Life as a Native woman in rural Minnesota was never easy for Nancy Beaulieu, but it got harder after 2016.
She saw racial tensions between some white residents and Native Americans in her northern Minnesota community spill out into the open after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. In January, Beltrami County became one of the first in the nation to vote to ban refugees from resettling there. At a September rally in Bemidji, Minn., a mostly white crowd of thousands cheered when Trump looked out and praised their “good genes.”
Beaulieu, a member of the Leech Lake tribe, said they decided to start “playing the game of politics.” A team of organizers registered new Native American voters on nearby reservations, bused them to the polls and created regular radio programing to keep community members engaged.
In other battleground states, Native American voters turned out in record numbers, including Arizona, where Biden leads Trump by 11,000 votes. Native voter turnout may have also tipped the scales in neighboring Wisconsin, where the National Congress of American Indians estimates there are about 71,000 voting-age Native Americans. Biden won the state by about 20,000 votes, pending a recount.
Source: Native American voters across Minnesota turned out to oust Trump – StarTribune.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.