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Showing posts from November, 2018

Native Americans Scored Big Election Wins in Washington State and Beyond

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This article first appeared in In These Times  magazine in November 2018. For more on topics like this, please see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle.... C hester Earl and about 300 members of Washington state tribes—from Tulalip, Yakama, Lummi, Quinault, Port Gamble S'Klallam, Earl’s own Puyallup community and more—are gathered at an election night party in a Tacoma catering hall. They are singing, drumming, dancing, feasting and watching returns from around the state and country. “It’s incredible,” Earl exclaims (at center left in photo) as the big news comes in: Initiative 940, a Washington state ballot initiative that approves new police reform measures, has passed with more than 60 percent of the vote. Earl and about 15 of the attendees have just returned from a two-week reservation-to-reservation tour, N8tive Vote 2018 . The tour held rallies on the state’s 29 tribal homelands and encouraged members to get to the polls, particularly to say yes to