The Democratic Party’s Indian Problem

This article first appeared in Indian Country Media Network in March 2014. O n the afternoon of March 9, 2014, the Montana Democratic Party leadership was holed up in a small stone building in the state’s capital, Helena. Inside were Democratic National Committee members Jorge Quintana and Jean Lemire Dahlman, state party chair Nancy Anderson and other members of the state party’s executive board. Outside on the sidewalk were Mark Wandering Medicine, Northern Cheyenne (shown below), and three other Native Americans who had tried to persuade the board to support an equal-voting-rights lawsuit. Reporters and a documentary film crew waited with them, hoping to learn how Democrats had just ended up saying ‘no’ to minority civil rights in the second decade of the twenty-first century—and in an election year. Across the street was a striking bronze statue of Montana’s first territorial governor, Brigadier General (and Democrat) Thomas Meagher. He’s depicted astride a warhorse