On the occasion of the centenary of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced a new print and digital awareness campaign to commemorate the centenary.
Launching today and running through the end of the month, the ads will reach Native communities in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin through a digital campaign and through print ads in local and national Native-owned publications.
While the ads commemorate this important centennial, they also highlight the barriers to the ballot box that remain for Native Americans. They highlight the critical work of Native communities, in partnership with Democrats, to support tribal communities in fully exercising their voting rights ahead of the crucial 2024 election cycle.
As part of the awareness campaign, the DNC will publish and distribute civic engagement and voter protection guides in seven different native languages; Apache, Ho-Chunk, Hopi, Navajo, Paiute, Shoshone and Zuni. The guides highlight resources for registering to vote, casting a ballot, and addressing barriers to voting.
“On the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the Indian Citizenship Act, we celebrate this historic milestone that granted citizenship to all members of federally recognized tribal nations,” said DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison. “As we celebrate this centennial anniversary, we also recognize that even with the passage of the Citizenship Act, Native Americans were unable to exercise their right to vote for at least 40 years. One hundred years later, many Native Americans still face barriers to the ballot box – that is unacceptable. That’s why we’re publishing voter education guides to give tribal communities, in the languages they speak, the opportunity to go to the polls this November and make their voices heard in elections that will determine whether we re-elect. Joe Biden – who fights for equal rights, opportunities and investments in indigenous communities – or if we risk another four years of Trump and his attacks on the rights of indigenous communities.”
“As the first and original peoples of this land, we have had only a century of recognized citizenship and continue to face systematic barriers to the exercise of the basic and hard-won right to vote,” said Clara Pratte, chair of the DNC Native Caucus. “We have to create awareness. We need to support and invest in culturally relevant resources like the translated voting guides that can help close the participation gap, but we also need everyone to encourage their family members and friends to check their voter registration status or register to vote. Indigenous voters are a critical part of our democracy.”
In 2021, President Biden signed an executive order directing the federal government to provide nonpartisan election-related information and engagement opportunities with Native communities and establish the Interagency Steering Group on Native American Voting Rights. The following year, the Biden-Harris administration released a report from the Interagency Steering Group that found much work remains to be done and presented best practices and recommendations to alleviate the barriers faced by Indigenous voters and take away.
At President Biden’s direction, the Department of the Interior’s two postsecondary schools, Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute and Haskell Indian Nations University, and two of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service sites located in Phoenix , Arizona and Santa Fe, New Mexico became federally designated voter registration sites under the 30-year-old National Voter Registration Act.
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