In Montana, American IndiansAre New Electoral Target

“You are the issue in this election!” declared Barack Obama, facing the American Indian public in Sioux Falls in South Dakota last May 16. American Indians represent 7% of Montana’s population and around 10% of South Dakota’s population, or five times more than the national average. Throughout the month of May, Barack Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton have traveled these two states in the Great Plains region getting ready to vote on Tuesday, June 3. The exceptional longevity of the Democratic primaries placed this electorate traditionally ignored by presidential candidates in the limelight. “This has never happened before,” exclaimed Jacqueline Johnson, Director of the National Congress of American Indians.

The Director of the Native Voice newspaper, Frank King, emphasizes that the tribes do not vote like other electors: “When a candidate comes to an Indian reservation, they are speaking to a big family; they are able to obtain the vote of ten thousand people in one swoop.” Last May 20, Hillary Clinton pointed her finger at the Bush administration’s errors in front of an audience that remembers the prosperous years of the Clinton era. “American Indians had a productive partnership with the Clinton administration in the 1990s,” remembers Lula Red Cloud, of the chiefs of the Sioux tribe, who supports the candidate.

At the heart of this traditionally Democratic electorate, the Republican candidate enjoys a certain influence. “John McCain has captivated several of the American Indian population’s leaders because of his respected military career, but also because he presided of the Indian Affairs Committee,” explains Wayne stein, professor at Montana State University and member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe. The Senator from Arizona has frequent contact with his state’s “native” population, and during the campaign, has conversed with chiefs of New Mexico tribes, whose American Indian population is the biggest in the country.

“I KNOW WHAT STRUGGLING IS”

But Barack Obama has surprised everyone. Widely unknown, the Democratic candidate “pushed his propositions further,” according to Frank King. He agreed to name an advisor responsible for American Indian policies that would be connected to the White House, if he is elected.

On May 16, Mr. Obama met in private with around fifty tribal leaders in Sioux Falls, the largest city in South Dakota. According to Lisa King, who participated in the organization of the meeting, “a relationship with American Indians is founded on confidence.”

The defense of the sovereignty of “tribal nations” is also an important idea “that Whites here do not like to hear,” emphasizes Frank King, making an allusion to the racism that runs rampant in the region. An additional reason, according to him, explains why American Indians are rallying to the Black minority candidate. “I know what struggling is…how many times we have forgotten you, like Blacks and other groups in this country. Because I have lived through this, I will not forget you,” promised the candidate.

If Obama wins in Montana and South Dakota, the challenges that the American Indian population in these states have known will transcend parties or candidates, states Robert Moore, a member of the Sioux Council Rosebud, South Dakota. “We are talking about life or death issues,” he explains in the Argus Leader, the local newspaper, while Indian reservations in this region, supported by casino revenues, are ghettos where poverty, violence, unemployment, and drug use run rampant.