Native American women make history with governor, Senate and tribal firsts

History came in waves on Tuesday night. New Mexico voters elected Deb Haaland, a citizen of Laguna Pueblo, as the country's first Native American woman governor. Minnesota sent Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth band of Ojibwe, to the US Senate as its first Native woman. And two tribal nations picked women to lead them for the first time: Crystalyne Curley at the Navajo Nation and Tina Abrams at the Seneca Nation of Indians in western New York.

The sweep ran far beyond the marquee races. At least 75 Native women, non-binary and Two Spirit candidates won in the November midterms, according to Advance Native Political Leadership and the news site ICT, out of a record-setting 363 Indigenous candidates who ran for local, state and federal office — at least 180 of whom won. Jordan James Harvill, a Cherokee Nation citizen and strategist with Advance Native Political Leadership, called it a seismic shift in Native communities, according to the Associated Press.

It's a shift a long time coming. Native Americans have only been guaranteed the vote across the entire United States since the 1960s, and Wilma Mankiller didn't become the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation until 1985. In 2018, Haaland and Sharice Davids, a Ho-Chunk Nation member, became the first Native women elected to Congress. Davids cruised to a fifth term in Kansas last week, while Claire Valdez, a Ysleta del Sur Pueblo citizen and New York Democrat, will join her in the House.

Two years after that 2018 breakthrough, Navajo and Hopi voters in Arizona helped flip the state for Joe Biden — and he tapped Haaland to run the interior department, making her the first Indigenous cabinet secretary. The same cycle, Cherokee citizen Yvette Herrell became the first Republican Native woman elected to Congress, serving from 2021 to 2023. Now the Senate, which has seen four Native men in its 237-year history, gets its first Native woman when Flanagan is sworn in come January. Mary Peltola, who is Yup'ik, could follow, depending on her still-undecided Alaska race.

Flanagan gave credit where she felt it belonged at her St. Paul victory party. She told supporters she could not run for the US Senate, or exist the way she does, without Native women. Haaland admitted the milestone sometimes slips her mind amid a frantic statewide campaign, but said she recognizes what it means to people who have never felt represented — and hopes she can show that hard work still matters and anyone can lead, no matter where they come from or how much money they have.

For the Navajo Nation, the largest tribal nation by geography at roughly 27,000 square miles across New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, Curley's win carries its own weight. The current speaker of the Navajo Nation council — the first woman in that role since 2022 — told the AP she faced sexist rhetoric on the trail and that women in Navajo politics have to work two or three times as hard, calling the result a win for all Navajo women. Abrams kept it short in her own statement: a woman will lead the Seneca Nation as president, a moment inspired by generations of Seneca women before her and, she hopes, inspiring generations after.