Grassroots advocates are the heart of Indigenous voter engagement

Indivisible Tohono Co-founder April Ignacio sits at the organization's voter information booth during their "Mosh the Vote" event on Oct. 19, 2024, at the Sells Recreation Center on the Tohono O'odham Nation. Photo by Shondiin Silversmith | Arizona Mirror

For Elayne Gregg, voting on the Tohono O’odham Nation evokes memories of her grandmother. She remembers sitting at the long wooden table in her family’s kitchen and spending time with her grandmother to review her ballot.

“It was so hard for her to understand what she was reading,” Gregg said, so she’d break it down for her grandmother by reading through the ballot to help her better understand it. 

Gregg always thinks about the time she spent helping her grandmother vote as she works to civically engage her community on the Tohono O’odham Nation. She helps with voter registration, get-out-the-vote events and educational presentations about the election.

As early voting heats up across the country, get-out-the-vote events and rallies are popping up all across Arizona to connect with as many voters as possible before Election Day. 

Often, national-led get-out-the-vote events and rallies are geared toward urban areas or work with Tribal governments, hoping to connect with Native voters in Tribal Nations. 

But voters who live in rural parts of their Tribal Nation are often forgotten by those efforts. Connecting with those voters is left up to grassroots organizations who are on the ground in Indigenous communities, organizations like Indivisible Tohono. 

Indivisible Tohono (IT), founded in 2017, works to civically engage the Tohono O’odham people by sharing information and resources about policies and candidates that will directly impact their community.  

Arizona is a crucial state this election, and Indigenous people make up 6% of its overall population. About 300,000 of the state’s voting-age residents are Natives. 

Even though a large number of Indigenous people now live in urban areas, there is still a high population of Indigenous people who live on their Tribal Nations, making them an important voting demographic. 

Historically, Indigenous communities have voted for Democratic candidates, and in the 2020 election, the voting precinct maps provide a visualization of how Arizona’s 22 Tribal Nations voted. A majority of the precincts located on Tribal land leaned blue.

Get-out-the-vote efforts geared toward Natives primarily come from voting groups that work directly within these communities or Tribal governments. 

Indivisible Tohono Co-founder April Ignacio said in the years they’ve been operating within the Tohono O’odham Nation, they have never come across outside voting organizations — national or regional — doing the same work and she believes that’s because engaging with Native voters is a year-round effort. 

“That’s why other organizations won’t work in tribal communities,” she added, because it takes a lot of time and investment to build “actual relationships with those communities, which is why it’s so much harder for the Native vote to be collected.”

The Tohono O’odham Nation is located in south-central Arizona. It is the state’s second-largest reservation, equivalent to Connecticut’s size. The tribe has some of the most isolated communities in Arizona. Most communities do not have access to basic amenities such as large chain grocery stores, and there are only two post offices and four gas stations in the entire reservation.

Ignacio said that Indivisible Tohono’s efforts are successful because they continuously hold themselves accountable to their community. 

“We’re not going away,” she said because, unlike national or large-scale voting organizations, who are on a timeline, there is no timeline for Indivisible Tohono. 

“We stay on all year round because laws change all year round,” Ignacio said. 

Building trust within the community is important, and Ignacio said that far too often, Indigenous communities are victims of good intentions with bad outcomes and it’s important to understand that rushing to build relationships will never work.

“Working in tribal communities is hard, it’s very hard,” Ignacio said. “ We recognize that it does take time.”

‘That is Civic Engagement’

Throughout the year, Indivisible Tohono works to connect with the Tohono O’odham community through things like candidate forums, community presentations, get-out-the-vote events and voter registration drives. 

Each event hosted by Indivisible Tohono aims to provide the Tohono O’odham community with more information on how to participate actively in the community and democratic processes.

Gregg said it’s not uncommon for Indigenous people to have trust issues when it comes to participating in elections or to believe that their votes don’t matter. 

“We’ve gotten placed on the back burner for generations,” Gregg said.

Before Gregg started getting involved with civic engagement, she said she didn’t think that voting mattered but has since learned that it does. 

“It comes down to what we’re able to do within our communities,” she said. “And how are we going to make change without having the right people in these positions?”

When the team at Indivisible Tohono started working on civic engagement within the Tohono O’odham Nation, Ignacio said they wanted to ensure that they presented the information accurately and had fun.

“Politics turns people off, especially in Indigenous communities,” Ignacio said, adding that their events are meant to make their community feel welcome while learning about civic engagement and how it directly impacts them.

“We are constantly undervalued and our communities are under attack,” she said. “It’s a complicated relationship when it comes to ensuring that we’re heard, ensuring that we’re reclaiming that democracy is Indigenous.”

Indigenous people have been fighting for their right to vote for generations. They were not considered citizens of the United States until 1924, and it would take decades for many to gain access to the rights that are supposed to coincide with citizenship, including voting. 

Indigenous people in Arizona were not granted the right to vote until 1948, and that came only after two people from the Gila River Indian Community sued the state.

Indigenous communities face voting barriers in multiple ways, which is why Indivisible Tohono’s efforts are year-round. The team works directly with community members to discuss voting, voter registration, and the candidates and policies that will impact their tribe.

“We’re still having to fight for the right to vote,” Ignacio said. “We’re still having to ensure that we have a voice, and we’re protecting that voice for the future.”

Ignacio said they have prepared presentations for their community that provide details about candidates and propositions and the impacts they will have on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

“We do a lot of research,” Ignacio said because they want to provide accurate information to their community so they can decide whether or not the values of the candidates or propositions align with their own.

“Indivisible Tohono is unique in that we really hone in on how all of it impacts us,” Ignacio said. “It’s not enough that we’re doing voter registration.”

She said that IT works to teach about the process of civic engagement, provide opportunities for it, and then provide educational opportunities.

“We do a lot of that legwork on their behalf so that they can make the best decision and feel confident when they go to the ballot box,” Ignacio said, adding that it is up to them if they choose to accept that information or go off looking for more, which is the point. 

“That is one step beyond voting. That is civic engagement,” she added. “What you’re doing beyond listening to me is civic engagement.”

Creating Safe Spaces

IT held four major voting events throughout 2024: Slay to the Polls, Meet the Candidates, Cumbia to the Polls and Mosh the Vote.

“Slay to the Polls” was a drag show featuring Indigenous drag queens from Tribal Nations across Arizona. The civic engagement theme focused on issues surrounding the 2SLGBTQ+ community. 

The “Meet the Candidates” forum was a nonpartisan event where candidates from local, Pima County and state races were invited to discuss their platforms for the Tohono O’odham voting demographic.

Their “Cumbia to the Polls” was the organization’s first major event in downtown Tucson and their last big voter registration drive before the Oct. 7 deadline in Arizona. They hosted a show at the Hotel Congress Plaza and provided voter registration and voting information to those who attended.

The final get-out-the-vote event IT hosted on the Tohono O’odham Nation was “Mosh the Vote.” This was the organization’s first-ever show featuring a lineup of all Indigenous heavy metal bands. The event was held at the Sell Recreation Center on the Tohono O’odham Nation on Oct. 19.

Ignacio said none of the events they hosted have ever been done in their community before, and they’re always nervous about how their community will respond. Still, even if only 15 people show up, their organization considers that a win.

More than 50 people attended “Mosh the Vote” for their final event and learned about early voting in Arizona and what’s on the ballot in November.

Indigenous metal band Six Million Dead was one of the performers for the event, and lead singer Rob Reyes said that it’s important to have events like “Mosh the Vote” because it brings in a different type of crowd and shares important information they may not usually have access to.

“It brings together a community, and that’s really important,” Reyes said, adding that he was happy to be able to perform on the Tohono O’odham Nation, his own tribe. “It’s making people aware, and if anybody has any questions, there are representatives here who can help better educate them.”

Providing a space for community members to enjoy themselves and learn more about what is going on in their communities or what is impacting their community is part of the work that the team with Indivisible Tohono does. 

Ignacio said that she feels that it is IT’s responsibility to provide a safe space for their Tohono O’odham people to have conversations about topics that directly impact their community. 

Arizona Native Vote Executive Director Jaynie Parrish said that Indivisible Tohono are amazing organizers, and they’ve been doing civic engagement work for a long time. 

Parrish said they know how to run programs that mobilize voters both outside of and during election season, and to do that, having really good, committed leaders is a must. 

“Smart people who know the community know how to do this,” Parrish said. “It’s not a one-and-done event.”

Arizona Native Vote is a grassroots organization that works on civic engagement and election participation in tribal and rural communities in northern Arizona.

Parrish said the work that they do and Indivisible Tohono are similar. They both pressure parties and groups to give and to know what’s up within Indigenous communities. 

“We both see the same struggles,” Parrish said. “This work is not short term.”

Parrish said that is what she appreciates about the team at Indivisible Tohono; they follow up with their community, which can be the hard part of grassroots work. 

“We have to be there,” she said, because much of the work is reconnecting with the community rather than collecting data or trying to meet a quota.

Native voting goes beyond statistics

When Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly is asked about Native voting, she wants to remind people that the concept behind encouraging Native voting is not about the statistics, but more as if one is planting seeds and changing soil to be more hospitable. 

“We’re making it more hospitable for other things that we didn’t even know were going to grow there,” Cázares-Kelly said. “I don’t have to see the numbers to know that it’s changing the way that my community is talking about voting and the way that they’re caring about voting.”

Cázares-Kelly is Tohono O’odham and grew up in Pisin’ Mo’o, Arizona, which is about 100 miles southwest of Tucson on the Tohono O’odham Nation. She is also one of the co-founders of Indivisible Tohono.

Early in her civic engagement work and before she held office, Cázares-Kelly recalls working on a flier where she gathered all the critical Pima County early voting information, including the polling locations, needed to educate voters on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

She wanted to share the flier on social media to educate her community, but she had one question that needed to be verified before posting it. So, like any concerned voter, she called her county recorder’s office.

Her question was whether people who lived in the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation could vote at the early polling locations in Sells, the tribe’s unofficial capital and where many tribal members work.

Cázares-Kelly said she called the Pima County Recorder’s office and the woman who answered told her that they do not have early voting locations on the reservation. 

“She tried to hang up the phone on me,” Cázares-Kelly added, but she stopped her and continued to try to get an answer to her question. 

After multiple attempts to explain her question and clarify the information taken from the Pima County’s website, the woman on the phone still did not try to help, Cázares-Kelly said

“Eventually, she hangs up on me, and it was very clear she got tired of hearing me,” she said, noting that she was not being combative on the phone or rude. She wanted to clarify the voting information so she could correctly share it with her community. 

Cázares-Kelly called the office back, spoke with a different person, and explained the situation. Finally, she was connected with a supervisor who could answer her questions. Yes, people living in San Xavier could vote in Sells.

“I was still really upset and very traumatized,” Cázares-Kelly said, and she believes that is a familiar feeling among many Indigenous voters when they try to get information about voting on the reservation from entities who are unfamiliar with their communities.

Years later, Cázares-Kelly is leading the office that employed the woman who hung up on her. She was elected as the Pima County Recorder in 2020 and is up for re-election this year. 

She is the first Indigenous person to hold an elected Pima County office and only the third Indigenous person to hold a county-level office in Arizona.

Cázares-Kelly said her work at the Pima County Recorder’s Office stems from years of working to educate her community about voting. 

In the last four years, she has implemented standardized accessibility practices, increased public communication among voters in Pima County, and increased rural and tribal outreach efforts.

Cázares-Kelly even made it a priority to share more with her team about what Native voting looks like in Pima County so that when Indigenous voters do call in, they do not face the same treatment she did.

“My staff is not going to say: ‘What are you talking about?’” she said. “My staff is going to be able to say: ‘Oh, is this an address on the Tohono O’odham Nation? Okay. Let me get you to the right person.’”

Being involved with civic engagement for the Indigenous community has taught Cázares-Kelly a lot about the Native vote and how she communicates it with Native and non-Native audiences.

“It’s not our fault,” she said about the complexities that come with Native voting. “The system was designed to exclude us, and it has been for a really long time, but now we can change it and take it over.”

Cázares-Kelly said Indigenous communities have the power to do more than just vote. 

“It’s not the most important thing,” she said. “It’s the least we can do if we have the right and the privilege of voting.”

Cázares-Kelly believes that the most important thing is for Native voters to get involved and engage with their communities because there are entities that claim Indigenous communities do not care about their people or that there is no organizing within these communities and they have no power. 

“The power is there,” she said, adding that it comes from Indigenous people sharing their stories and engaging with their communities.