Flanagan and Haaland win Senate and governor firsts for Native women
A third-grade field trip to the Navajo Nation Council set Crystalyne Curley on the path that led her to history this week, when voters elected her the first woman president of the Navajo Nation. Curley said the ambition took hold during that trip, as she watched a fiery debate erupt between two tribal lawmakers. “I thought to myself at a very young age, that’s where I want to be,” Curley said. She narrowly defeated attorney Justin Jones, according to unofficial results, breaking a barrier she said she never imagined as a nine-year-old. “This is a win for all Navajo women,” Curley told The Associated Press.
This week’s voting produced the nation’s first Black female governor, the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate and the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. Flanagan became the first Native American woman elected to the Senate, Haaland the first Native American woman elected governor of a U.S. state, and Curley the first woman to lead one of the largest tribes.
Flanagan, a Democrat and a citizen of the White Earth Nation, is Minnesota’s outgoing lieutenant governor. At her Senate victory celebration in St. Paul, Minnesota, she credited supporters from her community. “I could not run for the U. S. Senate without Native women. I could not exist in the way that I do without Native women,” Flanagan said. More than 230 years after the U.S. Senate was established, only four Native people have served in the chamber, all of them men. “This is a win that shows we can break every single glass ceiling,” said Jordan James Harvill, a Cherokee Nation citizen and strategist with the advocacy group Advance Native Political Leadership.
Flanagan will join Sen. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. A victory by Democrat Mary Peltola, a Yup’ik woman, in Alaska’s still-unsettled Senate race would mark the first time three Native people have served in the chamber at the same time.
In the House, Kansas Democrat Sharice Davids, who is Ho-Chunk, and Oklahoma Republican Josh Brecheen, who is Choctaw, won reelection. New York Democrat Claire Valdez, a citizen of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, and Michigan Democrat Sean McCann, a citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, became the first Native Americans elected to represent their states in Congress.
Haaland’s political career has been defined by historic milestones. She was one of the first two Native women elected to Congress in 2018 and later became the first Native American to lead a U.S. Cabinet agency, the Interior Department. Now, in her home state of New Mexico, the Laguna Pueblo citizen will break ground as the first female Native governor of a U.S. state. “I think it’s a long time coming,” said Haaland, who traces her ancestry in what is now New Mexico back 800 years.
Haaland is tasked with making good on campaign promises to make life more affordable for struggling New Mexicans and to address persistently poor education outcomes in the state. Known affectionately as “Auntie Deb” in parts of Indian Country, she was tearful as she reflected on the support she has received from Native voters and other Native women in politics, including Davids and Flanagan. “It makes me very happy that we’re able to have a presence,” Haaland said. “It’s not just a slogan. It matters that people feel represented.”
Curley told the AP she faced sexist rhetoric while campaigning and expects to be held to a higher standard as the first woman president. “As women, we have to work twice or triple as hard, especially within Navajo politics,” said Curley, who also was the first woman to lead the tribe’s legislative branch as speaker of the tribal council.
The modern, centralized Navajo government has been led by men since its establishment under federal pressure more than a century ago. The Navajo Nation holds the largest land base of any federally recognized tribe — 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — and ranks second in population to the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
Some Navajo people believe traditional teachings prohibit women from holding top government positions. Others say the absence of women from the presidency stands in contrast to the matrilineal structure of Diné society. “You see the language of tradition used to both deride the possibility of a woman being president and to say that women’s leadership is needed now,” said Jennifer Nez Denetdale, a professor of Diné studies at the University of New Mexico.
Lene Bitsui said she supported Curley because she considered her best positioned to restore order to the tribal government after what Bitsui sees as a period of dysfunction. Still, Bitsui said, she felt pessimistic when she cast her ballot. “I thought our people weren’t ready for a female president,” Bitsui said. “I was wrong, and I feel so happy to have been wrong.”
Curley and running mate Chris Deschene take office in January. They plan to transition the Navajo Nation away from coal development, historically a major economic engine for the tribe, and to reassert its leading role in national discussions around federal Indian policy.
The Seneca Nation of Indians in western New York elected its first woman president on Tuesday: Tina Abrams, a longtime council member.
Harvill said decades of political organizing are bearing fruit as more Native women run for and win office. “This is a seismic shift that is happening in our communities,” he said.