I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Santo Domingo Pueblo, circa 1883 (Photo from the New Mexico State Historian Web site)
SANTO DOMINGO PUEBLO — A different kind of change swept though this stronghold of Keresan culture and traditions as a steady stream of voters cast their ballots yesterday.
Four years ago, Santo Domingo Pueblo elders closed the village on Election Day, effectively turning their backs on what was then a hotly contested presidential election.
But on a dusty, windswept Tuesday, Sandoval County’s Precinct 20 reopened at the pueblo’s administration building in the heart of the village. Santo Domingo voters then proceeded to cast 95 percent of their ballots for Barack Obama, the Democratic victor and president-elect.
According to unofficial results posted on the secretary of state’s Web site, 608 Santo Domingo voters cast ballots at the pueblo’s single polling station.
The tiny tribal nation’s turnout marked a dramatic, more than two-fold increase in voter participation compared with the previous presidential contest.
In 2004, only 280 of the pueblo’s voters managed to cast ballots after the local polling site was closed for all but about two hours. Santo Domingo elders decided to close the pueblo for its All Souls Day feast that just happened to fall on Election Day.
The day after the election, the pueblo governor asked Sandoval County officials to consider eliminating the pueblo’s polling station, telling the Albuquerque Journal, “Maybe next time, they should pick another site so it doesn’t interfere.”
But the polling station remained, proving to be good news for Obama. In fact, Santo Domingo’s turnout on Tuesday put a human face on the Obama campaign’s strategy in New Mexico, which focused on finding new voters in overlooked pockets and expanding turnout in key demographic groups such as Hispanics and Native Americans.
Obama won the state by 120,000 votes four years after President Bush carried it by fewer than 6,000 votes.
In the case of Santo Domingo Pueblo as well as the state’s 21 other tribes — including the sprawling Navajo Nation — the Obama campaign actively organized each tribe, relying on the efforts of an especially active cadre of young Native American activists.
Standing in the dirt parking lot near the pueblo administration building and wearing a white Obama ’08 T-shirt, another former Santo Domingo governor, put his finger on the change he was witnessing — and helped bring about.
“I think the community as a whole is seeing the importance of voting and is slowly getting more involved,” ex-Gov. Everett Chavez said. “In the past, it was not fully embraced because voting was not a traditional way of doing things. But now it’s seen as a civic responsibility and right, and we’re slowly realizing that you can make positive change.”
Ex-Santo Domingo Gov. Everett Chavez asked Obama a question at February Albuquerque forum.
Chavez served as pueblo governor in 2003 and 2005, appointed by the tribe’s religious leader, or cacique. While several of New Mexico’s tribal governments have elections to choose government leaders, others maintain more traditional theocratic systems in which civic leaders are appointed.
The upsurge in Native voter participation this year and overwhelming support for Democratic candidates can, in part, be traced to an Albuquerque forum with Obama in February in which Chavez, then a candidate for the New Mexico Senate, secured two specific promises from the then-presidential candidate.
“I want to ask you, Mr. Obama,” Chavez began respectfully, mic in hand, wearing a suit and tie, “what would you do to strengthen tribal sovereignty?”
Obama’s answer, later included in a campaign DVD and widely circulated online, included this pledge:
“As president of the United States, I’m not just going to have a Bureau of Indian Affairs that is off in the sidelines somewhere, and is basically a flack catcher for the Native peoples,” Obama said. “I’m going to have an annual summit with Native American leaders, tribal leaders, they’re going to meet directly with me. I will have somebody in my White House who is regularly working with tribal leadership all across the country to figure out how we can lift up the economic prospects and the social and health conditions of these people in a way that is respectful of tribal sovereignty and the traditions and the cultures of the people involved.”
Obama answers Chavez's question at the forum earlier this year.
Those words were exactly what Native leaders like Chavez wanted to hear, and no doubt inspired others to take Obama’s message back to the rez.
“It was a step above what [Republican presidential candidate John] McCain was proposing,” Joe Garcia, chairman of the All Indian Pueblo Council, told the Independent. “Some presidents have had a government-to-government operations staff and that’s what McCain was proposing … but we need a top level person that we can work with that will answer directly to the president. Obama’s team is already working on that as we speak.”
Garcia, also the governor of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo north of Santo Domingo, recognizes that Native voter participation in federal elections wasn’t always viewed as a priority.
“We didn’t used to vote, but it’s seen as important now,” he said. Regarding the vote in Santo Domingo on Tuesday, Garcia added, “It is a monumental accomplishment. It’s just so powerful to realize that our people are starting to see that. And I think there will be no coming down from that high.”
At the precinct 20 polling station on Tuesday, six voting booths were set up at one end of the room. Black-and-white portraits of past pueblo governors dating back to the 1800s, most wearing traditional clothing, hung on the walls.
A mix of voters ranging from elderly women in skirts and turquoise jewelry to young parents in jeans with toddlers in tow kept filtering toward the voting booths. Nearly everyone seemed to be smiling or laughing as they signed the voter rolls.
On the road just beyond the voting site, mud brick ovens stood in close proximity to numerous Obama-Biden signs, and a couple of unleashed dogs chased passing trucks.
And in the parking lot nearby, Chavez and his wife and daughter staffed a makeshift get-out-the-vote effort based out of a mini-van parked next to the tent. Inside, a half a dozen young women on cell phones placed call after call, reminding their neighbors to vote and offering rides.
Chavez’s daughter, Wynema, wearing turquoise earrings and big sunglasses, noted that her 74-year-old grandmother voted for the first time this year — and she voted Obama.
“There isn’t a stigma to voting anymore,” Wynema said.
Her father, the former pueblo governor, is adamant that this year’s election results and, especially, a record-setting Native American turnout, are just the beginning.
“We’re committed not to stop after this election,” he said with a smile. “We’re going to awaken the sleeping giant.”
