“Charged” for Indian Country: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz get off to a great start

A “super-strong” agenda for Indian Country

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz end their first week in the presidential election campaign

Monday, August 12, 2024

By Acee Agoyo

Indianz.Com

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz capped off a whirlwind week of rallies, making history with the first campaign rally opened by a tribal leader. In her speech Saturday, Harris acknowledged tribal leaders in the massive crowd at Arizona’s Desert Diamond Arena. In remarks carried live by news stations across the country, she uttered words not often heard in Indian Country during the presidential campaign, especially at this stage of the race. “As president, I will tell you that I will always respect tribal sovereignty and tribal self-determination and fight for a future where every Native person can achieve their goals and every Native community is a place of opportunity,” Harris, who currently serves as vice president of the United States, said to thunderous applause at the complex, the naming rights of which belong to the Tohono O’odham Tribe, which operates the Desert Diamond Casino just across the street. But the pledge, delivered at the end of an hours-long rally that the campaign said drew more than 15,000 people, was just a reminder of how much Democrats have mobilized tribes and their voters. Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community opened the event by noting that it was taking place on tribal lands. “Tonight, here in Arizona, here on O’odham land, we stand united in our shared support for Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, because together they represent a better future for Arizona, a better future for Indian Country and a better future for our country,” Lewis said to applause. “Let’s all come together tonight, on our O’odham land, to stand up for our future,” Lewis added in his opening remarks to the rally. Just days earlier, Harris had introduced Walz as her vice presidential candidate at a raucous rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At their first joint campaign appearance last Tuesday, the vice president vowed to “reach out to everyone” — including people in “tribal communities,” she said. Advocates and supporters say the offer is working because of Harris’ work in President Joe Biden’s administration. Since January 2021, $45 billion in federal funds have flowed to Indigenous tribes and their citizens, not to mention the policy successes that have been achieved — from the historic rise of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland as the first Indigenous person to run for president to the record number of Indigenous people appointed to federal judgeships. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have taken the legacy of Obama and amplified it in Indian Country,” Kevin Washburn, a Chickasaw Nation citizen who headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the Barack Obama era, said last Wednesday on a virtual call organized by Indigenous men after Indigenous women and Two Spirit leaders hosted a similar call. But the presence of Walz, who has been governor of Minnesota since January 2019, on the Democratic ticket was also a calling card for Indian Country. That’s largely because Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation and the highest-ranking Indigenous woman in a state executive office, is on his side. “We have codified a government-to-government tribal consultation with all of our 11 tribal nations in the state of Minnesota,” Flanagan said during the virtual event, listing a “small sampling” of the accomplishments the two have made over the past five years. “We now require every state agency, all of our commissioners, deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners to complete training in interstate tribal relations, including everyone who works in the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s offices.” “We funded the American Indian Scholars Program, which provides college access and tuition assistance to Native students across the state of Minnesota, expanded our Minnesota Indian Teacher Training Program, created the first state-based office of missing and murdered Native relatives in the country, invested in food security in Indian Country, and protected and preserved Minnesota’s natural resources and partnership with our tribal nations,” Flanagan added. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate James David “JD” Vance have spent much of the past week shadowing their Democratic rivals, and have scheduled events in the same cities to draw attention to their campaign. By comparison, however, Republicans have not said much about Indian Country and the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations, even after gaining a head start following the Republican National Convention in July. Rather than address Native American issues at his rally in Montana – home to 12 tribal nations and a strong Native American voting base – Trump again resorted to insults. In a speech in Bozeman on Friday night, the former one-term president attacked a Democratic congressman from a state more than 2,000 miles away. “Remember Pocahontas?” Trump said of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who once identified as Native American despite having no affiliation with a tribe. “I’ve got more Indian blood in me than she has – and I don’t have any,” Trump said to laughter, invoking a harmful stereotype that denigrates Native Americans based on their perceived blood percentage. Trump also attacked Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana), known in his state for his work on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and other key Montana issues. In addition to denigrating the lawmaker’s weight, he also sought to link the Democrat running for re-election to “radical left-wing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.” “You know who that is, right?” Trump asked, drawing little reaction from the crowd. Attention will soon turn to the Democratic National Convention, where Harris and Walz will formally accept their party’s nomination. The event will be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, Illinois, on the homeland of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa people. President Biden should have accepted the nomination before dropping out of the race on July 21. In his place, he immediately endorsed Harris, who made history as the first woman, first African American and first South Asian to serve as vice president. Harris is a former U.S. senator from California, where she served as attorney general. During her tenure, she was known for opposing efforts by tribes to restore their homelands in the state, an issue that came up during the 2020 presidential campaign when she unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination. The Biden administration has taken a different course, returning nearly 300,000 acres to tribal ownership in less than three years, according to Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, a political appointee at the Department of the Interior. Harris is now being recognized for that political achievement. “We are in a moment of leadership for Native people, and we are in a moment where we are going to win this election for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” Lieutenant Governor Flanagan said on the virtual conference call last Wednesday.

If Harris and Walz win the election in November, Flanagan is expected to make even more history. She would be the first Indigenous woman to serve as governor in the United States. “It will be great to see Peggy Flanagan have a chance to be the first Indigenous governor in Minnesota,” noted Sean Sherman, a popular chef and restaurant owner in Minneapolis, the state’s most populous city. “Peggy, if you’re still up, we’re going to throw you the biggest party with as many Indigenous chefs as possible to make as much food as possible,” Sherman, a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said on the Native Men for Harris virtual call. “And we want to do the same thing in Washington — if we can.”

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