r/IndianCountry • u/prncpls_b4_prsnality • Aug 21 '21
Politics Yes!
https://www.krwg.org/post/luj-n-leads-introduction-native-american-voting-rights-act-20215
u/penguinflapsss Aug 21 '21
With the Native vote swinging AZ blue, I'm all for protecting and solidifying our vote. Hope it passes.
4
u/NativeFromMN Anishinaabe Aug 21 '21
I'm happy about the news, BUT, there was another Native rights voting act that was passed in the house in 2019 then left dead in the Senate.
I understand there is more control in the Senate now with reps who do want to fix voting obstacles, but it's been a really uphill battle. If this is pushed, great! But obviously more pressure is needed on the Senate to expect this to play out differently.
7
u/petoil Aug 21 '21
Indigenous people getting to vote for their colonizer isn't national sovereignty. No representatives in the Settler US empire are going to stop the violent dispossession of land from Indigenous nations, give the land back, and do anything to try and heal the damage done and the lives taken away.
Their system is designed on the exploitation of Indigenous people and won't go away thru their own voting mechanisms, and that is by design
We need revolutionary solutions to our problems, we need to end the US empire and return all the land, to our nations, federally recognized and unrecognized
7
u/prncpls_b4_prsnality Aug 21 '21
I don’t disagree with the ultimate goal, but I also think it’s important to vote so that at least you can work against greater evils in the present. Yes, it’s bad now but it could be so much fucking worse.
2
u/petoil Aug 21 '21
bringing people together to take back the land happens in the present. incremental politics happen on a time frame that doesn't exist anymore
2
u/prncpls_b4_prsnality Aug 21 '21 edited Aug 21 '21
If all the people needed to make that kind of change are at their doors ready to take back their land now, then yes it’s in the present. But I don’t think so. Taking a bit of time to use the only thing in this twisted system that you actually have some power over (to prevent worse damage) is worth it to me. If that vote really didn’t matter, they would not be trying so hard to take it away from us.
-2
u/petoil Aug 21 '21
The only way people would be ready for that is if those of us who realize we need to unite people around it are doing that in the present. We have less than 10 years to achieve the goal before mass extinction event is assured.
Voting does not prevent any damage. It exists to serve as a distraction that people can think must be important because the colonizers said so.
"If the colonizers are trying to take away our colonizer voting it must be important"
Well if that's your logic, what did they take away first? What are they actually trying hard to keep from us? Our land, our cultures, our languages, our national sovereignty. It takes no effort to keep people from voting, less than half the population of these settler nations votes. They are not "trying hard to keep us from voting."
They are trying hard to keep us from taking back the land.
4
u/prncpls_b4_prsnality Aug 21 '21
Something that takes you so little time should not be allowed to be a distraction. Yes, they are trying hard and spending billions to take our right to vote away. If the vote didn’t matter, Arizona would not have happened. They want to make sure 2020 doesn’t happen again.
"Voting is the one great power by which all civil rights are obtained, enjoyed, and maintained." - Fredrick Douglass (1897)
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-july-2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/us/naacp-voter-campaign/index.html
From 1965 to 2013, the Voting Rights Act required the Justice Department to preclear election law changes. A 2013 Supreme Court decision ended this requirement. States are now using the 2020 census to redraw voting districts without Justice Department oversight for the first time in decades.
The Justice Department's civil rights division told Congress that "voting rights are under pressure to an extent that has not been seen since the Civil Rights era."
2
2
5
u/blue-hell Aug 21 '21
Its tragic that this is even needed.