Artwork displayed as part of the Phoenix Indian Center’s town hall about voting on Indigenous Peoples Day at the Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo by Shondiin Silversmith | Arizona Mirror
With only two weeks until the election, voting advocates, candidates, parties and community organizers are making last-ditch efforts to rally people to vote across Arizona.
Some will go canvassing in neighborhoods, set up phone chains, or organize rallies to inspire people to vote and educate them about what’s on the ballot.
But for those whose goal is turning out Indigenous voters living in Arizona’s urban centers face unique challenges, in large part because there are no identifiable neighborhoods that only Indigenous people populate.
“Most other groups in cities have neighborhoods that they live in, and urban natives tend to literally be all over the city,” said Janeen Comenote, the executive director of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, an organization that advocates for Indigenous families living in urban areas through partnerships with local Indigenous organizations.
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Comenote said that it was because of the Indian Relation Act of 1956, when the federal government designed a program to relocate Indigenous people living on their tribal lands to major urban cities to acquire jobs and assimilate into the general population.
“When you think about Native people living (outside) of their ancestral homelands, we’re at about 76%,” said Jolyana Begay-Kroupa, the chief executive officer for the Phoenix Indian Center. “That number continues to climb, and more and more of our relatives continue to move off into major metropolitan cities like Phoenix.”
Comenote said the policy behind the relocation act was purposely designed to scatter Indigenous people within urban areas, and that is one of the biggest challenges a lot of organizations face when trying to connect with Native populations within the city.
“The biggest challenge is locating those urban Native people, finding out where they live, and finding out what kind of messaging is going to resonate,” she added.
When it comes to voting efforts for the urban Indigenous population, Comenote said it is essential to rely on the organizations that have worked with these communities for decades because they have built invaluable relationships.
“Reaching out to urban Native voters is really about bringing culture to the table,” Comenote said, which is why you see voting events centered around cultural events.
In the Phoenix area, that trusted entity is the Phoenix Indian Center, which has been a hub for Indigenous people living in the valley for more than 75 years.
The center has been able to build a trusted relationship with the urban Indigenous population, and it is through that trust that they help them develop civic engagement events aimed at the community.
June Shorthair is the civic engagement specialist for the Phoenix Indian Center, and she works as part of the center’s civic engagement efforts, which include assisting Indigenous people within the Phoenix area to get registered to vote in state and local elections.
The Phoenix Indian Center is also the only location in the Valley that can register Navajo citizens to vote in their tribal elections back on the Navajo Nation.
Shorthair said since the Phoenix metro area is so vast and the Indigenous population is so spread out, they focus their civic engagement efforts on the community setting because it is an environment many urban Natives are familiar with and feel comfortable in.
The Phoenix Indian Center hosts multiple community events throughout the year and has hosted events focused on Native voting, including candidate forums and town halls.
General election and voting information geared toward Native voters covered the tables during a get-out-the-vote event hosted by the Gila River Indian Community on Oct. 12, 2024. Photo by Shondiin Silversmith | Arizona Mirror
The center’s most recent effort was a town hall meeting during the Indigenous Peoples Day Fest hosted at Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix. They invited local candidates and had guest speakers discuss the importance of voting in this election.
“In the Native community, we don’t look at party, we look at issues,” she said, adding that is how they work to connect with Native voters.
“Democracy is Indigenous,” Shorthair said. “Democracy is something at the core of what we do, what we believe in — our community structures, our home structures.”
They highlight how the local leaders in the state, county or city they live in impact their lives, including education, housing and access to state-funded programs.
Indigenous people make up 6% of Arizona’s overall population, and about 300,000 of the state’s voting-age residents are Natives.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Native voting looks like any other voting population because “Native Americans are distributed in all parts of Arizona, not just on the reservations, but in other rural communities (and) there’s a lot of Native voters in urban areas.”
More than 176,000 Indigenous people call Maricopa County home, and in a state where small margins of votes will determine closely contested elections, the urban Native voting population matters.
During a get-out-the-vote event on the Gila River Indian Community on Oct. 12, Gov. Katie Hobbs spoke to tribal members, highlighting how Native voters turned out in record numbers in 2020.
“You showed not only Arizona, but the entire country, that tribal votes were the deciding factor in the outcome of the election,” Hobbs said. “You have the power to be that deciding factor once again this November, but only if you show up and make your voices heard.”
During the event, Hobbs and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes highlighted the importance of voting in Arizona, mainly because the state is known for having very close races, including the 2022 election, where both women won their seats by small margins.
“That’s how we roll in Arizona, we do close elections,” Mayes said. “I won my race, in large part, because of you, by 280 votes out of 2. 5 million votes. That was the closest statewide race in Arizona history.”
Mayes and Hobbs are not up for reelection this year, but during their speeches to the Gila River Indian Community, both talked about the importance of tribal sovereignty and the actions their offices have taken to work with tribal nations in Arizona.
“For too long, our state’s leaders have ignored or didn’t prioritize tribal voices,” Hobbs said, adding that she is proud her administration is committed to working hand-in-hand with Arizona’s tribes.
Hobbs said her narrow, 17,000-vote margin of victory has allowed her administration to work with Arizona’s tribal nations in various ways, including the signing of historical water settlements and cracking down on sober living homes that exploited the Indigenous population.
Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribal nations, but the Indigenous population in Arizona is made up of tribal citizens from tribes all across the country.
Shorthair said the Phoenix Indian Center’s mission is to help build a healthy Native community within the Phoenix area. She added that it is their duty to reach out to the urban Indigenous community and provide them with vital information about voting and civic engagement.
“We don’t give or put out information that doesn’t align with who we are, what we do and how we want to support,” Begay-Kroupa said. “We have to be advocates for our own people.”
When connecting with Native voters, Begay-Kroupa said she likes to remind people that Indigenous people were the last people given the right to vote, yet these are their homelands.
“We helped really make a difference in this last election,” she added. “Why not do it again?”
We helped really make a difference in this last election. Why not do it again?
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Shorthair said urban Native voters are often more concerned and focused on what is going back home in their tribal nations. That’s primarily why the Phoenix Indian Center talks with the community about how Indigenous people have dual citizenship, as Americans and citizens of their tribal nation.
“You, as a citizen and as a Native citizen, work together,” Shorthair said, adding that urban Natives who are registered to vote within their tribal nations need to consider registering to vote within the state and counties they are living in because they are connected.
Connecting with urban Native voters is also essential to tribes, especially when the city is built around and near their communities.
The Gila River Indian Community, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, the Ak-Chin Indian Community and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation are near the Phoenix metropolitan area and, in some parts, directly border their tribal lands.
Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said their voting efforts are geared toward the groups of people critical to getting out to vote, including their urban tribal members.
Lewis said the tribe has an urban members association that targets urban tribal members and provides them with the resources they need, including information about voting.
“They have leaders there that make sure to hold the tribe accountable,” Lewis said because the urban Native vote is no different. “We are a collective entity.”
The most recent get-out-the-vote effort hosted by the Gila River Indian Community was on Oct. 12 at the Rawhide Event Center in Chandler. The event featured guest speakers from Arizona tribal leaders, candidates, voting advocates and state officials.
All the tables at the event were covered with the Gila River Indian Community 2024 Voter Education Guide and voting signs that read, “WE ARE AKIMEL O’OTHAM/PEE-POSH AND WE VOTE.”
The voting guide had election dates, information about the general election, how to vote, what to bring on voting day, where to vote within the Gila River Indian Community, and summaries on the ballot measures and candidates up for election.
Lewis said their efforts don’t focus on telling their tribal members who or what to vote for but rather on explaining who the candidates are and what the measures do in ways their community will understand.
“The Native vote in Arizona made the difference in the state, federal and the presidential election,” Lewis said during the get-out-to-vote rally. “No matter who you vote for, please, make sure you make a plan to vote.”
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