This coming Tuesday, students at Blackfeet Community College will get a hearty dose of a timely topic through Western Native Voice’s new civic engagement workshop.
Western Native Voice has developed a curriculum on civic engagement for tribal college students and other Native community members. The curriculum covers the history of Native voting, the issues facing different Native communities, and the importance of taking action on those issues by registering to vote and participating in the policy-making process.
A history of disenfranchisement
Western Native Voice’s workshop counteracts some common misconceptions that Western Native Voice staffers have encountered in their work around Montana. Historically, Native Americans have been discouraged–or forbidden altogether–from engaging in elections and other public processes by countless mechanisms, including, but not limited to, laws that disenfranchise Native voters, voter identification policies that fail to account for the realities of life in Native communities (some states’ refusal to accept P.O. boxes as addresses for voter registration), election practices that make voting inaccessible or inconvenient for those living on reservations (a lack of voting stations on reservations), and general threats to tribal sovereignty.
In addition to these barriers, many within Native communities are deeply skeptical or downright uninterested in voting; the act itself is contingent upon the belief that voting matters, and that the federal government is trustworthy, neither of which are easy things for tribal communities to accept, after a history of broken promises, silenced voices, and abused trust.
Today, Western Native Voice staffer Alissa Snow explains, many within the Native community still doubt the impact that voting can have, and fear “registration” of any kind with a non-Native government. “Folks often feel that participating in the election of non-Indian government officials would undermine our own true sovereignty as Native Americans,” Snow said. “Not to mention the fact that many Native Americans feel that their voice just does not matter. It’s hard to convince people to register and to vote, if they don’t see the impact that they can have. We’re working to shift the narrative from, ‘I am small, and my voice doesn’t matter,’ to ‘I will have my voice heard, and in order to do so, I need to vote.’”
Strides towards civic engagement
In recent years, thanks to the dedicated work of Native Americans and social justice organizations across the country, the civic presence of Native communities has begun to grow in big ways. In 2012, a record-setting 61% of Montana’s Native voters turned out at the polls. In 2014, while voter turnout rates around the country plummeted, voter rates in Montana’s Native community held strong at a solid 40.2%. In 2015, the Montana state legislature included eight Native American elected officials, its highest-ever number. The Montana state education system is currently run by the only statewide elected Native American woman in the country.
Western Native Voice has played a major role in all of these successes. Now, they’re turning to the next generation to find and train leaders who will continue building upon that success. The civic engagement workshop includes program components on the definition of civic engagement and why it’s important, the different perspectives of mainstream and tribal cultures, the various community issues facing Native communities and the impact of those issues, current legislation that’s relevant to Native Americans, and the nuts and bolts of how to participate and engage in public processes.
Thus far, the workshop is slated for presentations at Aaniih Nakoda College (Harlem), Chief Dull Knife College (Lame Deer), Fort Peck Community College (Poplar), Little Big Horn College (Crow Agency), Salish Kootenai College (Pablo), and Stone Child College (Box Elder), in addition to Blackfeet Community College.