DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED

#NATIVEVOTE | 10.16.20

This may be the most difficult newsletter I’ve had to push out since I launched Indigenously in late June. It has everything to do with the fact that reporting from Indian Country is just SO HARD. Seriously—finding data, framing the Native Vote narrative —it’s taken so much more time than all other communities.

Invisibility is the biggest hurdle.

This week, my little newsletter got some extra love with the help of two fellows, Miacel Spotted Elk and Tsanavi Spoonhunter, funded by a fine host of journalism organizations. It’s allowed us to vigorously report on the Native Vote. I’m so grateful. Together we started digging into data that left, at least me, feeling baffled, although I shouldn’t be, given my knowledge of just how stark we are represented in statistics.

In this week’s Crisis in Covering Indian Country segment, I explain how our weeklong search for data returned an already known trend of Indigenous invisibility; the stats just weren’t there. It’s the main reason why there will be no Indigenously Index this week — the data relevant to the topic of Native Vote isn’t verifiable, yet.

It’s okay. I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak about such challenges with colleagues like Maria Hinojosa and Julio Ricardo Varela. This week on In the Thick, we all came together, including founder of Translash Media, Imara Jones, to discuss Election 2020 from a POC perspective. You can watch our live chat here.

In these final days before Nov. 3, I’m devoting a great deal of coverage of this newsletter to Election Day and the Native Vote. With the help of my amazing fellows, we have a goal to deliver some fruitful reporting each week beginning with how Native women are exposed to the highest rates of violence in America — and how it's driving the political agenda. It’s an essay I wrote that somewhat exposes my own encounter with domestic violence—it just poured out.

Until next time, here’s, my Sunday reading list all about felons and the vote, including: Does Florida really wants ex-felons to vote?, and Amy Coney Barrett’s argument for guns versusr votes for felons; and finally this latest report from The Sentencing Project.

Thank you all for being so tuned-in tune to Indigenous issues in this moment. It’s time.

Jenni Monet

THE INDIGENOUS INTERNET

INDIGENOUSLY INDEX

Total number of sources delivering solid Native Vote data: 0

For this reason the Indigenously Index is on hiatus until next week. Thank you as we gather more information.

THE CRISIS

This is what Indigenous invisibility looks like:

By Wednesday of this week, it became clear to me that there simply was no dataset that has tracked Native voter turnout - possibly ever! With my whip-smart pair of fellows, we poked around virtually every corner of the data world looking for information about how Native Americans and Alaska Natives voted in the 2018 midterms or even in the 2016 general election. Here’s what we found:

• The US Census Bureau’s 2018 Voter turnout data didn’t include Natives at all (Data, even from 2016, only includes voting age/registration stats.)

• The AP VoteCast 2018 file was merely a small sample size of Native voters: 56% of Native women; 44% of Native men.

• This poll from Latino Decisions Elect gave some sense of 2018 Native voter turnout but it failed to disclose its methodology.

• Native Organizers Alliance didn’t offer any data of their own but sent us to the emerging Native organization, Illuminative, for recent data.

• Illuminative’s 2020 “Native Futures” report (unpublished) apparently found that 77% of 6400 respondents polled this year voted in the 2018 election, however, it’s unclear how many respondents are Native.

• The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center relied on this generalized report from the Center for American Progress.

• And Four Directions, which has a fundraising goal of $10K/week had no ready response to Native voter turnout, at all.

ENDORSEMENT

FEEDBACK

“The value of bold & dedicated independent journalism cannot be understated. As authentic voices & perspectives of underrepresented communities continue to be tossed into the blackholes of newsrooms, @jennimonet brings exceptional work to @indigenous_ly with courage & strength.”

Meghan, Salt Lake City, Utah

So humbled by these words from a dear colleague. Thank you, Meghan.

QUOTE

The Indigenously newsletter is produced by Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo), Tsanavi Spoonhunter (Northern Arapaho) and Miacel Spotted Elk (Diné)

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