Here's one of my favorite photos. Taken in South Dakota on September 2013. This was a portion of the Badlands, one of the most beautiful areas in America in my opinion. I highly recommend a visit if you've not gone yet.
In the new book Voting in Indian Country, Jean Reith Schroedel weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts as the election nears
by Nina Lakhani in New York
Fri 16 Oct 2020
"#VoterSuppression has taken centre stage in the race to elect potentially the 46th president of the United States. But we’ve heard little about the 5.2 million #Native Americans whose ancestors have called this land home before there was a US president.
"The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to #CleaAir and #water, #health, #education, economic opportunities, #housing and #sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
"In a new book, Voting in Indian County: The View from the Trenches, Jean Reith Schroedel, professor emerita of political science at Claremont Graduate University, weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts.
"Is the right to vote struggle for Native Americans distinct from the wider struggle faced by marginalized groups in the US?
"One thing few Americans understand is that American Indians and #NativeAlaskans were the last group in the #UnitedStates to get #citizenship and to get the #vote. Even after the civil war and the Reconstruction (13th, 14th and 15th) amendments there was a supreme court decision that said #IndigenousPeople could never become US citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact first-generation violations used to deny – not just dilute voting rights – were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group. It’s impossible to understand contemporary voter suppression in Indian Country without understanding this historical context.
"The motivation for the VRA was the egregious treatment of #black people in the south, and for the first 10 years there was a question over whether it even applied to #AmericanIndian and Native Alaskan populations. It wasn’t really discussed until a #CivilRights commission report in 1975 which included cases from #SouthDakota and #Arizona that showed equally egregious #discrimination and absolute denial of right to vote towards Native Americans – and also #Latinos.
"When voter suppression is discussed by politicians, advocates and journalists, it’s mostly about African American voters, and to a lesser degree Latinos. Why are Native Americans still excluded from the conversation?
"Firstly they are a small population and secondly most of the most egregious abuses routinely occur in rural isolated parts of #IndianCountry where there is little media focus. But it’s happening – take Jackson county in South Dakota, a state where the governor has done little to protect people from #Covid. The county council has just decided to close the legally mandated early voting centre on the #PineRidgeReservation, citing concerns about Covid, but not in the voting site in #Kadoka, where the white people go. Regardless of the intent, this will absolutely have a detrimental effect on Native people’s ability to vote. And South Dakota, like many other states, is also a very hard place for Native people to vote by mail. In the primary, the number of people who registered to #VoteByMail increased by 1,000% overall but there was no increase among reservation communities. In #Oglala county, which includes the eastern part of Pine Ridge, turnout was about 10%.
"The right to vote by mail is a hot political and civil rights issue in the 2020 election – could it help increase turnout in Indian Country?
"No, voting by mail is very challenging for Native Americans for multiple reasons. First and foremost, most reservations do not have home mail delivery. Instead, people need to travel to post offices or postal provide sites – little places that offer minimal mail services and are located in places like gas stations and mini-marts. Take the Navajo Nation that encompasses 27,425 square miles – it’s larger than West Virginia, yet there are only 40 places where people can send and receive mail. In West Virginia, there are 725. Not a single PO box on the Navajo Nation has 24-hour access."
In summr o '21, #SouthDakota Gov #KristiNoem deployed #SD#NationalGuard 2 #Texas’s #Mexico bordr w/ $1M priv donation frm billionaire #GOP donor & #Tennessee res #WillisJohnson. The use o priv donation 2 activate troops was widely covered in nat #media not only as unprecedented, but also unethical & legally dubious. New records obtained by #CREW provide behind-scenes look @ how Noem’s & SDNG staff communicated about donation amid mounting controversy in last days o June
"Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions and Nebraska-based Navigator CO2 Ventures have both proposed huge #pipelines to move #carbon siphoned from Midwest ethanol plants to underground storage sites in other states.
In #NorthDakota, #SouthDakota, #Iowa, and #Illinois, however, the companies have had their permit applications rejected, or have had to slow work due to concerns from landowners along the proposed routes about safety and impacts to farms."
Cecilia Firethunder has spent decades fighting for the rights of the #Ogala people of #SouthDakota .
Ms Firethunder, 76, was the first woman elected Oglala Tribal president, and works teaching culture, language and history at Red Cloud Indian School on the #PineRidgeReservation .
According to a new report from the Daily Mail, #SouthDakota Governor Kristi Noem and Trump advisor Corey #Lewandowski have been having “a years-long clandestine affair.”
You're driving along the highway on fine afternoon on our [#USRoadTrip21#Travel] and next thing you know there's a what? oh just a "Skeleton Man walking Skeleton Dinosaur" moment in #SouthDakota
The bike sculpture at Pringle, off the George S. Mickelson Trail, S of Custer, Black Hills, #SouthDakota. Started in the 1980s by a repair shop owner. You can walk inside it!
For buying a home, paying debt, estate planning, life insurance, tuition, or starting a business. 100 folks each year through 2031. Annual window ends July 28.
Luke and Betty are both #trans, #disabled and living out of a car. They are trying to move from #southdakota to a nearby safe state like #minnesota They have been struggling to afford basic necessities like food and could really use your help trying to get on their feet.
#BenAndJerrys have this wonderful post on their homepage 👏
Here it goes:
The #US Was Founded on Stolen #Indigenous Land—This #July4, Let’s Commit to Returning It
Ah, the Fourth of July. Who doesn't love a good parade, some tasty barbecue, and a stirring fireworks display? The only problem with all that, though, is that it can distract from an essential truth about this nation’s birth: The US was founded on stolen Indigenous land.
When Indigenous leaders blocked the road to Mount Rushmore before an Independence Day celebration in 2020, it highlighted a #conflict that most #Americans probably know little about.
Long before #SouthDakota had become a state, long before the faces of four American #presidents were blasted into the side of Mount Rushmore,
From there, in 1927, they watched as their holy mountain, now located on land known as #SouthDakota, was desecrated and dynamited to honor their #colonizers, four white men—two of whom #enslaved people and all of whom were hostile to #Indigenous people and values.
This Sacred Land Is Not For Sale
In 1970, Indigenous activists climbed #MountRushmore and occupied it for months, demanding that land be returned to the #Sioux.
"We are poor because our resources were stolen from us…But our connection to the #BlackHills is not a monetary one. Our main concern is that the land not be desecrated and we be allowed to resume our role as stewards of the land—that is our purpose as #Lakota."
Red Dawn Foster, Oglala Lakota, #SouthDakota state senator
Luke and Betty are both disabled transfolk trying to flee South Dakota with their two cats. With the state they live in getting increasingly hostile and unsafe, they are hoping to get to minnesota Last I heard they may have been living out of their car.
Which of these South Dakota redesigns looks best?
Version 1...