#please don't take this as me trying to speak on behalf of Navajo folks

[redwizardofgay]

K so this post misrepresents some things. Firstly, NM has been consistently blue for the past few elections. Lumping us in with Arizona implies a much bigger victory than is true. In fact, NM lost a seat in the House for democracts with Xochitl Torres Small losing narrowly to a republican hack in the second district. To be clear that one wasn’t Navajo Nation’s fault at all. They’re district three and therefore had no hand in that election, but I still think implying that NM was a net victory for the Dems is misinformed at best and actively misleading at worst. Secondly, Biden took the state by a margin of about 10%, meaning even if we were historically a swing state, it almost certainly wouldn’t have been as close as it was in AZ. Arizon flipping is a big deal. NM staying blue with a measely 5 electoral votes is almost inconsquential. Lastly, one of two NM counties that overlaps with Navajo Nation went for Trump - the one with the greater overlap (San Juan). This probably means that the Navajo population in NM didn’t have much of an effect on our election as they typically vote blue - hell from what I can find they did vote very blue this time - but it didn’t have much of an effect on the presidential election. In fact, I fact checked and from here (https://navajotimes.com/rezpolitics/election-2020/results/) only about 18,000 people voted from Navajo Nation in NM period. Biden, according to google, won the state by about 100,000 votes. Navajo Nation did not swing NM one way or the other.  Even if we assume that every person who voted for the NM state senate’s democratic candidate also voted for Biden (11,809) that’s still like 1/10 the number that went for Biden. If make similar assumptions about AZ, however, they absolutely could have been the force that flipped AZ. 

By all means sing the praises of historically oppressed people and bring awareness to hoops they have to jump through just to exist in society, but don’t imply things that aren’t true - especially when it downplays real problems and real victories. The Navajo worked hard to do their civic duty and in AZ that really mattered. In NM, it’s more an indictment of a state that should be better but isn’t. We have nineteen puebelos, part of Navajo Nation, and two apache reservations - its not like our native population is small or inconsequential, yet the government still consistently fails them. The Navajo Nation that’s in New Mexico is poor, exploited country, and it’s not particularly well populated for a reason. Just as an example I’ve got sourcing on - Church Rock, NM, a Navajo Community, was poisoned by a uranium spill like decades ago and all our government has done to help is tell them that they can leave their ancestral home until the nuclear waste gets cleaned up or goes away (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETPogv1zq08).

Implying that the part of Navajo Nation that’s in NM is somehow populated enough to “swing” the state implies that NM has made it easy to live there ... in the middle of a desert where the mostly non-native government has done just about everything in its power to exploit its native peoples for cash and ignore them in times of need when the opposite is true. In making it seem like Navajo country is booming. or at least okay enough for everyone to take a day off work and go horse-riding to the polls (which sounds grueling if you think about it, but I promise you the people I’m worried about will think it sounds like a nice day) it perpetuates a harmful narrative pushed by non-natives here in NM that things are fine for people on the reservations cause they’ve got like Casino money or something. 

Look, I don’t want to be a downer but like... NM sucks and including us in this post is just wildly incorrect on so many levels y’all.  

We need to thank the Navajo a nation! They all got out and voted with no cars and few polling places- their population was enough to swing BOTH Arizona and New Mexico