Sometimes history repeats itself for all the wrong reasons.

In a newsreel released by the National Archives, polling places in Alabama in 1966 were notably “swamped” by record breaking African-American and white voter turnout. Wait times were as long as four hours. Lines stretched at least three city blocks.

At the time, it was news that voting was inconvenient. But the burden was a sign of progress.

Despite having the constitutional right to vote, African Americans in Southern states like Alabama faced insidious Jim Crow-era policies like poll taxes and literacy tests that were damn near impossible to pass. Just a year before, civil rights activists of the time were brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers for attempting to March from Selma to Montgomery for that right.

But thanks to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, many black voters in Alabama and elsewhere were voting for the first time.

Yet 50 years after African Americans waited hours to cast a ballot for the first time, a new generation of voters find themselves doing the same thing because of systemic efforts to make voting as onerous as possible.

Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, states across the country have passed a slew of voter ID laws to the fix nonexistent voter fraud that dubiously suppresses voters of color. Additionally, states like Ohio and North Carolina also significantly cut early voting opportunities — the latter state specifically to quell African-American turnout.

“Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Carter Wrenn, a Republican consultant and key player in North Carolina politics, told the Washington Post. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”

The result: reports of at least 4,000 people waiting in line in Cincinnati on the Sunday before Election Day; Latino voters waiting at least two hours to cast their ballot in Nevada; lower African-American voter turnout in North Carolina; and North Carolina college students circling their campus just to vote, with little more reprieve than the promise of free pizza.

In 1966, long lines and wait times were a sign that racial barriers to the ballot box were finally dissolving after disenfranchising an entire population for nearly a century. Fifty years later, these same lines reflect a concerted effort to take those same voting rights away.

This year, votes cast in Ohio may depend on the last-minute battle to thwart voter intimidation from the Trump campaign.

On Sunday, without explanation, a federal court overturned a lower court’s temporary restraining order against the Trump campaign, initially issued Friday out of concern that Donald Trump and supporters like the Stop the Steal coalition were conspiring to intimidate voters on Election Day.

Hours later on Sunday evening, with less than 48 hours until Election Day, the Ohio Democratic Party issued an emergency request to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to reinstate the original injunction because the Sixth Circuit failed to review documents from the district court, suggesting its decision “has no basis in law.”

The concerns raised by the Ohio Democrats aren’t unfounded. For more than three decades, long before Trump was the Republican Party’s nominee, the Republican National Committee was bound by a federal consent decree barring it from voter intimidation tactics it used to stop voters of color from casting ballots in New Jersey.

But over the past month, voter intimidation rhetoric has steadily followed the Trump campaign, which isn’t bound by the decree. The campaign has been pushing supporters to monitor polls in “certain areas,” a message that has only amplified rigged election conspiracy theories.

These “certain areas” are ones with high concentrations of voters of color, who are also, especially this year, more likely to be Democrats. And if this isn’t clear from Trump’s dog-whistle politicking, his supporters have noted the racial targets explicitly.

Steve Webb, a 61-year-old Trump supporter from a Cincinnati, Ohio, suburb, told Matt Viser and Tracy Jan at the Boston Globe that he plans to engage in “racial profiling” in hopes of making these voters “a little bit nervous.” Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, and leaders of the alt-right movement, including former KKK grand wizard David Duke (who is also running for Louisiana State Senate), have stated plainly that they plan to monitor “some of the more inner-city areas.”

The stakes are high in Ohio. African-American voter turnout has been lower in Ohio, in part, because the state cut early voting opportunities. And while Latinos make up only 2.2 percent of Ohio voters, Latino voters nationally overwhelmingly favor Clinton and could help swing the state. A CBS News poll on Sunday put Clinton and Trump in a dead heat, with Trump slightly edging out Clinton among likely voters at 46 percent and 45 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, as Vox’s Dara Lind has noted, one of the dangerous aspects of the Trump campaign is that it’s “opened the door for someone, somewhere, to take democracy into their own hands.”

On the eve of Election Day, people of color face a very real threat to their safety for simply exercising their constitutional right to vote in key swing states like Ohio. How and if the courts ultimately decide to protect them could determine the state’s election.

In an interview published Wednesday by Answering the Call, a voting rights initiative, Merrill was asked to explain why he opposes automatic voter registration, a move that could help fix America’s paltry voter turnout rate.

Merrill didn’t waver. First he name-dropped “civil rights pioneers” like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, noted his friendship with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), and touted the fact his daughter interned for African-American Congress member Terri Sewell (D-AL). Then Merrill argued that granting people the right to vote “cheapens” these people’s work by rewarding folks who are “too sorry to get up off of their rear to go register to vote”:

These people fought — some of them were beaten, some of them were killed — because of their desire to ensure that everybody that wanted to had the right to register to vote and participate in the process. I’m not going to cheapen the work that they did. I’m not going to embarrass them by allowing somebody that’s too sorry to get up off of their rear to go register to vote.

To make his point abundantly clear, Merrill compared automatic registration to “giving [people] a trophy because they’ve played on the ball team.”

For Merrill, automatic voter registration feeds into the taboo notion of entitlements, rewarding people with services when they didn’t put in the initiative to earn them.

There’s just one problem: American citizens who are at least 18 years old should be entitled to the right to vote if they meet the age and citizenship requirement.

Rather, the major barrier standing between people and the polls tends to be policies trying to keep select groups far away, as civil rights leaders demonstrated half a century ago.

Despite having the constitutional right to vote, African Americans in Southern states like Alabama faced insidious Jim Crow era policies like poll taxes and literacy tests that were damn near impossible to pass. In 1965, a 25-year-old Lewis and other civil rights activists of the time were brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers for attempting to March from Selma to Montgomery for that right.

The slew of voter ID laws passed to the fix nonexistent voter fraud that dubiously suppresses voters of color is one of the latest 21st-century examples. Others include some states like Alabama denying felons and people with mental disabilities the right to cast a ballot.

Historically, the right to vote has never been about effort. It’s been about access, and is likely one of the reasons Lewis has been a fierce advocate for automatic voter registration — even if he’s allegedly Merrill’s pal.

Merrill’s dog-whistle politicking about “entitlements” doesn’t change that.

While the Chicago Cubs cherish the definitive end of “Curse of the Billy Goat” with their first World Series win in 108 years on Wednesday, Cleveland baseball fans must reckon with whether their loss was retribution for their racist mascot: Chief Wahoo.

As Peter Pattakos wrote in 2012 for the Cleveland Scene, the thinking goes that Cleveland is “paying the price for embracing America’s last acceptable racist symbol.” That symbol is Chief Wahoo, Cleveland’s racist caricature of a Native American chief, first imagined in 1947 by a 17-year-old draftsman and redrafted in red face in 1951.

As Ed Rice has similarly written for Indian Country Today, the city’s baseball team has been plagued with misfortune ever since, like most of the city’s other professional sports teams.

The last time Cleveland won the World Series was in 1948. The Cleveland Browns, who have never played in the Super Bowl, are also this year’s “last winless team in the league,” according to Sports Illustrated. The Cavaliers had to rally from a 3-1 lead by the Golden State Warriors in June to win the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history.

For the superstitious, Cleveland’s latest loss reinforces the city’s legacy of misfortune. And yet, the curse doesn’t have to be real to reflect the environment that created it. The Chief Wahoo curse isn’t just about wishing misfortune on a sports team. It reflects a bigger issue: America’s failure to recognize the humanity of the country’s indigenous people, even in 2016.

Native American mascots dehumanize actual Native Americans

The controversy surrounding the city’s baseball team, like Washington, DC’s football team, pivots on one thing: People have yet to be convinced that these mascots are inherently racist.

Fans claim the mascots are about unbridled enthusiasm for the game. In a memorable Daily Show segment, some went so far as to argue that mascots sporting racial slurs as nicknames honor Native Americans.

History makes it abundantly clear that these symbols dehumanize the group of people they are supposed to depict.

As David Pilgrim, a sociology professor at Ferris State University, told Pattakos, the final version of Chief Wahoo carried the same purpose of Jim Crow era caricatures like Sambo: “to legitimize patterns of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation.”

More than half a century later, studies show this continues to be true. In 2014, the Center for American Progress released a report detailing the damaging psychological impact of these mascots, from creating hostile learning environments at schools with Native American mascots to general low self-esteem and mental health among indigenous people forced to bear witness to these symbols.

“The issue is not one of political correctness but about promoting human dignity to those who have been denied it for all too long in this country,” Joaquin Gallegos, a member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation and the Pueblo of Santa Ana, said in the report.

While Cleveland baseball fans dressed up in faux headdresses with red face paint, actual indigenous people, like the Standing Rock Sioux, have been fighting for their rights in Standing Rock, North Dakota, in an effort to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The private project threatens both their water supply and the desecration of sacred ancestral lands.

Chief Wahoo isn’t merely a symbol of pride in a major league sports team. It represents an unsettling source of cognitive dissonance: Native Americans are valued more in America as sports mascots than as actual people with actual needs and rights that have been historically neglected and denied since America’s inception.

So is the Curse of Chief Wahoo real? Maybe. Maybe not. The undeniable fact is that the curse is a reminder of America’s shameful failure to recognize indigenous people as actual people.

Correction: The piece mistakenly said the Curse of the Billy Goat was 108 years old. The Chicago Cubs had not won the world series for 108 years.

On Facebook, more than a million people checked in to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota on Monday but that didn’t mean that many people were actually at the site.

As the Guardian reported, the action was an act of solidarity with indigenous water protectors and activists fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, inspired by a viral Facebook post that began circulating from an unidentified source on Sunday, to thwart suspected surveillance efforts by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department:

The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has been using Facebook check-ins to find out who is at Standing Rock in order to target them in attempts to disrupt the prayer camps. SO Water Protectors are calling on EVERYONE to check-in at Standing Rock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them. This is concrete action that can protect people putting their bodies and well-beings on the line that we can do without leaving our homes. Will you join me in Standing Rock?

If you’re sharing your location at Standing Stock:

1) Make it public.

2) Make the clarification post SEPARATE, and limit post visibility to your friends only.

3) Don’t clarify on your check-in post; privately message friends who say “stay safe!” to let them know what’s up.

4) Copy/paste to share clarification messages (like this one) because making it public blows our cover.

5) Use an alternate name in clarification posts so that when they filter out / search those terms, your post is visible to the right people.

The plea comes at a crucial moment. Since March, the Standing Rock Sioux, other indigenous communities, and allies have been fighting against the construction of a 1,172-mile pipeline transporting crude oil projected to run under the Missouri River that threatens the local water supply and sacred ancestral burial land.

But in recent months the tensions between water protectors and law enforcement have escalated. The contractors behind the Dakota Access Pipeline have hired security staff, which have reportedly used dogs to attack activists. Over 100 people were arrested on October 24. At least 141 people were then arrested all at once during a camp raid three days later. There have also been reports of law enforcement in riot gear, armored vehicles, and subjecting people to solitary confinement and strip searches while in police custody.

The Morton County Sheriff’s Office issued a statement on Facebook noting that the agency “is not and does not follow Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location. This claim/rumor is absolutely false.”

Their response, however, doesn’t make protesters any less skeptical. As burgeoning social movements use social media like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as a decentralized organizing strategy, it’s become clear that government surveillance of activists still occurs.

Social media has become a double-edged sword for activism

Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become crucial ways for people to participate in and organize contemporary social justice movements.

Even though “hashtag activism” has been used to demoralize a new generation of activists, social media tools like hashtags have allowed people to organize and amplify their messages beyond their local physical community and network faster than ever. Social media has also democratized who bears witness to these events and how.

For instance, it’s hard to imagine America’s current conversation about police brutality had it not been for the social media savvy of people on the ground in places like Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, and people tweeting out the names of victims like Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and countless others to show how frequent and pervasive police violence really is.

Yet while law enforcement have used social media to target criminals, activists have also been monitored on these platforms for their organizing efforts.

In December 2014, reports emerged of the Chicago Police Department using stingray technology to eavesdrop on local protests. George Joseph reported for the Intercept last July that DHS monitored the Twitter and Vine accounts of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. Mother Jones reported that Zero Fox, a cybersecurity firm, identified activists DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie as “threat actors” during protests in Baltimore last year. In August 2015, Vice reported that DHS was monitoring Mckesson’s activities on social media.

A recent lawsuit filed against the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights highlights the problem with surveilling activists in the movement for black lives: “monitoring [the movement for black lives’] legitimate protest activities with the same surveillance methods used to target and disrupt potential terrorists undermines the First Amendment’s robust protection of political speech.”

Organizers and water protectors at Standing Rock have been organizing and amplifying their message with #NoDAPL hashtag. In addition to providing updates on resources needed and information about possible police abuses, people are discussing how their current fight for clean water reflects the ways indigenous communities are fighting on the frontline against climate change in part because they have been systemically denied tribal sovereignty over their land since European settler colonialism.

But, as the Facebook post noted, indigenous activists express concerns that that law enforcement is using social media for surveillance.

“There is no doubt that law enforcement comb social media for incriminating material and monitor communications,” a unnamed representative of the Standing Rock Camp, one of at least eight resistance camps, told Snopes. “There is no solid line between ‘organizers’ and ‘others’ — this is a movement, not an organization. There are many camps and points of contact, we can only verify that it did not originate from the Sacred Stone Camp FB page. We support the tactic, and think it is a great way to express solidarity.”

Social media is, without a doubt, an invaluable organizing resource today. At the very least, the viral Facebook post provided an opportunity for people gain more awareness about Standing Rock, allowing some to provide virtual support when social media may be their closest source of contact.

But as Katie Mossett, a Native American activist, told the Guardian, one of the uncomfortable undertones of the post is the reminder that federal and local law enforcement agencies’ have consistently used surveillance strategies to thwart activist efforts.

“I think they’re listening to us right now as we speak,” Mossett said. “My concern is the invasion of privacy … It’s eerie and frankly quite irritating.”

Tensions are rising in North Dakota as Standing Rock Sioux members, activists, and allies protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which could damage their water supply.

NBC News reported that at least 141 people were arrested on Thursday after protesters (who refer to themselves as protectors) were met with militarized police force.

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In many ways, the story surrounding the 1,172-mile pipeline may seem familiar. Environmentalists have long criticized the US’s dependence on oil, and the increasing reliance on fracking to satisfy it. Dakota Access LLC, the company behind the pipeline, says the project would create 8,000 to 12,000 jobs through construction (though Mother Jones reports that Iowa State University professor David Swenson disputes this figure). However, oil spills are fairly common and companies rarely catch them, leaving local communities to fend for themselves as corporate interests are prioritized over the environment.

But there’s also another key issue at play: race, and the need to recognize indigenous tribes’ right to self-determination.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, located just South of the pipeline, has sued the federal government for failing to consult the tribe before the Army Corps of Engineers discreetly approved the pipeline in July. As the Washington Post reported, the pipeline will run under the Missouri River, the major natural water supply, and through sacred areas that aren’t considered official parts of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

“#NoDAPL has made clear that climate change isn’t up for debate for most indigenous peoples,” Aura Bogado, a staff writer at Grist.org who focuses on environmental racism, told me in an email interview. “It’s a real phenomenon that can mean the difference between life and death.”

And while a federal judge has affirmed the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s concerns that corporate and government entities alike failed to consult them, American history shows there is a violent history of denying indigenous groups sovereignty over their own lives.

Bogado discussed what current protests can teach us about centering race in environmental journalism and the importance of amplifying indigenous people’s stories.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Victoria Massie: To begin, how did you get involved in covering environmental racism as a journalist?

Aura Bogado: I’ve covered racial justice for a while, and have always had a particular interest in climate and the environment – but it’s really tough to write about this intersection. Although nonwhite people tend to live with more contaminated air, water, and soil, there remains a fundamental disengagement about this in both the mainstream environmental movement as well as in environmental journalism.

Pair this with the fact that I’m an indigenous woman who has a particular way of thinking about climate, and you get an idea of what I’m up against. Those challenges are changing and even decreasing, but not fast enough to catch up with the way the planet is warming. Nevertheless, I’m committed to writing about environmental racism.

VM: A major component of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests is the fact that the pipeline isn’t just an environmental hazard; it’s one that is being implemented with pretty much no regard for the Standing Rock Sioux. How does this fit into a broader discussion of tribal sovereignty?

AB: This is such a great question, because the issue of tribal sovereignty, which is just as important as the environmental hazard, is getting lost in the pipeline story.

Too many people tend to think of tribal sovereignty as something that’s allocated, which can be given or taken away depending on the circumstance. But it’s not. The Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s tribal sovereignty, which essentially precedes colonization, is permanent, and it’s recognized (as opposed to granted) by the federal government.

The nation is concerned that its waters would be contaminated and that its sacred sites will be desecrated by this pipeline project. On the surface, that claim can easily look like a specific racial group got together to lodge an environmental complaint, but there’s a lot more than that: It’s actually a tribal sovereign nation that’s making an important claim about self-determination and its ability to survive and exist in the future.

But this isn’t just lost on journalists. It extends to the highest office in the federal government. During his trip to Laos this week, President Obama was asked about the pipeline. He issued, at best, a lackluster answer. Obama gave great lip service to his culturally appropriate communication with indigenous peoples, but he added that he couldn’t even provide an answer “on this particular case.”

Aside from asserting ignorance on a topic I can’t help but think he’s already been briefed on, Obama also missed an opportunity to publicly recognize the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s tribal sovereignty. That’s a real shame, as is his decision to skirt the environmental and climate hazards the pipeline presents.

VM: When we talk about environmentalism, we hear a lot about climate change, politicians, and CO2 emissions. These are all a part of the story, but as the #NoDAPL protests are showing, they’re not the full story. Race is also a critical part of the issue. How have you seen race erased from the environmentalism story as a journalist, and how does #NoDAPL demonstrate the importance of foregrounding race in the conversation?

AB: Environmental racism is woven into our society’s fabric. The very founding of this country was an environmental disaster, made possible through settler colonialism, and vice versa. The historical emissions produced by white colonists have greatly contributed to climate change, leaving indigenous peoples and people of color — that is, the very people who didn’t contribute to global warming much at all — most vulnerable. I see a lot of stories that reference climate change without much of an understanding about who’s responsible for creating it. It didn’t appear out of nowhere; it was part of a larger violent process of theft and genocide, and it’s stunning to me that most environmental journalists don’t really seem to get that.

But it wasn’t only in colonizing the land. It’s also about the way cities were constructed. Racial housing covenants often segregated people of color into areas that had the most factories, oil refineries, heavy industry, and so forth. Although explicit racial segregation for housing is illegal today, the legacies of those neighborhoods, and who’s affected by contamination and pollution, haven’t changed much.

If you live in a city, look up your closest landfill. Chances are that landfill, and all the health and environmental concerns that stem from it, is in a neighborhood of color. These neighborhoods and sacrificial zones were literally designed to be that way, and not much has changed.

You’re right that a lot of environmental and climate stories focus on science and policy — and too often, that casts people aside. As an environmental journalist, I understand and keep up with the science: We can nerd out on greenhouse gases, lead, and particulate matter for days. But I also pay attention to how much science matches up to experience.

The people I focus my stories on don’t worry about the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide allowed in the Paris climate deal; they worry about the number of asthma inhalers they can afford to buy in order to survive.

#NoDAPL has made clear that climate change isn’t up for debate for most indigenous peoples. It’s a real phenomenon that can mean the difference between life and death.

VM: What questions do you find journalists aren’t asking when it comes to covering the #NoDAPL protests?

AB: You asked a great question about tribal sovereignty — but few journalists even understand what that means. There are several Indian law scholars who’d like nothing better than to have a journalist call and ask them to explain what tribal sovereignty is. That attorney might not be quoted in a story, but that journalist will be armed with a crucial understanding moving forward with which to explain what’s happening in Standing Rock and elsewhere.

I’m also surprised that reporters aren’t pressing the two leading presidential candidates on the pipeline. I can image what Trump’s answer might be, but what about Clinton? She’s claimed she supports environmental justice — her claim could be buffered by issuing a simple statement, although it seems rather late for that now. Since she’s failed to say anything about the pipeline, reporters might want to press her campaign on it.

Aside from what’s not being asked, I also wonder who’s being asked. I think it’s great that more white folks are getting involved, and even heading to North Dakota, but I worry about the way that white voices are validating what indigenous peoples, and people of color who are in solidarity, can say for themselves. So I think it’s incumbent upon reporters to get out of their comfort zones and talk to more than just white sources for this story.

VM: The Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter just recently traveled down to stand with #NoDAPL protesters. Why are these kinds of alliances important for understanding the complexity of the problem?

AB: The enslavement of black people in the Americas complicates the settler colonial matter I talked about earlier. One legacy of enslavement is that black skin continues to be an indicator that marks one’s place in a racial hierarchy. Black Lives Matter has built a worldwide movement and has also taken the time to work thoughtfully with indigenous peoples. There’s probably an amazing story waiting to be told about the meetings, especially among women and gender nonconforming people, that have taken place behind the scenes before and after BLM arrived at Standing Rock.

BLM knows it has the media’s attention, so it made a strategic decision to head to Standing Rock in order to get journalists to pay attention. It’s also brought much-needed supplies there. And it’s created some visibility for black indigenous folks to also be recognized. Every step of the fight against the pipeline has seemed historic to me. But this allegiance is toward the top of that list, and deserves more coverage.

VM: What can coverage (or lack thereof) of the #NoDAPL protests teach us about how indigenous communities stories are told?

AB: For the most part, stories about indigenous communities aren’t being told. We have a way of relegating indigenous peoples to the past, so stories that are taking place today rarely resonate with mainstream journalists. There are, of course, indigenous reporters and reporters of color that write about this — but the system that keeps journalism so white tends to keep the publishing gate closed in terms of what we can cover and when.

Then again, I do think that #NoDAPL has revitalized the argument [that] it’s important for journalists to pay attention to the fact that already marginalized communities are the ones on the front lines, fighting against environmental injustices. There’s a great opportunity here created by indigenous peoples. I hope we don’t miss it.

As Election Day approaches, candidates are rallying their bases to vote. But for Native American voters in places like Arizona, access — not apathy — may be the biggest barrier to turnout.

After the Supreme Court invalidated parts of the 1965 Voting Act, Arizona (with the second-largest Native American population in the country) has passed restrictive measures that have been shown to target voters of color in particular.

Native voters have since been dealing with a new host of unique voting roadblocks, says Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee, a law professor at Arizona State University. For instance, those who live on reservations often don’t have standard addresses reflected on both the rolls and their photo ID, which are now used to verify a person’s polling location and eligibility to vote. Many have to deal with burdensome transportation — think traveling several hours — just to get to a polling place. 

Even with mail-in ballots, a law passed after the Supreme Court’s ruling makes it illegal for most people to mail a ballot for someone else, unless they’re a caregiver or family member. This becomes a problem for those who don’t have access to neighborhood mailboxes, a local post office, or a car to get them to either.

These problems play out clearly among native populations in Arizona, says Ferguson-Bohnee. For example, only a quarter of Navajo Nation households have cars, and many people don’t receive mail at their home. So if a neighbor is going into town, the typical offer to drop off any mail becomes a problem if a mail-in ballot is involved.

“Unless that person is living with you or they’re your health care worker,” she says, “that person is subject to a Class 6 felony.”

Ferguson-Bohnee also serves as the coordinator for Arizona’s Native Vote Election Protection Project, a nonpartisan campaign group working to prevent Native American voters’ disenfranchisement. Vox spoke with her to examine what unique challenges Native American voters face today.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Victoria Massie

How are Native Americans often left out of the kinds of conversations we have about voting rights access?

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

Well, first I think the Native American population is small compared to the other minority groups in the United States, and because of that, a lot of times, the issues that impact Native Americans aren’t discussed. Also, there are places in the United States where Native Americans have some of the highest rates of poverty, which means they also have less access to vehicles. And we have places on reservations that don’t have access to utilities, which includes water, electricity, telephone service, and also internet access. So there’s just less access to information in Indian country. And one of those issues is the digital divide, and infrastructure.

The other issue deals with poverty. There have been efforts in the past to suppress the Native American vote, specifically to prevent Native Americans from even voting, denying that they are citizens. So really, the ability for Native Americans to participate in elections in states like Arizona didn’t really start until the 1970s because of [native] language access issues [after certain counties were required to provide translation services to native voters]. Now we do have native languages that are covered. Specifically, in Arizona, nine out of 15 counties are covered for Native American languages.

Whether or not the counties are following the law with regards to that is a different issue. Counties that are following the law are doing that as a result of lawsuits that were brought to enforce the Voting Rights Act, specifically section 203, which is a language minority provision.

Victoria Massie

Arizona is becoming a major battleground state this election. How do Native Americans fit into the state’s current electoral politics? 

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

After the Voting Rights Act, English literacy requirements were banned; Native Americans in Arizona started participating in elections and started being elected to office. But there were challenges to that, and there continue to be challenges because we have a lot of individuals who live on reservations who don’t have standard addresses.

So say, for example, in 2002, we had a very high Native American turnout. The election of Janet Napolitano [as governor] was credited with the Native American vote. They also had a gaming proposition on the ballot, and there was a big push for Native Americans to participate because their issues were actually on the ballot. They felt like they were a part of the process. Since that time, there have been a lot of changes in election administration, specifically laws that have been passed to suppress the vote. And I think one of those, most importantly, is the voter ID law.

The big issue with the voter ID law, and why it limits access disproportionately in the Native American community, is because if you vote by mail or early vote, you don’t have to show an ID. So if there’s in-person early voting available to you, you can participate in that. You don’t have to show ID. But if you vote in person on Election Day, you have to show ID. We have elders who have never needed a photo ID [to vote] who have been turned away from the polls.

If you look at the statistics, there are actually a high number of people who aren’t voting on Election Day because they don’t have ID. They’re either denied a ballot or they arrive at the polling place and they never return with ID. Under Arizona’s law, you have to return with ID within five days of a federal election in order for your ballot to be counted [if you didn’t initially arrive to vote with an ID card]. So that’s a barrier.

And that’s a barrier for some of the reasons I mentioned earlier, which includes the types of ID that are allowed: a utility bill, a property tax statement, a vehicle registration card, vehicle insurance card — things that Native Americans are less likely to have.

[On] most reservations, most people do not receive mail at their homes, and they have nonstandard addresses. They have to sometimes travel an hour or more to receive their mail. In one county in particular, [the county] changed everyone’s address, so that people’s addresses didn’t match the voting roster, so people were turned away from the polls.

All of these impact the ability of Native Americans to exercise their vote. I think because there’s been more attention paid to Arizona this election cycle, there are going to be efforts to turn out the vote by both parties. In Arizona, we have more independents than Democrats or Republicans.

Also the rhetoric before the election has even happened, that the voting is rigged, is encouraging more people to volunteer as poll watchers. Those people can challenge voters, and depending on how it’s done, that can have a negative impact on voters even though you’re supposed to be ensuring that the law is followed. So it could have a positive impact to make sure that poll workers aren’t asking things that they shouldn’t be asking, or that they’re allowing people to vote [with IDs sanctioned under the expanded ID law, which allows] Native Americans to vote, using a provisional ballot with any ID issued by the tribe or tribal division with just their name on it. If people aren’t trained properly on that, they could be challenging voters.

That could result in voters not exercising their vote, or feeling embarrassed, or being turned away despite what the law allows. And a lot of that has to do with poll worker training. But when you have poll watchers, sometimes they’re challenging things that need not be challenged. 

Victoria Massie

Is that typical?

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

It’s not typical, but I think sometimes with the nonstandard addresses, people aren’t placed in a poll[ing place]. That happened during the last general election. And so what happens is that if the poll workers don’t check the other voting list, then people will be told, “Oh, you’re not registered. You can’t vote here.” But we have the Help America Vote Act, which ensures that if someone believes they’re at the correct polling location, the poll workers have to issue them a ballot. And so sometimes that doesn’t happen. 

If we have volunteers there, we go back in with them, or if they call our hotline, we check their voter registration. And sometimes it says “voter precinct unspecified.” Or we try to call the country recorders. They’ll have a regular list, an inactive list, and, the last election, Apache County had a [list] for individuals who weren’t placed in a polling precinct. Sometimes people have to draw their addresses, and then the county places them in their precinct. 

A voter can be properly registered but the poll workers [could] not be aware of that. 

Victoria Massie

Mail-in ballots are supposed to help voter access, especially when it comes to early voting. But is that always the case, especially in areas like Arizona, where Native Americans don’t necessarily have standard addresses?

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

If you don’t have a standard address, you may describe your address. And that address may be on your driver’s license or your Arizona ID card. But that address doesn’t fit into the county’s voter registration database.

So [the county has] to change the addresses. And under the Arizona process, the Arizona county officials get to decide whether your ID reasonably matches [the voter rolls] for you to receive a regular ballot on Election Day. So they’re supposed to have both your physical address and your mailing address. Your physical address could be the address on your driver’s license, [but] if it’s not a standard address, it won’t fit in their voter registration database.

[During] the last presidential election in Pinal County, people were being turned away. Reservation voters were being turned away because all of their addresses had been changed, and people didn’t know that.

We had an elder that we worked with who was very passionate about voting, and she was subject to this law because a lot of native people like to vote in person on Election Day, and especially if you need language translation, the only way you’re really going to achieve that is if you vote at the polls on Election Day. So we had a Navajo elder who had been voting since she had been allowed to vote in the ’70s. And after this law was enacted, she went to the polls to vote, and she didn’t have ID, or the ID that they were asking for. And so they berated her. She wasn’t allowed to vote. So she didn’t return for the next election.

To demonstrate how hard it was for her to obtain an ID, she lived in Chilchinbito, Arizona, which is more on the eastern side of the Arizona portion of the Navajo reservation. Somebody brought her to Tuba City, Arizona. We drove from Tempe to Tuba City to meet her so that she could receive her affidavit of live birth from the Navajo Nation and then go to the DMV next door. Well, we received her affidavit of birth, and then we went to the DMV, and the DMV wasn’t issuing photo ID cards. They were issuing paper cards. Well, that wouldn’t be sufficient to obtain a regular ballot.

So we then drove to Flagstaff. She went in to receive her ID as she had told us she had tried several times before. And when she got there, she said they would not accept her affidavit of birth from the Navajo Nation. But since we were there, we said, “No, this is an acceptable form of documentation to prove citizenship, so you must accept it.” And they issued her an ID.

But it was a very long process. She doesn’t have a car, she lived in a home without utilities, and she just didn’t ever have a need for a photo ID. And we drove. It took us five hours one way and then another five hours back. And she drove from the other part of reservation to Tuba City, and then [in] Flagstaff, someone had to pick her up. So it was a lot of energy invested into that process, and it really shouldn’t be that hard for someone to vote.

Victoria Massie

You’ve mentioned some of the issues Native American elders in particular face. Is there a generational divide in terms of access among Native American voters?

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

I think that’s a great question because if you’re younger, you may be able to go to the chapter [office on the reservation], get on the internet, and request an early ballot. I will say that the limited opportunities for early voting on the reservation prevent native voters from having the same type of voting opportunities as non-reservation individuals.

For example, Apache County — it’s a huge county. But early voting is located off the reservation. [Polling workers] may come to the reservation a couple times for a few hours to engage in early voting, but how are people notified about that? In Nevada they just recently were able to win a preliminary injunction to allow for that early voting on the reservation because of the distance it requires to go off the reservation. There’s no public transportation for people to even go off the reservation to do this.

Victoria Massie

How did the 2013 Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act impact Native American voters in general, and specifically in Arizona?

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

There is a native community in Maricopa County called Guadalupe, and it’s a Yaqui community, and it’s not on a reservation. It’s just a Yaqui Indian community within the county, and at the presidential preference election, Maricopa County reduced the number of polling locations to 60. And I think in the previous presidential preference, where it was contested, there were at least 400 — people stood in line for five hours. There were people who didn’t have access to the polling location because of transportation issues.

And one of the questions asked to the county recorder was whether or not they considered the impact on minority voters. And the answer was no. Without Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, some individuals and officials do not consider the negative impact that laws may have on minority voters.

Victoria Massie

But now you could be criminalized for trying to exercise your basic right to vote under the circumstances that this is the only way you can do it.

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

Right. And it was really, I think, because one of the parties was more successful in canvassing to see who had received a permanent early vote. Or early vote to say, “Hey, have you turned in your vote? I can go pick it up for you.” I don’t understand why that is a problem, especially when there is no evidence of any sort of fraud. And that’s the same thing for voter IDs across the country. There isn’t all this evidence of voter fraud — or in some cases, any voter fraud — and these laws are being passed. So the purpose of the law isn’t to ensure integrity of the voting system if you don’t have fraud. It’s to suppress the vote. 

Victoria Massie

What key points do Native American voters, specifically in Arizona, but also more generally, need to know gearing up for the election this year?

Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee

Whoever is elected, whether it’s for Senate or president, will make a difference on who is confirmed to many of these positions that undertake the federal relationship and federal trust responsibility. So that includes who is the secretary of the interior, and who is the assistant secretary of Indian affairs whose main job is to enforce the trust responsibly. And whoever the Supreme Court justices are, because we have a number of federal Indian law decisions that will be decided by the Supreme Court. Those are extremely important issues.

Also whoever your senators are, the Affordable Care Act includes funding for Indian health care. And if that’s overturned, that’s something that tribes should be aware of, specifically what individuals are saying. Whether they’re going to limit that or whether they’re [supporting] health care funding that is direly needed in Indian country. So even though they may feel remote and not a part of the process of a lot of the decisions that are being made, at the federal level, they are impacting their daily lives.