizona 2. The Path Toward Biden's Victory 3. The Native Vote in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential Elections Conclusion Hlavní výsledky práce (max. 10 řádek): After the long history of the fight over citizenship, suffrage, and representation, Native

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Americans played a significant part in the 2020 presidential elections. Various non-profit organizations, grassroots groups, and activists worked tirelessly to get out the Native vote, and their efforts paid off. Native Americans voted in large numbers despite various obstacles and the covid-19 pandemic decimating their communities. Out of 89 Arizona precincts overlapping with tribal lands, only five did not record higher voter turnout compared to 2016. The support for democratic candidates was evident among Native Americans. The most populous Arizona tribes, the Navajo and Hopi Tribes, Tohono O'odham, San Carlos Apache, and Gila River Indian Tribes, cast more than 80% of ballots for the democratic candidate. After comparing the 2016 and 2020 election results, I concluded that in the 2020 elections, Native Americans proved to have the potential to influence the results and thus helped Biden win the state of Arizona. Prameny a literatura (výběr nejpodstatnějších): 1) “2016 General Election ~ November 08, 2016,“ State of Arizona, accessed January 18, 2021, https://apps.azsos.gov/election/2016/General/ElectionInformation.htm. 2) “2020 General Election County Canvass Returns,“ State of Arizona, accessed January 15, 2021, https://azsos.gov/2020-election-information/county-canvass-returns. 3) “American Indian and Alaska Native Data Links,” United States Census Bureau, accessed February 11, 2021, https://www.census.gov/about/partners/cic/resources/data-links/aian.html. 4) “Federal Election 2016, Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives,“ Federal Election Commission, United States of America, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms- content/documents/federalelections2016.pdf. 5) “My Tribal Area,” United States Census Bureau, accessed February 11, 2021, https://www.census.gov/tribal/. 6) “Obstacles at Every Turn, Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters,“ The Native American Rights Fund, accessed December 2020, 1-167, https://vote.narf.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/obstacles_at_every_turn.pdf. 7) “Official 2020 Presidential General Election Results,“ Federal Election Commission, United States of America, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms- content/documents/2020presgeresults.pdf. 8) “Quick Facts, Arizona,“ United States Census Bureau, accessed April 3, 2021, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/AZ,US/PST045219. 9) Rollings, Willard Hughes, “Citizenship and Suffrage: The Native American Struggle for Civil Rights in the American West, 1830-1965,” Nevada Law Journal 5, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 1- 140, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=shib&custid=s1240919&direct=true&db=e dshol&AN=edshol.hein.journals.nevlj5.14&site=eds-live&scope=site&lang=cs. 10) The American Election Eve Poll, “Arizona, American Indian,“ available on: https://electioneve2020.com/poll/#/en/demographics/native-american/az.

Etika výzkumu:** Not relevant Jazyk práce: English Podpis studenta a datum

Schváleno Datum Podpis Vedoucí práce Vedoucí diplomového semináře

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Vedoucí specializace Garant programu * BAS – Balkánská a středoevropská studia; ES – Evropská studia; NRS – Německá a rakouská studia; RES – Ruská a eurasijská studia; SAS – Severoamerická studia; ZES – Západoevropská studia. ** Pokud je to relevantní, tj. vyžaduje to charakter výzkumu (nebo jeho zadavatel), data, s nimiž pracujete, nebo osobní bezpečnost vaše či dalších účastníků výzkumu, vysvětlete, jak zajistíte dodržení, resp. splnění těchto etických aspektů výzkumu: 1) informovaný souhlas s účastí na výzkumu, 2) dobrovolná účast na výzkumu, 3) důvěrnost a anonymita zdrojů, 4) bezpečný výzkum (nikomu nevznikne újma).

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