This is Native America
Title: This is Native America #1: Voting is Sacred ($acred)
Created: 2020
Medium: Graphic Design
Software: Adobe Illustrator CC
Dimensions: 48″x36″
Article (Voting is Sacred)
““Voting is sacred. My people know that,” said Haaland, who is a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna.
Haaland’s words, delivered from the tribally-owned and operated Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, came during the fourth and final night of the Democratic National Convention, which began Monday and has been hosted almost entirely virtually due to COVID-19. Some keynote speakers have taken the stage at the Wisconsin Center, located on Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe and Potawatomi homelands in Milwaukee. Biden officially accepted his party’s nomination as president on Thursday night from his home state of Delaware.
Elected in 2018 and seeking reelection this year, Haaland offered the most extensive speech among the handful of Native speakers invited to make primetime presentations at this year’s convention.
On Tuesday evening, four Native leaders presented the delegate totals for the states of Alaska, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota. They were part of a 57-state and -territory roll call at the convention.
Before the last night of the convention Thursday, tribal leaders gathered for a second and final Native American Caucus meeting.
The caucus heard from political heavyweights like Joe Biden’s wife Dr. Jill Biden, House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former presidential hopeful Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The caucus also heard from frontline Native advocates and activists during panel discussions on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and the importance of voting in Indian Country.
Jill Biden is an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College and is thought to be the first second lady to hold a paying job while her husband was vice president.
“We see the stakes of this election every day, especially for the Native American communities that are feeling the pain of COVID more than others,” she said Thursday. “From health care to voting rights to tribal sovereignty, your rights are on the line. You deserve a partner who will stand by you, not in your way, and that’s Joe.”
Biden asked Native caucus members to imagine waking up on a day in 2021, after Biden and Harris have taken office.
“You pick up the morning paper and the headline isn’t about some late-night tweet storm,” she said. “Instead, it’s a story about the children who will benefit from universal free kindergarten and dramatic increases in school funding.””
– Indianz.com, ‘Voting is sacred’: Democratic convention ends with calls for Indian Country to vote for Joe Biden.
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This is Native America
This is Native America is a series of artworks by Ihanktonwan Dakota artist David Bernie that promotes issues and stories within Native American and First Nations communities.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
