Tobacco smoke wafts from a shell as the sound of ululation rises from the crowd.
“Arizona has Indigenous DNA,” Navajo activist Allie Young says to cheers. “And this country has Indigenous DNA. And let’s be proud of that.”
Young is founder of the group Protect the Sacred. And she is at Fort Defiance, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, to encourage her people _ and all Native Americans _ to vote.
“This year marks 100 years of citizenship for Native Americans in this country, and it’s a special year for our people,” says Young, her neck encircled by strands of red and turquoise beads.
“You know, our communities are up against so much voter suppression,” she says. “Since we got the right to vote, we’ve had these barriers. But we’re here today to say that we’re not letting those barriers stop us and we’re coming together as a community and we’re showing our power.”
Navajo social media influencer Ian Teller uses video to inform his people about the voting process, and remind them of their own influence.
“It’s going to be a very close vote in Arizona,” he says, the band on his Western hat flashing in the Arizona sun. “And I think that the potential that native people have in this elections to change the outcome is going to be really interesting. I mean, if you think about 2020, where the state was carried by Joe Biden by only 10,000 votes in that election, there was about maybe 60,000 Navajo/Hopi voters. That goes to show and say it says a lot about how powerful the native vote will be in this state.”
On a recent sunny day, Young and actor Mark Ruffalo led a “Walk to the Polls” in Fort Defiance. As they marched, the group chanted “Shí Naashá,” which means “I Walk” _ the song their ancestors sang after signing the Navajo Treaty of 1868 and being released by the U.S. Army.
“Some of us think that voting is, you know, a colonial construct. And it is,” says Young. “But it’s but also voting, it existed in our communities. Democracy comes from indigenous communities. And so that’s what this is about. It’s about honoring our ancestors who fought for us to be here.”
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