Native Americans Get in the Spirit of Political Empowerment

Here in Montana, the Great Spirit has always helped those who help themselves. So when Pat Pierre recently offered up a prayer to elect Democrat Mark O’Keefe governor, he made sure there was a voter registration booth close by.

“Remember this when you go to the polls,” the elderly spiritual leader told 500 members of the Salish and Kootenai tribes who had gathered for a political rally. “He that is not with us is against us.”

In an unusually competitive political year in Montana, the Tuesday election will influence policies ranging from Indian water rights to the buffalo slaughter in Yellowstone National Park to taxation on the reservations. And to an unprecedented degree, the state’s Native American leaders have identified friendly candidates--and launched a massive effort to get them elected.

They are not alone.

Native Americans nationwide are putting registration and get-out-the-vote drives into high gear; casino-rich tribes from across the country have poured nearly $800,000--more than a third of it from Southern California--into defeating Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), who repeatedly has challenged tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. Indians in Oklahoma are soliciting help to unseat Republican Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr., who has attempted to make tribes subject to state taxes.

In Montana, not only are tribes stressing voter registration, they are delivering absentee ballots and offering voters rides to the polls. In addition to backing O’Keefe in his race against GOP Lt. Gov. Judy Martz, they are targeting Republican Sen. Conrad R. Burns, who has challenged the tribes on sovereignty issues.

“The message now is, if you’re going to attack Indian country, then Indian country will attack back--and there will be consequences,” said Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallem tribe in Washington state who has spearheaded the effort against Gorton.

In addition to writing checks, tribes are mobilizing in an unprecedented fashion, Allen said. “What you’re seeing is more volunteers. You’re seeing Indian people saying: ‘Where do I gotta go and help out? How do I get signs put up in my community?’ You see a lot happening that didn’t happen before.”

There were a record 96 Native American delegates at this year’s Democratic National Convention. Ten tribes have lobbying offices in Washington, D.C., and Indian gaming has been responsible for $1.3 million in political contributions so far this year--10 times the 1992 levels. About 70% of the money has gone to Democrats.

“Native communities are becoming much more politically astute . . . and this year it’s been particularly troubling because neither presidential candidate knows much about Indian policy,” said George Cornell, director of the Native American Institute at Michigan State University.

Tribes are focusing their collective strength in those regions where Indian issues are most at stake. “When you’ve got somebody like Sen. Gorton . . . of course you’re going to see a lot of people organizing against him,” Cornell said of the lawmaker who repeatedly has sought to limit tribal sovereignty and fishing access on nonnative lands.

Gorton has been dubbed by his detractors as “the last Indian fighter.” Yet throwing their weight behind Democrat Maria Cantwell--the Seattle software millionaire who already has spent about $6 million (nearly two-thirds of it from her own pocket) mounting a down-to-the-wire challenge against Gorton--is a mixed bag for many tribes. Gorton chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that doles out money to reservations nationwide, and tribes cross him at their peril. Gorton has directed millions of dollars toward the construction of Indian schools and health, irrigation and salmon recovery programs.

“Tribes pooling their resources together in an effort to defeat a senator is a recipe for disaster,” Tom O’Keefe, an eastern Washington Democratic House candidate who is married to a Nez Perce Indian, wrote earlier this year. “What if the tribes pour millions of dollars into the campaign and Sen. Gorton wins reelection?”

With that in mind, some Washington tribes have refused to endorse Cantwell, and others hung back before last month’s primary election. Gorton’s apparent vulnerability--the latest polls show him at 46%, just three percentage points ahead of Cantwell and within the margin of error--will prompt many tribes to step forward, Allen predicted.

Conscious that Indian leaders weren’t going to win broad public support by attacking Gorton on tribal issues, Allen’s First American Education Project convened focus groups and determined that there was broad concern about the incumbent’s environmental record. A television ad that Allen’s group started running this month in western Washington highlighted Gorton’s support for a controversial gold mine in north-central Washington.

Likewise in Montana, Native Americans are spotlighting environmental issues as a means of reaching non-Indian voters.

Members of Honor the Earth, a Native American environmental group headed by Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader’s running mate, Winona LaDuke, were in Montana earlier this month launching a series of voter registration rallies that are planned for Indian reservations in nine states, from Arizona to Wisconsin. The rallies were accompanied by a series of fund-raising concerts featuring such artists as Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, the Indigo Girls and the South Dakota Native American rock band Indigenous.

Organizers used the concerts to spotlight issues they believe are worrisome to a broad spectrum of Montanans: the killing of more than 1,000 Yellowstone bison that wandered out of the park in search of food; strip mining coal on the Northern Cheyenne reservation; stepped-up methane gas development on the Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations that is draining aquifers that supply water to the reservations and communities.

The extreme poverty among America’s estimated 2.2 million Native Americans--a high percentage of them young people who tend not to vote--and a historic inclination to pay more attention to tribal politics than national elections traditionally have left Indians outside the process. Only about a third of eligible tribal members nationwide are registered to vote.

Tribal leaders in Montana, however, have sought to buck that trend. Over the last decade, they have pushed voter registration efforts and succeeded in drawing large numbers to the polls. This year, activists will focus for the first time on the estimated 30,000 Native Americans (half the total in Montana) who live off the reservation.

Activists predict Native American voter turnout this year will exceed 1992’s record numbers, when 16,000 Montana Indians--about 73% of those registered--came to the polls. Darrell LaMere, a Winnebago Indian from Nebraska who was hired by the Montana Democratic Party to spur Native American turnout, recently set up a booth on the Flathead reservation. He trumpeted seven Indian state legislative candidates and urged voters to support Brian Schweitzer, the Democrat running against Burns. The next day, LaMere headed to reservation high schools and community colleges.

Gail Small, who founded the Lame Deer, Mont.-based group Native Action, said the upcoming state election--in which term limits and other issues have put an unusual number of political seats up for grabs--is an unprecedented opportunity for Native Americans to gain a stronger foothold.

The governor’s race is key: The latest polls show O’Keefe, the state auditor, and Martz in a statistical dead heat.

Targeting state government races will give Native Americans access to the Montana Trade Port Authority, she said, and a voice on the state Supreme Court will aid in upcoming battles over taxation and water rights.

“The issue we’re hitting is Indian political empowerment,” she said. “And that’s something that some Montanans are really afraid of.”