Voting rights activists led a “Walk to the Polls” on the Navajo Nation on Saturday, Oct. 12, as part of a civic campaign aimed at increasing voter turnout among Indigenous communities for the 2024 election.
Diné activist Allie Redhorse Young, founder and director of Protect the Sacred, was one of the event's organizers. Young, who also led the Ride to the Polls campaign in 2020 and 2022, said tribal communities have a lot at stake this year.
“Our tribal sovereignty — I do believe that is at stake in this election,” she said.
Young said the appointment of Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, as the first Native American Interior Secretary has significantly benefited tribal communities.
“The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force, the investigation on the Native American boarding schools that were here in this country, all of those things never happened before Secretary Haaland, and she has pushed all those initiatives forward,” Young added. “And so, her role and her position is at stake in this election. And that's what I'm hoping for our community to recognize, is that it's a fight for our tribal sovereignty, to protect our tribal sovereignty.”
Kat Calvin, the founder and executive director of Spread the Vote and Project ID was also in attendance. Calvin said Voter ID laws disproportionately impact Indigenous voters and other vulnerable communities.
“People who have disabilities, people who are seniors, people who have a really hard time being able to get an ID are now being cut out, even though the purported voter fraud, the reason we have IDs has been proven over and over not to exist,” said Calvin.
“Everything that we do is ‘how do we help people who are the most vulnerable and the most left out be able to get to the polls?’ And I think in this particular instance, the people who should never be on that list are Indigenous Americans.”
Actor Mark Ruffalo joined activists and community members in the three-mile walk to a ballot drop box in Fort Defiance, Arizona, the historic starting point of the Long Walk of the Navajo in the 1860s. The Long Walk was the forced displacement of the Navajo people by the United States military.
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