Video Transcript
Go to vote whether it's in person or vote by mail that they have access and their vote is counted today. I have two very special guest with me Krystal Echo, who is CEO of Illuminate and Jacqueline De Leon, who is a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Foundation. Before we kick off this conversation, I just wanted to acknowledge the land that I am on right now in Washington, DC for the community of the ins and the Piscataway tribe. Had this land before any of us got here? so I wanted to pay tribute and honor them and I also now wanna welcome Crystal and Jacqueline to the turn up. welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you you okay. We're gonna hop right into it before we start talking to specifically on voting rights. First. I just wanna talk about the state of the Native American community right now in Covet, there are a lot of challenges. We're seeing this disease hit community. Of color indigenous people at disproportionate rates Crystal, I know you've started an initiative so I wanted to give you some space to talk about that initiative and what you're seeing and the Native American community right now. we're sure well. Thank you so much for having me and you know really the mission of illumined of the Organization that I I founded in that you know we're working together to lead is really focused on fighting the ability and the era of native peoples and so we did a research project starting back in 2016 that really Call the reclining of Truth project that found that nearly 80 percent of Americans feel little to nothing about native peoples and so we are largely sort of invisible within the American public within media entertainment, you name it every sector really contemporary Native Americans. really, you know don't really exist in the minds of the Americans and and often times that means that you know the Americans are invisible when it comes to things like legislation, allocation of resources and other things. and so that avis. This is very dangerous. It feels bias. it can feel racism and when we are faced now in this time of the pandemic of Cove, 19 and visibility can really be a matter of life or death. And so it's really important in our mission at illumined is really to amplify the voices of native people The stories from the front lines right now of how our communities are being impacted by Covet 19, but also to really talk about the stories of resilience and amazing examples of tribal sovereignty and action of grassroots native organized. And communities really coming together and being resilient in this time and really, you know advancing native blood solutions so that's it. you know you know work that we're committed to doing in terms of how the overall sort of state of of Indian country right now with Co in 19, I mean right now there's over 21, reported 2100 reported cases within the Indian health care system, But the the thing is is that the data collection is really broken. It's it's a broken system of data collection. Kind of playing into these issues around visibility and so we really only think that might be the tip of the iceberg particularly since 70 percent of Native Americans live in cities and right now, and I know this impacts other communities of color are word. That was that kind of important data around race and ethnicity isn't always being captured. so we think that might be the tip of the iceberg but Navajo Nation right now and the number three hot spot in the entire country. I mean it's not our. Behind New York and you know in New Mexico native Americans are 40 - five percent of all cases in New Mexico and 16 percent of the death rate in Arizona so to your point, Cove 19 is disproportionately impacting native people's and communities of color man those statistics are devastating and unacceptable. so I wanna say thank you for the work that you're doing Jack. I wanna bring you in on this conversation. and let you share some of you're thinking on and some of your observations of what's happening in the country as well. Yeah. So I think Krystal really highlighted some of the disproportionate impacts that are happening. I know that it's a really scary time frankly and I know that tribal governments are responding really strongly that they're doing their best to protect their communities trying to protect their elders. they're exercising their sovereignty closing their borders trying to trying to move. Around their lands and I think a lot of people are rising up and supporting their communities by trying to get resources out to the vulnerable population across a really rural areas and I think that that really real nature of a lot of reservations provides really logistical challenges and so it's impressive to see people rise up to that to that challenge to take care of each other but it's a daunting problem and it's certainly a very a scary time you know one of the reasons why we wanted to have a turn up Tuesday. focus particularly on this community is because we did not want to be a part or an enabler of erasing the the indigenous people to this land. so I wanna thank Jacqueline from NAR, the Native American Rice Foundation and Crystal Echo Hawk, who is the CEO of Illuminate. So and I met back in December and. We're like we need to do some stuff around voting and senses and communities the in on reservations in Indian country and Native American communities. Little did we know that we will be faced with the pandemic now five months later having this conversation, the impact that we're seeing in Indian country has ripple effects on our health care system, but also creating access to the ballot. Jacqueline I'm wondering if you can. and actually before I actually ask this question if you have a question for those who are watching feel free to drop it in the comment box and we will see if we can get an answer before this conversation ends so Jacqueline Your Organization focuses a lot on voting rights. it's a part of our civil and human rights coalition such an integral part of our work. Can you talk to me about the state of voting rights for the Native American community even before Kobe cuz it was not great and now. Another barrier on top of this, yeah, so the need American Rights Fund has been dedicated to advancing a voting rights in Indian country for years and over the last two years I was able to co-lead a series of field hearings across Indian country nine in total to ask the question. Why is it that Native Americans are disproportionately not register to vote and not voting right so about six only about 66 percent of eligible Native Americans. Estimated to be registered that leaves over A million Native Americans eligible of Native Americans not registered and you know even for those that are registered. you know definitely not getting out to the ballot box at proportional rate as the rest of communities in the state. and so we ask that question of why and later this month, we're gonna have an almost 200 page report coming out detailing a whole bunch of barriers, but I think it really boils down to the fact that it's really hard to vote in. In native communities, one of the things we saw over and over again is that it was just too far 40 miles to go and cast a ballot on dirt roads in November. that means that it is you know really hard to get out to that ballot box. the other thing is they're often in border towns not on the reservation and something that might surprise a lot of people is that we were still seeing over racism so were seeing communities you know count. you know actors of the government that we're being frankly racist towards native voters, so they had voting facilities for example in South Dakota of a repurposed chicken coop. and so this is where you guys are gonna vote. You know there's still crates in the corner and people felt really disrespected no bathroom facilities and so those kind of actions you know really communicate to the people that their vote isn't wanted and so People have to overcome that kind of attitude just to go and cast their ballot, usually in a you know, sometimes in a really unfamiliar area. and so you know we've been trying to encourage moving voting facilities on-site facilities on the reservation and in safe spaces, you know with native people as poll workers there's no reason that Native people can't you know run an election their their citizens of the. States and their citizens of the counties and so they're they are qualified to you know run an election in their community and they should have more of an opportunity to do so. there's a whole host of other factors, but I think those are some big ones. Yeah. Okay so 40 miles it's as far as a hundred and 50 miles to cast an in-person ballot. That's crazy. Yeah. That's like. Go I am in Washington, DC hometown in Youngstown, Ohio. Yeah, it takes five hours to them so it could be as close as 40 miles, which is not very close chicken coops crystal. Why do you think we live in this? you know we're in this country. This was this great democracy and yet the people who are native to this land are experiencing such a oppressive conditions to do the one. This country was like supposed to empower, which is the franchise for people make it make sense. Please it makes no sense to me. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense right. I mean it's just it. It doesn't make sense as the original first Americans in this country. We've we've served in wars. I mean we make massive contributions to this country. yet you know we're we're treated like in these conditions and so I mean really again what are our research found is that you know the invisibility is so profound again that 80 percent of Americans don't know about us. 72 percent don't even like encounter any information about us on a daily basis right and anywhere in the media and the vast quantity of media that we all consume on a daily basis. Native Americans contemporary Americans are not showing up in that, so there's a vast majority of the population that it's just we're out of sight out of mind right and so when we think about issues' from voting rights and I have to kind of challenge like even the left and the Progressive front of our movement that often. Our allies as well as we are, we don't always get invited in these conversations. That's why we're so excited to be having a conversation with you today, right, Yeah and that we are facing these these voting rights and that we we need to be working together around these issues, but I think what we also found is that invisibility serves to dehumanize and that really when we went out in one of our surveys, we found that it barely 60 percent of Americans in that poll considered Native Americans to be fully human wrap. Around that statistic for a minute, it makes no sense and so when you talk about dehumanization of a population, it's easy to do things to like we're gonna put you in a chicken coop. We're gonna treat you in this way and we also found in our research that particular in these areas that Jacqueline's talking about border towns, these towns that are right up against reservations. We found the highest instances of racism and bias right that's really fueled with just a lot of miseducation misinformation and you know a lot of. Perpetuated by the education system, we've found that 90 percent of the schools don't teach about Native Americans past 19 hundreds so for most Americans again, we're sort of relegated to they lived in TV. They existed a long time ago and they don't teach about modern Native American day. You don't learn about tribal governments when you learn about governments in society and so there's a lot of misinformation that fuels a lot of ignorance and you kind of just throw some of the right wing nationalist sort of rhetoric. that's been kind of you know gain. The momentum in our country and then you kind of situate sort of the systemic issues around invisibility or perpetuating false narratives about Native Americans that we're all alcoholics and we don't pay taxes and we just live off the government. This sets a lot of conditions for this racism to play out and and in this instance around this voting rights abuses, you know a turn up is like when you go from zero to a hundred like real quick and you get upset and just. I was like rocking in my chair as I was listening to you because I know that injustice but to hear it be to think that people don't think that Native Americans are a fully human like you know there was a part of our history where black people were the recess of you. It's just it's outrageous to think that is the the thinking and the sentiment of some people living in this country, but we know it's true, which is why we need to turn up and shine a light. okay. We're talking about voting. so let's get to it. There is this-we're. We're in the. Of a pandemic we normally might have done this in person. We can't do that. We need to be at our homes to stay safe and so there's a huge conversation right now in our our country about how people are going to vote in November's election and while we know an overwhelming amount of people will need to vote by mail, we also know it's not accessible to many communities, including the Native American community. Jacqueline. Can you talk about why vote by mail? Is not the Panacea is not the one fix like it it it kinda it makes me wanna turn up when I hear it was just like why I just vote by now. it's like wake up. It's not that simple for everyone. life was not you know so tell me what are some of the challenges that you're experiences will vote by mail so first, thank you for including us in this conversation. I can even among allies vote by mail is kind of something that has gotten this mythic reputation as the Savior. of sort of you know the ability to increase turnout everywhere and so you know, let's all vote by mail. I'm support of a vote by mail. I think that we all need to increase voting options wherever we can but on made in native communities, I think the simple answer is a lot of people don't get mail delivered to their homes and so either their home is completely unaddressed, meaning there's not an address on there. Or it has a non-traditional address and the post office will not drive up to that House and drop a ballot into the box and it's not gonna be able to pick it up and so Native Americans just don't have the option of safely voting from their homes and a lot of instances instead, they're reliant on PO boxes to service their community. The problem with PO boxes is that they're far again you know, 2030 40 miles. they also cost money they're often shared and they're so they're open from nine to you know nine to four on a Tuesday they're not sort of having this like nine to five or you know in any event. It's just business hours. That's not gonna be this 24 hour access and so male is difficult in the country and you know natives could conceivably go an entire election without picking up their mail and certainly not picking up receiving filling out and dropping it back off and so. vote by mail just isn't gonna work in native communities and then the last thing I'll say on just sort of the logistical challenges to keep in mind is even if we're able to get everybody a ballot and have them turn them back in the rural post offices that they're turning them back in that meal is gonna bounce around. so you know you never you're putting it into a rule post office. it doesn't get sent right to your County. your County official. it gets bumped all the way back to whatever major city is closest and then bounce back and so native ballots are gonna take. Lot longer to come in than other ballots you know mailed in the city and so we have to be cognizant of all of those challenges now, if you did not listen to the Turn Up Tuesday that we did two weeks ago that focus on my home, state of Ohio would have heard a very similar explanation around the challenges of the vote by mail system is that the bounce in Ohio they were saying that if you mail something in Toledo it has. To Detroit, which is not even in the same state to end up to get to back to Toledo. So it's not that we are. It's why we actually are in coalition because some of the challenges that face one community faces another and we can help to make reforms more accessible and working in coalition together Crystal. I know there are also is challenges with broadband a lot of times when you need to request your ballot, you either have to go online and download. It is not intuitive if you have to download the application, send back your applications to only get the ballots then fill it out correctly and send it back. can you talk about some of the challenges with Internet access in the country and how that also create a barrier to people can have access to the ballot. Absolutely they you know, unfortunately, there's a massive digital divide in this country when we talk about our reservations and and tribal communities and it's it's been a a decades long problem. I mean I can remember when I first started organizing like I'm not gonna say how long ago, but it was right and it's like we're we're constantly dealing with this issue about the digital divide and that you know there's a massive ssss of many of these reservations communities like not too long ago at the Beno and Indian reservation up in Montana and I mean vast parts. A reservation with no no Internet access right in really limited cell phone service and those types of things and so that's a very real issue and it's a real issue. That's playing itself right out right now as everyone's leaning in to online education for children all kinds of things. I mean we're we're grappling with this now in that how many native students are not able to access sort of online educational resources and other types of things that maybe might more accessible to other communities. and so it is it is a really big problem. and it needs to it's it's a long standing problem. This pandemic gives it a great opportunity that we need to really address it and ensure that all communities have access. Yeah. It's like you you won't have access to vote that would empower people to put policies in place to help improve your life. And so it's just like repetitive cycle of like creating barriers, then like not having access to elected officials that actually have you at the forefront of their mind. I know we've been. About a lot of the problems, but you are both do really great work and I wanna give you a chance to let people know what they can do to get involved. One thing I wanna say, is that a lot of times in our movement and just large for people who believe in civil rights. It's like Oh, it's a black problem. so Ashley's gonna work on it cuz she's a black person. Oh as a native American problem. so Crystal and Jaclyn is gonna work on it. That's not how we do it here on the turn ups. Okay like their problem is my problem. My problem is the problem. We're gonna work together so. Of where people live Crystal, I'm gonna start with you. can you tell folks what they can do to either get involved with your effort and plug in so that we can help make this a voting as accessible as possible. Then Jack I wanna hear from you. Yeah, absolutely and I'm just that's so true and I think you know the biggest thing that I would just say to allies you know because that invisibility is a real thing, even when you are woke and you're passionate about social Justice and doing the right thing that it's an implicit bias that exists out of invisibility and so it's doing that constant gut level check as as you're working and organizing is or native people included in this conversation. If not, if I'm not the one of Jack's, not the one, we'll find the person for you to connect with. so it's just really like offering like let us be. For people in this work but I wanna encourage people please go to our website. WWW dot Elis dot org and go to slash Boyer up. This is we've launched a National campaign called up. We We released a PSA last week with a lot of people folks might recognize just again. It's called the action around Co 19 to really protect our elders protect our communities and as we say, stay away together but this Thursday, April thirtieth, we're gonna be hosting a National Virtual Town Hall And 19, and we've got amazing tribal leaders from the President of Navajo Nation to Congresswoman Deb Holland Congresswoman Sharice Davids The Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan from Minnesota, as well and we're gonna be one of our big conversations that we're gonna be having on Thursday night is the disproportionate impacts that is having on native communities and people of color and really also inviting other native leaders in because it is this moment we can't forget about the election. We can't forget about what's ahead and. We need to make systemic and transformative change, so just really why I wanna invite people to tune in Thursday night. It's gonna be on taboos YouTube page from Black Eyed Peas as well as on Lu's Facebook page and and we can share out more information with your network, but you know we're we're ready to work shoulder to shoulder with everyone we we did this change and like you said this is the election of a lifetime. Yeah and and in this pandemic we also one another as well. We're really all related. I love it. Warrior was my word for the year, so I love that so I'm here shoulder to shoulder with you Jacqueline how can people get involved with the work that you're doing? Yeah. So we just wanna Echo. I'm really excited about Crystal's Initiative on Thursday and that's a great way to be involved other ways to to be involved. you know dot org. we've got sort of worksheets and ways that you can you know address things like. Vote by mail in your community definitely just bringing Native Americans up in the conversation. you know checking to see if if you're adjacent to an Indian community. maybe ask where is the polling location? for me and where's the polling location for them and if you see that polling location is off the reservation, you know making inquiries into your County officials to see whether or not they are going to put up a polling location on Reser. Land and for the trouble of members that are that are listening, I would really encourage them to approach your travel governments let them know that you're passionate about voting. Let them know that you're available to be a poll worker. Let them know that you're also want to maintain in person polling locations. I know I know that it's a scary time and that a lot of people are you know unsure about how voting is gonna take place and that we have to try and be safe about it. We have to be sure to get you know, protective equipment and distancing and fit no ideas like. Side voting to try and keep everybody safe but if we move real quick all to vote by mail, people aren't gonna be able to vote and that's just the bottom line. It's just people are gonna be able to vote safely because they don't get that ballot at their House. so it's not safe to vote from their House cuz they're so they're gonna have to go out anyway so if they wanna vote in the biggest election of our lifetimes and they wanna do it safely the tribes need to participate in making it safe, making those in-person options safe you know conducting. curbside voting I'm working with election officials to make sure that they've got the resources Okay. I like to close out every session because we talk about a lot of problems if you would leave down, but what is so we're gonna bring it up on this turn up. What is one thing in this very challenging and unprecedented moment that our country is facing that is giving you hope. If you want, I think it's just it's stories of resilience. This is resilience like you said. Normally, you might be meeting in person you know and and I think this Pem is letting us see each other in different ways. It's it's giving it to more intimate connection. you're getting to see in our homes and our kids and our backgrounds and we're just that resiliency that innovation those just the moments of humanity that you know I've been on 10 million calls is everyone else and we've had those moments where we've all shared. We shared moments, we've shared laughter and we share different things and that gives me hope that gets me fired up and I and I I feel really empowered and strong with that awesome. Jacqueline. I'll just say I'm just really proud of the way that so many young people are stepping up to protect our elders and our community. I'm seeing the way that they organize and how they've been you know just I'm gonna go shopping and I'm gonna you know drive and leave it at the front door and wave that you know to them from the porch and I think that you know they're gonna drive those really far distances. To get them and make sure that they're okay and I think that this you know unfortunate situation gave us a moment to pause and recognize how valuable our elders are and how much we have the ability to pull together to protect them and that they're the ones that we have to really rally around when they're vulnerable at this point and I think that I've been seeing all over the country. Native communities do that and it's really inspiring well. Crisco Echo Hawk from Illuminate. Jacquelyn De Leon from the National American Rights Foundation, also known as Nar. Thank you for this turn up. we all have to turn it together to ensure that our Native American brothers and sisters have access just as much access to the ballot as we do one post person who is disenfranchised as a country that is disenfranchised and we won't stand for it. Thank you for being in community with me. Thank you for turning up. If you want to find more information you can go to and still I vote dot org. We will be back next Tuesday for another turn up. Thanks everyone. Thank you.
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