WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — At the crack of dawn on a steaming September morning, political candidates, campaign surrogates and staffers boarded parade floats to court Arizona’s key Indigenous vote at the Navajo Nation Fair.
But despite heavy Republican and Democratic presences at the 76th annual parade, Indigenous Arizonans gathered there said they felt disenfranchised and detached from the political system.
“I don’t think they really pay attention to us as much as they should or take our feelings into consideration of what they do with our land,” said Lomakoyva Manuel, 25, a musician who voiced his frustration with both major parties. “A lot of times, they attack sacred and tribal lands, and it’s for no reason other than to gain money, and, I mean, there’s enough of that in the world.”
Lorinda Strayhorn, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said: “I don’t think they’re paying attention to it a lot. Not only the Navajos, but different tribes, too. We need a lot of attention, love for our kids, keep our kids in school.”
Asked whether either party cares about issues affecting life on the reservation, Leo Mann, 56, a construction worker, said, “It seems to me it didn’t really matter to them.”
Mann, of Nazlini, said his grandfather, who served in the military, wasn’t taken care of when he returned from service.
A woman holds a sign with former President Donald Trump’s mug shot while riding the Arizona GOP’s float at the Navajo Nation parade Saturday.
“My grandfather passed in 2001. He never got housing. He applied for it but never did,” Mann said. “They should really look into getting some help for the veterans. … It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
The swarm of politicians from both parties is all after a small but consequential sliver of Arizona’s electorate. Data on Native American turnout is hard to come by. Uplift Campaigns, a Democratic strategy company, estimates that 58,121 Arizonans on tribal reservations voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — when he won Arizona by about 11,000 votes. It reached that figure by adding vote totals from all of the precincts on reservations, with numbers provided by the Arizona secretary of state. (The data doesn’t account for Indigenous Arizonans who live outside tribal reservations or deduct votes from residents of non-Indigenous reservations.)
Manuel, Strayhorn and Mann all spent their first full weekend of September enjoying the Navajo Nation Fair, riding amusement rides, eating fair food and listening to their tribe’s music. Nearly 300 miles away, Roland Interpreter, a Navajo who is homeless in Phoenix, was having a different kind of weekend.
NBC News first met Interpreter in the parking lot of a Safeway in downtown Phoenix on Monday as severe, 109-degree heat put the unhoused in danger.
“Right now, I’m unemployed,” said Interpreter, 57. “A little homeless, but I’m working on it. I’m not a total hopeless person. … Being Native, it’s kind of hard to measure between Caucasian people and myself.”
Interpreter said both parties care about tribal issues, but only “on a very limited basis.”
“When a new president comes in … they’re kind of like, ‘Hey, this hot potato is my lap.’ So I hope they do up the ante on it, but it’s hard to forecast,” he added pessimistically.
Back in Window Rock, the Navajo Nation’s capital, presidential campaign surrogates, Senate candidates and congressional candidates were out in full force. The Harris-Walz campaign came with a float, a mobile billboard and a dune buggy as it spread its Democratic message.
A man holds a Harris-Walz sign at the Navajo Nation parade in Window Rock, Ariz.
Democratic state Sen. Theresa Hatathlie, a Harris campaign surrogate, said Navajo voters’ feelings about disenfranchisement were valid.
“I do believe that’s accurate,” Hatathlie said when she was asked to respond to voters’ sentiment that their voices aren’t being heard by the American government in general.
“Sometimes it’s so easy to see that we are just a checkbox. We don’t want to be a checkbox,” she said. “We want to be heard based on the fact that we should listen to understand, not listen to respond.”
The Trump campaign sent a surrogate, too — Arizona GOP chair Gina Swoboda — to spread the Make America Great Again message. Swoboda, too, felt the frustration of government neglect was justified among Indigenous voters.
“The political system has left the sovereign nation behind because they are not down here, just maybe listening,” she said. “President Trump tried very hard to do that, listening, to do outreach and to make sure he had representatives here in the nations.”
Kari Lake, the Republican Senate candidate, also marched in the parade and concurred with Swoboda.
“I don’t blame them,” Lake said of Navajo voters who feel they’ve been ignored by the government. “Both [parties] in D.C. have, frankly, not been very good for the people. That’s why we need citizen politicians.”
Lake’s opponent in the hotly contested Senate race is Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a longtime advocate for Indigenous causes since he served with Navajo tribe members in the Marines. Since he went to Congress in 2015, Gallego has been the chairman for a federal hearing on the topic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in 2019, led passage of the Native American Child Protection Act and sponsored the BADGES Act to help improve tribal law enforcement on reservations. His advocacy earned him warm welcomes on the parade route.
“I understand the tribal trust responsibility that you’re supposed to have as a member of the Senate for the 22 tribal nations here in Arizona,” Gallego said in an interview before the parade. He has vowed to visit all of Arizona’s 22 federally recognized tribes before Election Day. So far, he has visited 21.
The political candidate who got the strongest reception at the fair is a member of the tribe: Jonathan Nez, the Democratic candidate in Arizona’s heavily Republican 2nd Congressional District. Nez, who was swarmed by young children asking for his autograph, was president of the Navajo Nation for four years until 2023. Now, he’s running an underdog race to become Arizona’s first Indigenous member of Congress.
Jonathan Nez is a Democrat running to become Arizona’s first Indigenous member of Congress.
“Ruben Gallego, he’s visiting all 22 tribes. He’s been in Navajo. … He’s like one of us,” Nez said. “But there are other candidates that only come to Navajo just to get their vote, and it’s about time Native Americans and the Navajo people recognize that.”
Nez aims to unseat Republican Rep. Eli Crane, who was also at the parade.
Across several interviews with Navajo voters at the fair, one issue was cited repeatedly as a top challenge of life on the reservation.
“The dirt roads have been getting bad,” said Denzel Bia, 22, a rancher from Many Farms. “One big thing is fixing the roads on the Navajo Nation, putting highways on those dirt roads. That’s what would help people and save their vehicles.”
Steve Blackrock, 65, of Black Mesa, said, “We’re really lacking infrastructure on the Navajo reservation, utilities, water power and even roads, a lot of things like that.”
The Biden-Harris administration elevated Indigenous voices in a history-making way, picking former Rep. Deb Haaland to run the Interior Department. Haaland’s appointment made her the first Indigenous Cabinet member, and in March, she announced a $72 million investment to improve electricity infrastructure across tribal communities. The Navajo Nation also used over $520 million in funding from a Biden-backed law to “nearly double” new infrastructure building, the Navajo president’s office announced this year.
In a statement, the Republican National Committee’s Arizona communications director, Halee Dobbins, said: “Team Trump in Arizona has been dedicated to uplifting the Native American people and addressing the unique challenges facing their communities. We are proud to have staff and volunteers in communities to meet Native American voters where they are.”
Swoboda, the state GOP chair, argued that Trump’s broad economic policies would bolster Indigenous communities suffering from inflation, an issue aggravated on tribal reservations.
“If you’re living out here, you have to haul water, and you usually have to travel something like 45 miles to get to where to get the water and then back,” she said. “If you’re looking at gas prices that are out of control, it’s going to cripple you.
“You have to have a sensitivity and listen,” Swoboda said, emphasizing empathy and understanding while trying to court the Native American vote.
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Publish date : 2024-09-12 13:10:00
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