As the United States commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Snyder Act of 1924—legislation that granted citizenship and voting rights to Native Americans—tribal voices are poised to play a pivotal role in the election. In swing states like Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where even slight shifts in voting patterns can tip outcomes, Native American voices have the power to decide elections at the local level and all the way to the White House.

“In 2018, Deb Haaland became the first Native congresswoman, and then from there, she became the Secretary of Interior,” said April Ignacio of the Arizona and Mexico-based Tohono O’odham Nation and Co-Founder of Indivisible Tohono, during a recent Native voting webinar hosted by the Indigenous Journalists Association. “That’s the power of the Native vote.”

While Native voting trends are not easy to find, Native participation since 2018 has increased substantially thanks to a mixture of grassroots advocacy and legislative changes at the state and federal level.

But the long path to the ballot box for Native Americans has been fraught with challenges. Although the Snyder Act granted American citizenship and the right to vote, indigenous voters have faced a century of voter suppression that is far from over.

A history of disenfranchisement

One of those barriers was the U.S. Constitution, which, through the 14th Amendment, guaranteed citizenship to anyone born in the United States. But it excluded most Native Americans. This was followed by federal assimilation policies that attacked Native American culture. The U.S. government broke numerous treaties, destroying tribal governments, eroding the size of tribal lands and removing Native children from their families to attend boarding schools. This resulted in fragmented communities where poor health outcomes and poverty took hold.

However, things began to change in the early 20th century thanks to the tireless work of Native American activists and their unlikely allyship with white women suffragettes. It was in late 1920 when Indigenous suffragist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, also known by her Yankton Sioux tribal name Zitkala-Ša, addressed a gathering of newly franchised white women.

“The Indian woman rejoices with you,” said Zitkala-Ša to Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party, which was still celebrating the passing of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 18, 1920.

She reminded them that although their achievement was significant, most women of color were still excluded from voting. But Zitkala-Ša had grander ideas of how to harness the swell of energy from the women’s suffrage movement. She wanted to ensure that all Native Americans regardless of gender had the right to vote.

Her decades of advocacy worked. The Snyder Act, also known as the Indian Citizenship Act, lifted those barriers and unveiled a new era of American democracy. Or so she thought.

Barriers then and now

Just like the Jim Crow laws of the South, which enforced racial segregation from the late 19th century to the 1960s, these new freedoms came with new barriers. For example, Native Americans living on reservations were excluded from the democratic process. In 1948, the courts lifted bans in New Mexico and Arizona, while the last two holdouts, Utah and New Mexico, lifted prohibitions in 1957 and 1958, respectively.

Even then, access to democracy was still out of grasp for most.

“In Arizona, for example, Native Americans could not fully participate in voting until 1970 when the Supreme Court upheld the ban against using literacy tests,” wrote Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian tribe and director of the Indian legal program and clinic at Arizona State University, in a 2020 essay for the American Bar Association. “Today, the right to vote continues to be challenged through the passage of new laws and practices that either fail to consider, disregard, or intentionally target Native American voters.”

She recalled how a Navajo grandmother in Arizona who didn’t have a birth certificate and only spoke Navajo was barred from voting, and her attempts to obtain an ID were repeatedly denied.

“The Indian Legal Clinic intervened, traveling hours to assist her through bureaucratic hurdles to finally secure her ID,” noted Ferguson-Bohnee. “Living without electricity or running water on the reservation, her situation underscored how the system failed to account for her unique circumstances, almost depriving her of her right to vote. Her persistence prevailed, but many face similar barriers without such support.”

In addition, states used literacy tests, poll taxes, and lack of voter protection laws to exclude Native voters. Even today, Native communities face disenfranchisement.

“Whether it’s invalidating Tribal IDs to be able to register to vote, or having real IDs that require residential address,” said Pauly Denetclaw, a Diné tribe member and political correspondent with Indian Country Today during the IJA roundtable. “I live a mile past milepost six in Crystal, New Mexico, and that was the address I had to get rural addressing for.”

In short, she didn’t know her address and couldn’t obtain a state driver’s license until she worked it out.

It was only in 2018 that the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that required residents in North Dakota to have a real address on their ID instead of a P.O. Box number, which is common among the Native community.

Lack of residential addresses, restrictive voter ID laws, and isolated polling stations—often requiring hundreds of miles of travel—are some of the barriers that Native voters face, in addition to limited access to mail, transportation, the internet and language access.

However, recent reforms at the state and federal levels have helped turn Native voters into an election-changing voting bloc. Advances in Native American voting rights over the past decade have been driven by advocacy from the a coalition of Native American voting rights groups, Four Directions, and the National Congress of American Indians, alongside legal support from the ACLU and efforts by Native leaders and tribal governments.

These groups have championed reforms like requiring states to accept tribal IDs, expand polling locations, and provide voter education. At the same time, state legislators in certain areas have worked with Native communities to address longstanding barriers, improving access for Native voters nationwide.

That work has seen a remarkable change in Native voting participation–enough to change the outcomes of elections.

Swing state power

In the 2020 election, Native American voters significantly impacted key swing states like Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Arizona, where Native Americans comprise nearly 6% of the population and have around 319,000 eligible voters, played a decisive role. Higher turnout among Navajo Nation voters—around 67,000 eligible voters—contributed to Biden’s narrow 10,500-vote victory. Precincts on tribal lands, like the Tohono O’odham Nation, saw overwhelming support for Biden, with some precincts reporting up to 98% Democratic votes, according to an analysis by High County News. Additionally, three counties overlapping with the Hopi and Navajo Nations leaned 57% for Biden, well above the state’s 51% average.

Even with what seems like an insignificant turnout, Arizona’s Native population is turning up to vote in greater numbers, but its potential is immense.

“We are the sleeping giant,” said Ignacio of her home state’s Native voters. “We average maybe 10% during the election. The power of that [voting potential] would be so astonishing.”

Ignacio’s example of why voting is important is how just 300 votes won Arizona’s attorney general election in 2022.

The margins are not so different in Wisconsin and Michigan.

In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin by just over 22,000 votes and Michigan by around 12,00 votes. The two states, along with Pennsylvania, effectively decided the election. Again, in 2020, Wisconsin’s electoral votes were decided by a razor-thin margin, going to Joe Biden by little more than 20,000 votes.

In Wisconsin, Biden’s narrow margin was strongly bolstered by Native voters in Menominee and Bayfield counties. Menominee County, home to the Menominee Nation, gave Biden 82% of the vote, while Bayfield County, with 11% Native residents, went 61% for Biden.

“When our communities come out and vote, that counts,” said Judith LeBlanc, a Caddo Nation member and executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance, a grassroots organization that sprouted in 2010 to mobilize Native people around the Affordable Care Act and permanent reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. “Elections are a snapshot of our political power — our voice on the ground.”

Similar patterns emerged in Montana and South Dakota. Although both states overall favored Trump, counties overlapping reservations, such as Glacier County (Blackfeet Nation), heavily supported Biden.

Native voters could also have a significant say in North Carolina and Nevada counties.

Unique campaigning

But getting these votes required effective political strategies.

In 2020, Biden followed up on Barack Obama’s outreach. Obama increased consultation with tribes on land protections and criminal justice, while Biden campaigned in several tribal nations in critical states like Wisconsin and Arizona, and precincts on tribal lands there helped narrowly tip the election for the Democrats.

“Arizona was kind of like a textbook example of what that could look like if you make those early investments,” Gabriel R. Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Chicago Tribune Oct. 29.

The trend has continued into the 2024 election.

“The minute that the announcement came that Harris was stepping into the race, you saw people organize overnight,” Crystal Echo Hawk, CEO of IllumiNative, a nonprofit dedicated to raising Native American visibility, told the Washington Post.

Whereas Trump, noted Echo Hawk, will have to contend with his reduction of Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and his revival of the Keystone XL pipeline, both unpopular with Indigenous peoples. “I think a lot of these people remember that.”

In a recent $370 million ad campaign, which included ads on multiple reservations, Harris emphasized the need for the U.S. to honor treaty rights and uphold tribal sovereignty. Echo Hawk said that these commitments and economic and environmental protections are top priorities for Native voters.

“I haven’t seen the same kind of targeted messaging and outreach from the Trump campaign,” she said.

Campaigns have targeted Native communities with radio ads and events featuring former President Bill Clinton and Donald Trump Jr. in attempts to gather final crucial votes.

When the margins are that thin, the outcome could depend on “how many Native Americans show up to vote,” according to Arizona’s U.S. Senator Mark Kelly of the state’s 450,000 Native Americans during an event on Oct. 25. At the same event, President Joe Biden apologized for the government-run boarding school system that for 150 years forcibly removed native children from their parents.

“It’s a sin on our soul,” said Biden during his speech at the Gila River Indian Community in Phoenix, Ariz. “Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make.”

Grassroots organizing

But it’s not just high-dollar campaigns and appearances from former presidents that have helped grow Native voting. This political awakening is partly thanks to grassroots organizers like Ignacio, whose Arizona organization does year-round voter education and hosts events like Slay the Vote.

Slay the Vote, for example, was a drag show featuring Indigenous drag queens from tribal nations across Arizona that focused on issues related to the LGBTQ community.

The point was to have fun while engaging native voters.

“Politics turns people off, especially in Indigenous communities,” Ignacio told the Tucson Sentinel last month, adding that their events are meant to make their community feel welcome while learning about civic engagement and how it directly impacts them.

Current organizers have been instrumental in addressing voter registration issues and encouraging turnout among young first-time voters, while tribal election coordinators are building infrastructure that didn’t exist in previous generations.

“We’re still having to fight for the right to vote,” Ignacio added. “We’re still having to ensure that we have a voice, and we’re protecting that voice for the future.