The 2020 presidential election saw Native Americans and Latinos in Arizona voting in record numbers, with some counties in Indian country seeing 40-to-60 percent increases in turnout compared to the 2016 election. Not only did Joe Biden win Arizona, the first Democrat to do so since 1996, Senator Mark Kelly also won, flipping a reliably Republican Senate seat blue.
High turnout among Native Americans and Latinos was driven in part by opposition to Donald Trump, but also by the availability of diverse voting options during the pandemic. Mail-in ballots, early voting and additional polling places made it easier than ever before to cast a ballot, especially for those who live in tribal areas where great distances and inadequate transportation infrastructure have made it historically difficult to vote.
However, in recent months, the Arizona state legislature has been working to restrict voting rights of Native Americans and Latinos. The voter suppression tactics include disqualifying tribal IDs as a valid form of voter identification, closing polling places in sparsely populated and rural areas, prohibiting ballots from being produced in languages other than English and requiring proof of citizenship.
We got the opportunity to speak with Rosetta Walker who has dedicated herself to fighting these restrictive policies and being the “moccasins on the ground” to mobilize voters statewide. Walker has been working for years to get out the vote in tribal communities and suburban neighborhoods around her home in Tempe. On many Wednesdays, she can be found registering student voters at Phoenix College.
Walker is a certified deputy registrar and Native vote activist and an advocate for the Native American community.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How strong is your connection to your tribe?
I’m a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. But at the age of two, I was adopted out to a white family. I’m the product of the removal from my tribe. It goes back to what they call the ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act, when young children were forcibly removed from their Native American families and sent to residential boarding schools or adopted out to White families and removed from the reservation altogether.
I never grew up on the Native American reservation, I never grew up with my people. I don’t speak my language. I don’t practice my culture, I carry the name, I get nothing from my tribe, other than a census number. I don’t have a sense of belonging to my tribe.
When and how did you get involved politically?
I’ve lived here in Arizona since 1995. We moved here from Breckenridge, Colorado, which is in the Rocky Mountains, 90 miles to the west of Denver, and I was also doing voter registration in Colorado.
I got politically involved back in probably 1983 when my employer was running for the House of Representatives in the state of Colorado, and I helped him on his campaign. That’s where I got my feet wet with understanding the impacts of legislators and why they vote the way they do and the political sway, positive and negative, of big money.
Given the complicated history of your Native heritage, what motivates you to do the work that you do?
I feel that the system has worked. I’m 62. I’ve seen the impacts of voting. I’ve seen how voting down a bad bill worked for the better. I’ve seen how people’s opinions were swayed. Today abortion is a hot topic. Where we have states voting on women’s rights, if we don’t vote, what will happen? I like to feel in my heart and soul that my vote does make a difference. And I will vote every election.
It’s extremely important for people to understand that you are citizens and you’ve all been granted citizenship. And with that comes responsibility that you can exercise that right to vote, you can cast a ballot, you can go to your local polling place, and you can vote for your school board. You can vote for your city council, you can vote for the president of the United States. But that wasn’t always the case for Native Americans here in the state of Arizona. So I decided that I’m going to try to make a change. And so that’s when I became a certified Deputy Registrar.
The message is that you have to take charge of what’s given to you. And a lot of people don’t, and that kind of hurts my soul. But I will do what I can to change their minds. I feel that, you know, in my gut and in my soul, that what I’m doing is right, by encouraging the voter and doing voter registration, because I feel that you can make a difference.
What are the biggest struggles that you face in encouraging the Native American community to vote?
When you go out to the reservation, you will see, it’s not like here, it’s not neighborhoods, you have vast expanses between little communities. So when you take away a polling booth, a polling site, you’re taking away the opportunity to make it easier to vote, it’s now going to be cumbersome. You’re now going to have to rely on your neighbors to get by. You might not even want to vote anymore, because they took away that ease of voting. So that to me is heartbreaking. That to me is voter disenfranchisement. You’re taking away the opportunity to make it easier to vote.
What is your take on the current state of political division in the country and the general distrust of the public?
Our household is split. I say that because my husband is 67. He’s a Black man, and he’s a Republican. I’m 62. I’m a Native American woman, and I’m a Democrat. Our daughter is 28, and she’s an Independent. People ask me, how do you guys get along? It’s just fine. There’s certain things that we just don’t talk about. And if things get a little heated and I have to listen to Hannity one more night, I go. But I tried to keep the peace. It’s not like I’m an ostrich burying my head in the sand, but I just know better. Because when something that causes discomfort and discord within your household, within my home, I just know enough to just leave it be. Because my home is where I have peace. We can go to the bar and hash it out.
When you and your husband have your disagreements, what brings you back together?
It’s a mutual respect, because I do respect that other opinion. Because it helps to see two sides of the situation, sometimes it really does. And I’m extremely thankful that my husband is very level headed. He won’t counter with something ridiculous, he helps to explain his opinion and where he stands, and I can explain where I stand. So it’s having that mutual respect to have good dialogue, to have good discourse because it just makes us better rounded people.
We live in a divided household, but I think, at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to fight the good fight.