.@Deb4CongressNM and @sharicedavids broke barriers together, and together, they’ll be using their power in Congress to fight for all of us. https://t.co/ztuX3iH1Lo
— Madam President (@Madam_President) January 15, 2019
Excellent, and sometimes unexpected, consequences:
… Davids is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation from Kansas. Haaland is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna from New Mexico. They joined a record number of Native women that ran for public office in 2018, according to Indian Country Today’s Mark Trahant. To say their arrival in Congress is overdue is a harsh understatement…
Congress has desperately needed more Native voices, specifically Native women. Without them, the nation’s most powerful legislative body will continue to misunderstand and mute the litany of issues that Indian Country faces. Some of the more headline-grabbing issues are tragic—scores of missing and murdered Native women, woefully underfunded health services, white parents continuing the long practice of snatching Indian children from the reservation. And some are more abstract, like the issue of climate change in the Southwestern tribes, or the sudden importance of non-voided tribal land agreements.
With such a wide array of issues to tackle, and with little support coming from the White House or the Department of the Interior, it’s fortunate that a pair of Democrats as distinctive as the new Native congresswomen are the first to emerge. Haaland and Davids come from different generations, from different states, from different life experiences, from different tribes, from different views of what a government should look like. The steps they’ll take to represent their people, let alone their own districts, are going to be just as unique as Indian Country itself…
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Elections Have ConsequencesPost + Comments (237)