Native Americans gained U.S. citizenship 100 years ago, but the fight for voting rights continued for decades

SACRAMENTO – The year 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the federal government's official recognition of Native Americans as citizens of the United States, which technically meant that citizen rights and privileges, such as the right to vote, were granted to tribal communities.

However, decades of voter suppression meant the fight for voting rights would continue for decades to come, and today activists are still working to remove barriers to voting access for Native American communities, a century after they first gained citizenship.

A federal fight for Native people's right to vote

President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans and stated in law: “All non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States are hereby declared citizens of the United States.” United States : Provided that the grant of such citizenship shall not in any way impair or otherwise prejudice the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.”

Still, securing the right to vote as a citizen became an uphill climb thanks to Jim Crow-style state laws that barred Native Americans from voting in many states until Indian citizens began suing and resisting states in the late 1950s who then withdrew these restrictive laws.

“That didn’t automatically mean everyone voted,” said Calvin Hedrick, lead organizer for the Northern California chapter of the California Native Vote Project.

Because Congress left state governments to decide who was eligible to vote, legal access to voting under existing constitutional provisions and state laws was denied in Arizona and New Mexico until 1948 — and under reservations in Utah until 1957, according to the Associated Press.

“There were a lot of barriers like literacy tests and things like that that kept a lot of communities of color from voting,” Hedrick said. “Some states were determined to stop Native people from voting.”

The passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, initiated by the Civil Rights Movement led by African American leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., banned discriminatory voting practices and protected the right to vote within communities of color.

The Voting Rights Act was re-passed and tightened in 1970, 1975 and 1982.

Still, scars remain today in the form of low voter turnout and access to voting within tribal communities in California and across the country, particularly on the most remote reservations.

Access and voter turnout: Voter turnout is still a challenge

“Our voice has meaning, our voice can be powerful,” Hedrick said. “We’re really trying to get more Native people involved in the political process, register more Native people to vote and get more people to vote.”

That is the message underlying the California Native Vote Project.

“Just make sure you have a plan to vote in your community,” Hedrick said. “We have seen voter registration of eligible voters as low as 10 percent in some tribal communities. We’re trying to reach out to those communities and make it something people want to do.”

Even a century after Native Americans gained citizenship, Hedrick says the California Native Vote Project is still fighting to break down barriers that prevent people from voting — some of those barriers are walls built from centuries of federal emotional trauma – and state governments have inflicted on the indigenous people.

“Recently at a voter registration event, a person came up and said, 'Well, I'm not voting because my grandma told me not to vote. They told her it wasn't for us.' My response to that was, “Who told your grandma she couldn’t vote?” “That’s the most important thing we need to think about. Voting is a right,” Hedrick said.

Today, the fight has a new focus: making voting accessible to all Native American communities.

“We have people telling stories here in California, especially in the last election, that they had to drive two hours outside the reservation just to vote,” Hedrick said. “We will go to tribal communities and host voter registration parties and events. During the primary, we did a couple of candidate forums where we had local election candidates come to tribal communities. For some of them, this was the first time anything had ever happened in these communities.”

Democratic Assembly member James Ramos says even reliable mail delivery of ballots and the location itself are issues that still exist on rural reservations today.

“We are starting to turn the page, but there are still obstacles and barriers,” Ramos said. “Efforts to reach voters in the state of California do not reach the boundaries of reservations or tribal communities in the state.”

The first Native American legislator, but hopefully not the last

Rep. Ramos is the first and only California native elected to the state legislature. He has been in his position since 2018.

Ramos is a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla Tribe and a lifelong resident of the San Manuel Indian Reservation.

Before running for the California State Assembly, Ramos held positions on his tribal council, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and the San Bernardino Community College Board of Trustees.

“We still see a great need for California natives to run for political office,” Ramos said. “We made it into the state parliament. So if I can do it, other Indians can do it too.”

Ramos said that in addition to increasing access for local voters, more healing is also needed here at home in California.

“As people begin to accept that guilt and move forward, we will see people feel more part of a process of a state that now recognizes a terrible past but also builds on the resilience of California Indians. We're still not at this point,” Ramos said.

It was only in 2019 that California Governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the treatment of California's native people.

Ramos authored legislation signed into law by Newsom that would help address the barriers that still exist for Native voters. This includes a commitment by the Secretary of State to establish an Advisory Committee on Native American Election Accessibility.

According to the Native American Rights Fund, 4.7 million Native Americans nationwide are eligible to vote today, but only about 36% voted in the recent general election.

The group also estimates that one in four Indigenous voters is ineligible to vote.

“There's a lot of concern about trusting a government that's never really been honest with you,” Hedrick said. “But we've seen this increase in voter registration in almost every community we've been to. So people are actively engaging and we’ve definitely seen that.”

The year 2024 also marks the centennial of a major desegregation case in Native American history.

Alice Piper, a 15-year-old Paiute student, made history in 1924 when she and her parents sued California's Big Pine School District to integrate their classrooms – and won.

Their successful case set an important precedent for the future Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case in 1954, which made school desegregation illegal 70 years later.

Election day is Tuesday, November 5th. November also marks Native American Heritage Month nationwide.