Knowing where to start can seem daunting for people who want to get involved in their communities, and civic engagement can mean something different for the indigenous people of Montana.
Ronnie Jo Horse, executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Western Native Voice, which works to involve more Montana natives in the election, said a motivating and empowering factor to involve people is to explain the relationship between tribes and the US government.
“Understand that American Indians or Alaska Natives are not another racial or ethnic group, but have a unique sovereign political status that is recognized in the U.S. Constitution, various Supreme Court decisions, executive orders , acts of Congress and other federal policies,” Horse said. .
Horse pointed out that people are also more likely to engage in elections when they understand Native American voting history. Native Americans were not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924, then faced Jim Crow-era hurdles until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. About two-thirds of Native Americans voted in the 2020 election in Montana. The 2022 state primary election will be held on June 7.
Horse pointed out that people can start small if they want to be civically engaged. To have the biggest impact, she said in-person conversations were the most powerful. Horse noted that unfortunately the pandemic has disrupted his organization’s ability to work in this way, but they have expanded their digital footprint.
“We had a bigger reach with the younger generation,” Horse explained. “But it was difficult because of this lack of face-to-face interaction to get the message across.”
Horse added that it’s also important for elected leaders to understand Native American communities and some of the barriers they face, especially in voting. Issues like voting by mail are critical, for example, because mailboxes can be far away from voters living on reservations or in rural parts of the state, which can be a barrier to voter turnout.
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Native American communities say the pandemic has severely limited their ability to communicate with the rest of the world and with each other, largely due to problems with internet access. But new grants will help some areas improve service, including three reservations in South Dakota.
The federal government said $77 million will be shared among tribal governments in 10 states, to be used for things like new equipment and creating affordable internet service programs.
Sherry Johnson, director of education for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribe, said many local students were unable to be fully connected to teachers when schools were closed.
“It really affected our kids, along with our academics, our test scores,” Johnson reported. “We can definitely see it in our data.”
She pointed out that reading and math scores have declined, but with funding, the approximately 700 homes on the Lake Traverse reservation will have more reliable service and schools will be equipped with devices such as Chromebooks. . Johnson pointed out that this puts families in a better position for future remote learning scenarios.
Johnson acknowledged that some homes are already serviced, but the bandwidth is low. Adding to the dilemma is a large ridge of land running through the reserve.
“Sometimes it’s really a hindrance for our cell boosters and stuff. [that] are needed to really pick up and have a good signal there,” Johnson remarked.
She added that they will be able to buy more equipment to counter the signal disturbances. The community will see other connection gaps addressed, including telehealth.
The other two beneficiaries in South Dakota are the Cheyenne River and Flandreau Santee Sioux tribes. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey shows that tribal areas trail the rest of the nation by 21 percentage points in homes with internet service.
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Enbridge is looking to reroute part of its Line 5 around Bad River Band territory in northern Wisconsin.
The rerouting falls within the tribe’s watershed and tribal advocates have argued that it poses risks to tribal farming traditions.
Aurora Conley, president of the Anishinaabe Environmental Protection Alliance and member of Bad River Ojibwe, said the potential environmental fallout could be disastrous for wild rice paddies in the region. She explained that wild rice, or manoomin, is more than an agricultural product for the tribe.
“That’s why we migrated to this area,” Conley pointed out. “We were told to keep going until we find the food that grows on the waters, which is wild rice. It’s our job to take care of the rice. We were told that if we could take care of the rice, we would survive, and We have.”
According to the National Wildlife Federation, Line 5, which currently crosses tribal lands, leaked 29 times from 1968 to 2017. A spokesperson for the company said about $46 million would be spent on businesses and Indigenous communities for diversion, and the Project is undergoing reviews by state and federal regulators. The integrity of these reviews has been questioned by tribal leaders and environmental groups.
Last month, more than 200 organizations submitted a letter urging the US Army Corps of Engineers to halt new construction on Line 5, including upgrades outside of Wisconsin, and conduct a top-down environmental impact statement .
Osprey Orielle Lake, executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network International, signed the letter, noting that the Biden-Harris administration had made campaign promises to begin divesting the country from fossil fuels.
“We think this fight to stop Line 5 is really vital to protecting Indigenous rights,” Lake said. “Protecting indigenous cultural ways of life, and also protecting water for all of us and the climate for all of us.”
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) wrote its own draft environmental impact statement for the Wisconsin diversion, which received more than 10,000 written comments.
Among other issues, Conley argued that the document failed to consider the cultural and historical significance of rice to the Ojibway, and how crop damage would be a direct assault on their cultural identity.
“You can’t commodify love,” Conley pointed out. “This rice represents a loving gift of a spiritual essence that has been given to us. And it has been our duty since time immemorial to take care of that.”
According to the DNR, wild rice paddies in northern Wisconsin can produce more than 500 pounds of seed per acre and are an important source of food and shelter for native and migrating wildlife.
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A Chronicle of Higher Education article showed that progress has been made at Arizona State University (ASU) in recruiting Native American faculty and students to the Tempe campus.
Arizona is home to more than 20 tribes and approximately 400,000 native citizens, but until the late 1990s they were underrepresented at state universities.
ASU founded the Center for Indian Education about 20 years ago in response to the growing number of indigenous students on campus.
Bryan Brayboy, director of the Centre, said there was a clear need to hire more Aboriginal teachers.
“We wanted to be really intentional in listening to our students telling us that they wanted more teachers who looked like them and wanted to be seen,” Brayboy explained. “They felt invisible, so we sat down and came up with a plan to try and fix that.”
Even though Indigenous students make up only about 1% of ASU enrollment, many are the first in their families and communities to attend the university. Brayboy noted that this led them to recruit 60 indigenous scholars for teaching positions.
He argued that programs such as the Center are integral to the university’s mission of inclusiveness, research for the public good and response to the communities they serve.
“Indigenous students and many of our non-Indigenous students come to university, come to ASU particularly because they believe in the mission of the place and are interested in serving society,” said claimed Brayboy.
Brayboy pointed out that the center is also important because of Arizona’s history of using schools as a way to assimilate Native children into Anglo-Saxon culture.
“It’s not that we don’t care about the past, we do,” Brayboy argued. “It’s important that guides us in all sorts of ways. But the hope is that we’re moving towards transforming society and people’s lives by really thinking about what’s possible.”
He added that while the Center is honored with this recognition, it will not rest on its laurels.
“People said to us, ‘God, you’re an overnight success,’ and we’ve been an overnight success for 25 years,” Brayboy pointed out. “This has been in place for a long time as we begin to move towards these goals.”
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