Who gets to vote is still up for grabs

The first time I began to understand a bit about how Native Americans' right to vote is frequently denied was in 2004. Not that what I saw that year was anything new ... but it bears remembering.

The Democratic-adjacent political consultancy we were working with in Albuquerque, New Mexico had assigned an eager young man several months before the November presidential election to try to increase the vote coming out of the state's nineteen recognized Pueblos. These tribal entities were deeply rural and isolated, mostly very poor without money jobs except perhaps at a dingy casino, and organized under Native governments. Nowadays, the state of New Mexico advertises them to tourists. Then the Pueblos were just pockets of poverty to be romanticized by whites as historic artifacts and kept out of sight.

Our organizer went to work vigorously. He drove hundreds of dusty miles on dirt roads, held numerous meetings with elders and tribal authorities, and finally persuaded several hundred eligible people to sign up to vote. Then he arranged for their registration forms to be delivered to the appropriate county governments in which their particular pueblos were located.

As Election Day approached, nobody heard anything. The new registrants were not contacted. Finally Democratic Party election lawyers made some calls and were assured that all was well.

On Election Day, our organizer returned to some of the hamlets where he'd worked so hard in order to drive voters to the polls. But his passengers were turned away; there was no record of their registrations. The election lawyers eventually determined that NONE of these 300 or so citizens were entered on the rolls. So they could not vote.

And just to rub it in -- most of the counties where the Pueblos are located were run by white and Hispanic Democrats. It seems that out there in the countryside what disqualified a voter was being a tribal citizen ...

This June, the Native American Voting Rights Coalition issued a report titled: Obstacles at Every Turn.

Not nearly enough has changed since 2004 for Native voters: too many election rules seem designed to make voting very difficult. Potential Native voters are disqualified by not having addresses recognized by the post office, by election offices and polling places which are only open limited hours, by limited numbers of polling places, and by having to take costly drives over long distances on unpaved roads in order to cast a ballot.

And then last week, the Supreme Court approved an Arizona law which strictly limits who can carry a voter's completed ballot to their polling place. This is aimed straight at impeding voting by tribal citizens living far off the beaten path. The highest court has made it abundantly clear that it will not protect against partisan, often racist, restrictions on voting.

National legislation protecting voting rights would seem the obvious remedy -- but it seems we may not get this because of the unwillingness of a few Democrats in the U.S. Senate to use their power to make it happen.

Voting rights for Native Americans still depend on the determination of the people to claim the vote.

Weasel words

This is not the most important vexation in this moment, but this New York Times headline provoked me.

Either the Native American population dependent on the hospital were abandoned by the overlords of the U.S. Indian Health Service or that population is in the grip of a delusion. Which is it, Times? 

If you don't have an answer, you don't have a story. I wouldn't ask this of some amateur blog -- but the "newspaper of record" ...

Good news you understandably might have missed

While we were all trying to adjust to being locked down, some good stuff happened out there.

Did you know that Colorado abolished the death penalty last Monday? Governor Jared Polis signed the measure sent him from the Democratic legislature eliminating capital punishment and also converted the sentences of three men awaiting execution to life without the possibility of parole. This makes Colorado the 22nd state without a death penalty. Many states, including California, retain death penalty laws on the books, but seldom or never execute convicted offenders....Early in March, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger ordered removal of Confederate paraphernalia from all of the service's bases. Oh, you thought that the victor in that war had been determined a century and a half ago? So did I. But after members of Congress had held a hearing on white supremacist activity in the ranks, the general felt he should take action.

"We're not being politically correct -- nobody told me to do this. The sergeant major and I are just trying to do what's right for the institution.

"We're trying to make it better."

...

Finally, the Water Is Life movement scored a big win against a dangerous, dirty oil pipeline.

... a federal court issued a major ruling in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s legal challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The D.C. Court of Appeals found that the Army Corps of Engineers violated federal law in giving the pipeline a permit to cross beneath the Missouri River, at a spot just north of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, whose residents say the pipeline poses an ongoing threat to their drinking water, sacred sites, and way of life.

“This decision vindicates everything we have been saying,” Dallas Goldooth, a grassroots organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, tells Mother Jones. “Indigenous expert knowledge cannot be ignored. The fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground cannot be ignored. This is a huge win, not just for the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes, but for the hundreds of other nations fighting extractive projects on their lands.”

Will this hold up in court? There's a chance. The victory is a reminder of what Native Americans have to know: never say never.

Raised up by the wind in colonized Massachusetts

When Puritan colonists descended on epidemic-decimated Massachusetts in the 1600s, they ostensibly believed it was their responsibility to evangelize the existing Native inhabitants. According to Michael P. Winship's Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America:

The English had always made pious, empty noise about the missionizing goals of their colonies. "Come over and help us," says the Native American on the 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Yet for already overworked New England ministers faced with what one called the "veriest ruins of mankind," it was easier to agree with the illustrious John Cotton about the Native Americans' place in God's plan for humanity. The Native Americans' mass conversion was to take place only after the mass conversion of the Jews. Since the Jews remained stubbornly Jewish, the Native Americans must remain, for the time being, Native American, and there was no point in putting energy into trying to convert them.

Somewhat surprisingly, some local Natives took it upon themselves to investigate the Englishmen's God. After all, that God seemed powerful while their Wampanoag spirits had allowed the epidemic.

Winship tells the story of a man named Waban who apparently had always felt a call to be a spiritual leader of some sort to his people, but never quite found his role until he decided to study the secrets of the English religion. He then led a community called by the Puritans the "Praying Indians" who attempted to adopt Puritan customs. They convinced at least some Puritan congregations of the authenticity of their acceptance of the Christ and were baptized -- a far from perfunctory rite in that colony. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts confirmed their title to their land and later the town of Natick was founded as a home for "Praying Indians." Conversion spread around Cape Cod and particularly offshore on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Though imported European illnesses continued to kill off members of the tribe for several generations, some Wampanoags found a way to make their peace with the white men's God.

Waban's acceptance of Christianity had one idiosyncrasy to it. He never adopted the practice, common among Praying Indians, of taking a Christian first name. Perhaps that was because he felt he did not need to, for his name was already charged with Christian significance. "Waban" meant "wind," and Eliot's first sermon to the Notamun Indians was on Ezekiel 37:1-4, which speaks of wind stirring dry bones.

Native Americans and English alike made the connection between the verse and Waban and his evangelizing activities. For Waban, his prophetic name meant that the coming of Christianity started before the arrival of Europeans. Other Native Americans recalled pre-contact dreams of the arrival of black-clothed missionaries, while still others were convinced that the missionaries were restoring wisdom the Native Americans had forgotten.

These newest of Native American stories, about how their God used the English to complete his bringing of this truth to them, meant nothing to most colonists. ...

The Praying Indian community was further repressed in the wake of what the colonists called "King Phillip's War" in 1676 when some of the tribespeople rose up against the English interlopers.

But elements of a syncretistic piety survive to this day among the Wampanoags. On Martha's Vineyard Island, the tribe is an important component of a racially diverse population. In southern Massachusetts in the last few days, the Trump Administration Department of the Interior is trying to "disestablish" the Mashpec Wampanoags. Perhaps the tribe is suspected of wanting to compete with Trump in a casino business? ...I thought of Waban when we read from Ezekiel about the dry bones brought to life by wind in online church on Sunday morning....The illustration here is from Native American Netroots.

I took up Hot Protestants as part of my personal "1620 project" in which I'm trying to learn a little more about the story of my ancestors who were among those tough but otherwise unattractive settlers at Plymouth 400 years ago. A previous post:
Those Plymouth Puritans