Three Native American women have been elected to congress after a record number ran for Congress in the 2020 election on Tuesday, according to the (CAWP).
Nine Democrats and nine Republican Native American women entered the race for congress. That’s compared to just two in 2018.
Democrat Deb Haaland is a 35th generation New Mexican who is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, a tribe in west-central New Mexico. She was first elected into the US House of Representatives in 2018, and retained her seat this week.
Democrat Sharice Davids was re-elected as a member of Congress representing Kansass. She is a member of the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) people, whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Davids was the first openly LGBT Native American elected to the US Congress in 2018, and also retained her seat in this week’s election.
Joining Haaland and Davids is Republican Yvette Herrell who has been elected to the congress for the first time this week. Born in New Mexico, Herrell is a member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. The wins for Herrell and Haaland mean that New Mexico will be the first state to have two indigenous women as . The state also became the to elect women of colour as all three of its delegates in the US House of Representatives.
Native American women are underrepresented in US politics. , women who identify as Native American or Alaskan Native represent about 1.1 per cent of the US population. In 2020, women in this group are 0.7 per cent of all candidates for the US House, with nearly equal representation among Democratic and Republican House candidates.
There have been four Native Americans in the US Senate and a handful of Indigenous US representatives. All were men until Haaland and Davids were elected in 2018. There has never been a Native American woman in the US Senate, though Democrat Paulette Jordan was the first to run in Idaho this year. She was unsuccessful.
There were several historic appointments in the US election.
Democrat Sarah McBride who was elected to be Delaware state senator, who is the first openly transgender person to win the position in any state. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat won a seat in the House, is poised to be the country’s first Black and openly gay congressman.
