Ruth Hopkins of the Lakota Sioux summarizes the contributions of Native Americans in the recent election in Business Insider:
Natives make up about 6% of the population of Arizona, or 424,955 people as of 2018, and the Navajo Nation has around 67,000 eligible voters. This election, the Navajo had a 97% voter turnout. President-elect Joe Biden won the three counties that overlap the Navajo Nation with 73,954 votes. President Donald Trump received a mere 2,010 votes.
Most precincts located on the Tohono O’odham Nation were above 90% for Biden, and the territories of the Hualapai, Havasupai, White Mountain Apache, Gila River, San Carlos Apache, Pascua Yaqui, Cocopah and Colorado River Tribes were 70-90% for Biden. Biden currently leads in Arizona by 11,935 votes with 98% of the votes tallied — a margin slimmer than the Native voter turnout.
Tribes in Arizona also helped flip an Arizona Senate seat from red to blue as former astronaut Mark Kelly unseated Republican incumbent Martha McSally.
Hopkins points out that similar results apply in Wisconsin. I hope the Biden Administration begins the hard work of straightening out relations between the Native nations and the United States, which have been screwed up and murderous since before the United States came into being. The recent SCOTUS decision regarding criminal jurisdiction in Oklahoma is a start. I hope it continues.
And I might point out that the Native Americans seem to have a better grip on what it means to have a just democracy than does the White community, at least in Arizona and Wisconsin.
