Why more Native Americans are on America's ballots than ever before

Voters in 25 states will have the opportunity to elect or re-elect an indigenous candidate to public office this year.

At least 170 Native Americans, Native Hawaiians and Native Alaskans are at the polls this fall, an all-time high, according to a database collected by the group Advance Native Political Leadership and Indian Country Today, an independent, nonprofit news organization reporting on Indigenous news. The group has been tracking indigenous candidates since 2016, from school boards to the U.S. Congress.

Still, organizers and others say more work needs to be done to achieve representation commensurate with national population size.

Advance Native Political Leadership has identified 347 current Native elected officials – less than 0.1% of the approximately 519,000 elected offices nationwide. The organization estimates that this number would need to be 17,000 to achieve parity based on the native share of the U.S. population, which is about 3%.

“The most ground we’ve gained is at the state level,” said Elise Blasingame, an Osage Nation scholar-in-residence at the Advance Native Political Leadership, and an independent researcher at the University of Georgia who focuses on the impact of Native representation. about publicly elected offices.

Blasingame said that between 1993 and 2023 there has been a 300% increase, to about 80, just in the number of state legislators who identify as Native American.

“Local efforts have enormous power, not only in setting the agenda, but also in showing other districts what can be done,” Blasingame said.

Read more about the causes and consequences of this increase in representation.