Sovereign Bodies: Native Nations,Native American Women,and the Politics of 2018

Abstract

What did Native American women and men voters think about Donald Trump on the eve of the 2018 election? This question has important implications for understanding the gendered political attitudes of peoples adversely targeted by Trump’s politics. To examine this issue, we analyze a path-breaking, nationally representative sample of six hundred Native American voters. We find that Native Americans’ attitudes about sexual harassment are central to their attitudes about politics and policy in the Trump era. This relationship suggests that Native American voters are an informed electorate influenced by the president’s words and actions. Our work demonstrates multiple ways that gender influenced Native American politics during an election where gender and racial identities were central. In so doing, our work illuminates how race, institutions, and vulnerability affect the political attitudes of Native American voters, one of the least studied groups in American politics.

Keywords

Native Americans political attitudes voting gender

“It is impossible to have a truly self-determining nation when its members have been denied self-determination over their own bodies.”

—Sarah Deer, Muscogee (Creek) Nation (2015, xvi)

Like many U.S. leaders over the centuries, President Donald Trump poses a threat to the safety of Native Americans, and Native American women in particular.¹ In verbal attacks toward a political opponent, Trump frequently used a racial slur employed to stereotype and denigrate Native American women for years (Elfrink 2019; Gorsevski 2018; Traister 2018). Unfortunately, the president’s policy agenda reinforces these symbolic threats. In the fall of 2018, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) failed to receive renewal on Trump’s watch. VAWA included important resources and protections for Native American women. This inaction came in spite of increased demands for attention and resources toward missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW; Huyser, Sanchez, and Vargas 2017). More generally, Trump questions the trustworthiness of women who claim sexual assault. For Native American women, who are twice as likely to have experienced rape than non-Native American women, this characterization triggers their personal experiences and the sexual violence experiences of others in their networks (National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center 2018). Trump is not an historical aberration; since the first European contact, attacks on Native American women’s bodily autonomy and social status have been integral to the colonial enterprise (Estes 2019).

In this context, we examine differences in the attitudes and opinions of Native Americans as they relate to Donald Trump and policies about gender equality. In particular, we are interested in whether Native Americans hold Trump accountable for the well-being of Native American women. In addition, we consider whether such concerns anchor other political perceptions. We consider Deer’s observation that for Native Americans, egalitarian gender relations are a rejection of colonialism and an assertion of Indigenous sovereignty (Deer 2009, 2015).

To these ends, we analyze a sample of roughly 600 Native American voters on Election Eve 2018. We find that concerns about the harassment of women were key in shaping Native American attitudes about Trump. While we find a gender gap in Native American political attitudes, specifically feelings of anger, we find that concern about the normalization of harassment of women has more consistent effects among Native Americans rather than gender identity. Our findings demonstrate that the politics of Native American women and men are situated in political struggles over the autonomy and well-being of Native nations.

In the sections that follow, we review the scholarship on the ways in which Native Americans engage in the U.S. political system. We also review the literature on Native American women and politics, which shows how both gender and Native nations shape Native American politics. We then provide additional context of Native American women in the lead up to the 2018 election, discussing how issues of violence and safety of Native women played a significant role in the 2018 election. We draw on these diverse literatures to lay out our theory about the gendered attitudes of Native Americans. Specifically, we argue that concern about Native American women’s well-being shapes Native American political attitudes, in particular for women but for men as well. We then move to testing hypotheses about gender and political attitudes of Native Americans, drawing on both descriptive statistics and three causal models. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings and how they help us further understand Native American public opinion generally and in relation to gender dynamics as well.

Native American Political Behavior

Existing literature on Native American political behavior is limited but highlights three important takeaways. First, in contrast to many other communities, Native American political behavior is shaped by tribal identity and allegiance to Native nations (Herrick and Mendez 2018; Wilkins and Stark 2017). Second, Native American participation in U.S. politics has been growing and is robust, although genuine barriers to Native American political participation persist (Schroedel and Aslanian 2015; Schroedel and Hart 2015). Third, as with many other communities, Native American voting is shaped by socioeconomic status (SES; Huyser et al. 2017) and ties to the Democratic Party (Herrick and Mendez 2018; Min and Savage 2014). These themes in the literature inform our analysis. They guide our ideas about how Native Americans link their behavior in U.S. politics to the well-being of Native nations, and they identify important control variables for our analysis.

To begin, the literature highlights that the defense of sovereignty is a different enterprise than the defense of the well-being of a racial or ethnic group. In studies of non-Native Americans, linked fate and group consciousness are important in-group heuristics signaling that what happens to the racial or ethnic group has a significant effect on one’s own life (Dawson 1994). Moreover, scholarship on non-Native Americans finds that linked fate is both racialized and gendered (Brown 2014; Gutierrez et al. 2019; Stout, Kretschmer, and Ruppanner 2017). For Native Americans, group consciousness leads to greater support for co-ethnic candidates but has no effect on political participation or political interest (Herrick and Mendez 2019).

Existing scholarship also shows that Native Americans’ participation in the U.S. political system has increased as voters, political candidates, action committees, and more. Some may see participating and voting in U.S. elections as “virtual acts of treason,” whereas others clearly see it as an important vehicle to expand, protect, and advocate for Native American interests (Wilkins and Stark 2017, 170). The available research on Native American political behavior tells us that Native Americans are less likely to register to vote and vote than other racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States (Huyser et al. 2017; Peterson 1997). But the turnout gap of Native Americans has declined significantly over time and may depend on electoral cycle (Skopek and Garner 2014). There is some evidence that Native Americans turn out in greater rates during congressional election years, possibly because these elections matter more for local representation (Huyser et al. 2017). Many scholars point to histories of discrimination, ballot box access, and ongoing suppression tactics as reasons Native Americans may participate in American politics at lower levels than other groups (Fergeson-Bohnee 2015; Pryor, Herrick, and Davis 2019; Schroedel and Aslanian 2015; Schroedel and Hart 2015; Wang 2012).² Also, research suggests that Native peoples seem to engage in acts like boycotting and contacting a public official at higher rates than other minority groups (Herrick and Mendez 2019; Huyser et al. 2017).

Moreover, research to date identifies that SES and partisanship are among the important control variables for our study of Native American voting. In their analysis of Native American political participation and civic engagement in 2008 and 2010, Huyser et al. (2017) find that some socioeconomic variables commonly used to explain political participation for the general population are relevant in explaining participation of Native Americans. Although most SES factors do a better job in explaining the political participation and civic engagement of non-Native Americans, some indicators like marital and veteran status, level of education, and household size are important factors in explaining Native American political participation and civic engagement.

Partisanship of Native Americans is among the most consistent findings in the analysis of Native American voters, who tend to identify as Democrats (Herrick and Mendez 2018; Min and Savage 2014). But generally, results suggest that racial identity does not largely drive Native American partisan identity (Herrick and Mendez 2018; Min and Savage 2014). Rather, Native Americans who have higher levels of linked fate, identify as members of a tribe as opposed to U.S. citizens, believe Native Americans are oppressed, and who spent more time as a child on a reservation have stronger attachments to the Democratic Party (Herrick and Mendez 2018).

In sum, there is a growing and robust stream of research unpacking conditions under which Native Americans participate in politics. These findings point to some similarities in the ideological leanings and SES factors that shape Native American political participation, but we see substantial gaps in explaining how attitudes related to sovereignty affect Native American political behavior. Next, we turn our attention to examine the literature on Native American women in politics.

Native American Women in Politics

As noted above, there is little research on Native American public opinion, and this extends to an examination of the political attitudes of Native American women. Yet, we find two important takeaways in the existing literature. First, there are certainly gender gaps in Native American political attitudes. Second, the status of Native American women hinges on strong and independent Native nations, and conversely, strong and independent Native nations cannot exist without confronting the harms that colonialism has inflicted on Native American women.

We note two important political scientists in the study of Native American women and politics; both find that Native American identity and Native nations are key to Native American women’s political attitudes. Herrick (2018) observes that there is no prior survey research on the political attitudes of Native American women in the United States. She finds that Native American women are more likely to support Democrats and have a stronger attachment to their Native identity than to their U.S. identity. Also, she finds that Native American women are more likely to support women’s issues and compassion policies. The gender gap in preferences for compassion policies including gun control, environmental regulation, affirmative action, and women’s bodily choice (pro-choice) explains the gender gap in party identification. Herrick’s findings on Native American women and politics are similar to general findings on the gender gap in the literature. Scholars note that several gaps exist generally between men and women in politics, including higher rates of liberalism and greater support for compassion issues among women compared with men (Box, De Boef, and Lin 2004; Chaney, Alvarez, and Nagler 1998; Lien 1998).

Although similarities exist between women generally and Native American women in their ideology and support for compassion issues, there are fundamental differences in the political attitudes and opinions of the latter. Prindeville’s (2003, 2004) scholarship on Native American women leaders provides valuable insights about gender and Native American politics. Prindeville observes that in traditional Native American practices, men and women played distinct yet complementary (not hierarchical) roles. She acknowledges that Native American societies vary greatly; some tribes’ traditions have far more gender equality than others. However, Prindeville argues that the fight for tribal sovereignty structures Native American women’s politics. She finds that Native American respondents gave greater weight to their Native American identity than to their gender identity, relative to Latino women leaders in nearby locales. In short, there is a powerful link between Native American women’s political identity and the politics of Native nations.

The discussion above provides context of how gender intersects with Native American political preferences and sovereignty. Too often, scholars in political science tend to assume similarities among women, dismissing how gender intersects with racial and ethnic identity and lived experiences (see Brown 2014; Brown and Gershon 2016 for more). Given this context, we connect the concerns of Native American women to the 2018 election in the next section.

Trump and Native American Women

Our work rests on the assertion that President Donald Trump is a threat to the safety of Native American women. Here, we present the case for this conclusion.

Issues of sexism and racism are inseparable from Trump’s election and his subsequent time in office. The budding research on sexism and racism in the 2016 election finds a positive association between racial resentment and vote choice for Trump among white women (Frasure-Yokley 2018; Tien 2017). Moreover, support for Trump was rooted in racial resentment, negative views toward immigration, and hostile sexism rather than economic class or anxiety (Bock, Byrd-Craven, and Burkley 2017; Carter and King-Meadows 2019; Cassese and Barnes 2019; Cassese and Holman 2019; Frasure-Yokley 2018; Junn 2017; Tien 2017).

Even more, since Trump took office, issues of race, gender, and sexism continue to motivate policies and actions toward women and racial and ethnic minorities as well as responses from these targeted groups. On the day of Trump’s inauguration, millions of women around the country took to the streets in their pink “pussy hats” as a sign of collective resistance to his administration, sexism, and policies that negatively affected women. Approximately a year later, the #MeToo movement elevated the visibility of sexual harassment, abuse, and misconduct as women told their stories. The public testaments of female survivors provided new momentum to discussions of gender equality. Yet Trump, who has been accused of and has admitted to sexually assaulting women, sat in the highest U.S. political office, leading the Republican Party.

For Native American women, recent issues of sexism and racism began during the 2016 campaign with Trump referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” because of her claims to Native American heritage.³ Since then, this slur has been used to invoke historical stereotypes and racism related to the myth of American “discovery” and genocide.⁴ Native American scholars document the spectrum of historical portrayals of Native American women, from valuing the presumed welcoming spirituality of the “Indian princess,” most commonly associated with Pocahontas, to images of Native American women as the “oversexualized drudge” (Bird 1999; Coward 2014; Fryberg et al. 2008; Fryberg and Townsend 2008; Green 1975; King 2003; LaFromboise, Heyle, and Ozer 1990; Leavitt et al. 2015; Merskin 2010; Meyer and Royer 2001; Mihesuah 1996, 2003). These narratives emerged over time, largely created to dehumanize and subjugate Native American women (and Native peoples generally). Moreover, sustaining these narratives supports colonial policies that stripped Native nations of land, resources, and cultures (Cook-Lynn 1996, 2001; Deloria 1969; Deloria and Lytle 1984; Meranto 2014; O’Brien 1993; Wilkins 2007).

In addition to evoking dehumanizing stereotypes of Native American women, Trump’s policies also directly affect Native American women. The assault on reproductive rights and healthcare similarly affect Native American women who face even greater challenges of quality access given the remoteness of many Native American communities.

Other policy directly affects the safety of Native American women. More specifically, the expiration of the VAWA in 2018, originally passed in 1994, ended one of the federal government’s most comprehensive legislative efforts to address intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and stalking in diverse communities. VAWA also supported shelters, wraparound services, and other care, authorizing resources for victims, survivors, advocates, and other stakeholders.⁵ Congress renewed VAWA in the spring of 2019, but at the time of the 2018 fall elections, VAWA lapsed and its future was insecure.

VAWA was a critical program, especially because Native American women experience intimate partner violence at nearly twice the rate of other groups. Four out of every five Native women experience violence in their lifetime. Over 55 percent of Native American women have experienced sexual violence, nearly 50 percent experienced stalking, and over 66 percent experienced other forms of psychological aggression from a partner (Rosay 2016a, 2016b). VAWA was vital legislation providing resources to Native American women disproportionately affected by these acts of violence (Amnesty International USA 2007; Bachman et al. 2010; Gebhardt and Woody 2012; Turanovic and Pratt 2017; Wiseman 2014; Yuan et al. 2015).

The 2013 VAWA reauthorization restored tribal governments’ jurisdiction in some Native communities over non-Native Americans who committed intimate partner violence or violated a protection order of a Native American woman. Non-Native American perpetrators commit most of the violence against Native American women (Rosay 2016a, 2016b). Prior to 2013, Native nations had no jurisdictional authority to prosecute the majority of non-Native men who committed acts of aggression and violence against Native American women. Leading up to the 2018 reauthorization, Native advocates and leaders looked to restore Native nations’ criminal jurisdiction in Maine and Alaska (states excluded in the 2014 legislation) and tribal ability to prosecute for acts of violence, including sex trafficking, rape, and murder.⁶ With the lapse of VAWA, the opportunity to expand tribal legal provisions providing broader protection to Native American women was also in jeopardy (Hart and Lowther 2008; Modi, Palmer, and Armstrong 2014; Singh 2014).

In the two years since Trump took office, Native American women have called for more investigation and attention to be paid to MMIW, including federal agencies’ undercount of MMIW (Farley et al. 2016; Hanssen and Fornoff 2019).⁷ In the 2018 campaign season, Native American women staged protests and rallied political candidates to uncover causes and ways to combat the high numbers of MMIW.⁸

As this section notes, the 2018 election took place against the backdrop of Trump actions that furthered sexism and imperiled women’s bodies. Furthermore, Native American women experienced gendered racist denigration. Given this electoral context, we explore how Native American women and men view Trump and gendered policy.

Theory

In light of President Trump’s threat to the safety of Native American women, we consider how Native American women and men evaluate President Trump. While Trump exercises this threat more frequently than his recent predecessors, there is nothing new about his tactics. Attacks on the safety of Native American women are well-established colonial practices to undermine Native nations. We build on an established, cross-disciplinary literature on Native nations and Native American feminism that shows Native American gendered politics have historical roots. We use the insights from these literatures to expand on the emerging political science literature on Native American political behavior and Native American public opinion. More specifically, we contend that Trump’s conduct and gender inequity particularly will trouble Native American women, and Native American men share concerns about Native American women’s well-being.

First, it is vital to understand that Native nations continue to be sovereign and maintain their status as distinct and separate political bodies. Wilkins and Stark (2017) remind us that Native Americans are citizens of “extra constitutional nations” which federal policies slowly incorporated into the U.S. political process. Native Americans always advocate for the protection and maintenance of tribal sovereignty rather than political and socioeconomic incorporation, which is the goal of other racial and ethnic minority groups (Deloria 1969; Deloria and Lytle 1984; Deloria and Wilkins 1999; Wilkins and Stark 2017).

In response, colonizers continually seek to impose gender inequality upon and render Native American women vulnerable to disrupt Native American societies (Kauanui 2008; Meranto 2001). Leonard (2018, 103–104) notes,

legal scholars aim to understand the origins of violence against Indigenous women, but they often fail to examine the historical record of the colonial plural legal systems that cast the subjugation of Indigenous women as persons with less legal protections than their European counterparts and thereby inherently violable.

Traditional Native American societies, although they varied greatly, were more egalitarian. Even though gender roles were often distinct, they balanced reciprocity (Jacobs 2014; Privott 2019), compared with U.S. society today, and imposed much stronger penalties for sexual violence (Deer 2015). In the present, the dominant society continues to portray Native American women as low status but exotic, making women vulnerable to abuse and assault (Lajimodiere 2011). We see the consequences in staggering rates of sexual violence against Native American women.⁹ As a result, a fruitful path to gender equality for Native American women will protect traditional culture and disentangle it from colonial practices (Arvin et al. 2013; Lajimodiere 2011; Ramirez 2007). Indeed, Native American women’s political activism today has organizational roots in their responses to domestic violence decades ago (Robertson 2012).

Taken together, these findings center our work. They lead us to expect that perceptions about the well-being of Native American women can be a powerful motivator for Native American political attitudes. In addition, they lead us to expect that the particular experiences of Native American women lead to gender differences in Native American political attitudes. Perhaps most importantly, they sharpen our understanding that the security of Native American women is inseparable from that of Native nations. Our approach leads to three hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Native American voters’ concern about Native American women’s well-being will have consistent and powerful effects on their attitudes about President Trump.

Hypothesis 2: Native American women voters will have more negative attitudes about President Trump, although their attitudes are not fully distinct from the concerns of Native American men.

Hypothesis 3: Because of the unique political history of violence against Native American women, we hypothesize that political dynamics differ when gendered politics do not relate directly to Native American women’s safety.

In the next section, we test these hypotheses drawing on data from the 2018 Latino Decisions Election Eve Survey.

Data and Method

To examine political attitudes of Native Americans, we rely on the 2018 Latino Decisions Election Eve Survey for our analysis.¹⁰ In partnership with Asian American Decisions and the African American Research Collaborative, Latino Decisions completed 9,400 interviews with Latino, black, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Native American, and white registered voters who voted early or were certain to vote in the November 6, 2018, general election. Interviews were conducted through a combination of cell phone and landline telephone with live callers and self-administered online surveys. Respondents were randomly selected from a statewide or district-wide sample frame, giving all voters an equal opportunity to be selected for interviews. Respondents were reached on landline and cellphone-only, from October 31 to November 5, 2018, and interviews averaged fourteen minutes in length.

Voters were pre-screened based on their vote history in previous midterm elections and date of registration. They included a mix of new registrants and first-time voters as well as those with confirmed vote history in 2010 and 2014 midterms. The survey also included newer voters who first voted in 2016 and even newer registrants who were first-time voters in 2018. Respondents were asked whether they had already voted early, and if not, whether they were 100 percent certain they would vote on November 6. Approximately half of voters indicated they voted early, while half were Election Day precinct voters. The interview was terminated for any respondents who were not certain they would vote. Final data were compared with known census estimates for demographic profiles of voters and weighted to be representative within each state or congressional district. Latino Decisions has employed this same methodology since the 2010 midterm election (Barreto et al. 2018). In 2018, the Associated Press abandoned the traditional Election Day Precinct Exit Poll and now also conducts an election eve poll using a similar methodology to the American Election Eve Poll.¹¹

Native American registered voters were randomly selected from a national online panel of registered voters, as part of a national survey of voters of all races and ethnicities.¹² All voters were asked to self-identify their primary race or ethnicity but were also allowed to check more than one race or ethnicity. This opt-in approach is limited in not being able to ensure that Native American respondents are enrolled Tribal members. However, Herrick et al. (2019) directly compared an opt-in web panel with data in the Current Population Survey (CPS) and American National Election Survey (ANES) and found that, when weighted appropriately, the opt-in web survey results across political behavior items were similar to that from the other data sources. This led them to be optimistic that weighted, opt-in web-based surveys can be appropriate and useful for studying Native American politics. This research helped us determine the weighting approach used for the analysis.

We took additional steps to verify the authenticity of the Native American sample. For example, any respondent who marked that they were Native American was asked a follow-up question about their Tribal identity or affiliation, if any. Respondents who identified as Cherokee were asked one additional screening question to assess whether or not they had more recent Native American identity or more distant connections to this identity. The questions used were as follows:

A lot of Americans have some Native American heritage or ancestry, including Cherokee. How would you describe your Cherokee ancestry? Would you say you have at least one distant relative who was a Cherokee enrolled tribal member, that a more immediate relative like a grandparent was a Cherokee enrolled tribal member, or that you or a parent is an enrolled Cherokee tribal member?

The Native American sample excluded anyone who said their Cherokee identity was based on one distant relative to ensure that the sample included respondents who primarily think of themselves as Native American.

This is an ideal dataset for our analysis for two major reasons. First, the relatively large sample of Native American voters from 2018 allows us to look at the potential for gender variation in this recent election. Second, the survey included multiple measures of reactions to President Trump, as well as perceived importance to gender pay equality. These questions provide us the opportunity to test important hypotheses about gender in general, feelings toward the president’s rhetoric, and a specific policy on gender equality.

We utilized three dependent variables in our analysis: two measures that gauge how Native American voters felt about the President’s actions and one measure of attitudes about gender pay equality. Our first two models consider how Native Americans view Trump. Our third measure allows us to evaluate whether our independent variables also influence attitudes about other sources of unequal treatment for women.

We base our first two measures on the following survey question: Has Donald Trump, because of the kind of person he is or because of something he has done or said, ever made you feel: angry or disrespected? These items were asked separately with the same prompt, allowing us to differentiate between the two negative reactions. In both cases, we have dichotomous outcomes (no/yes), which call for logistic-regression approaches with our models.

We think that for Native American women and men, anger and disrespect might have different dynamics. Non-political science scholars offer insight into Native American men’s distinct attitudes. In Jacobs’ (2014) study, Native American men note that they value their traditional roles as physical protectors of women. Through that lens, to demean Native American women is disrespectful both to women’s status and to men’s roles. Other scholars find that when Native American men discuss violence against Native American women, they attribute it to the harms of colonialism and emotions, such as anger. They identify returns to traditions and practices that include respect for Native American women as the solution (Hartmann and Gone 2014; Heart et al. 2012; Matamonasa-Bennett 2015). Native American advocacy organizations that confront violence against Native American women also identify solutions in practices that include respect (Artichoker and Mousseau 2019; Manning 2018). It is possible that when Native American men evaluate politics that affect the safety of Native American women, they may identity with disrespect rather than anger.

For the third dependent variable, gender pay equality, we rely on the following survey item: employers should be required to pay women and men the same wages for the same work. The response categories range from strongly disagree to strongly agree, with somewhat agree and disagree categories rounding out the measure and a midpoint of neither disagree or disagree. We utilize an ordered-logistic-regression model for this categorical and ordered dependent variable. The literature on non-Native American populations indicates that there is a gender gap in attitudes about equal pay. Cassese et al. (2015) find that respondents perceived systemic bias against women influences their support for gender equality in pay. More generally, Dolan and Hansen (2018) find that women are more likely to think that they face systemic barriers. For Native American men, the question of gender, equality, and pay is nuanced, as they earn less than white women (Burnette 2017).

Our primary explanatory variable is gender, with female being the interpretation category in our model. In our sample, 53 percent of respondents are female (347 respondents). We hypothesize Native American women will be more concerned about Donald Trump’s sexism and other gender disparities in U.S. society. Over the centuries, Native American men faced intense pressure to internalize colonial patriarchy. Also, as Gurr (2015) notes, Native American women directly experience sexism in ways that men do not, such as with obstetric and gynecological care.

In addition, we expect that Native Americans with greater concern about the harassment of women will have more negative attitudes about Donald Trump. We included a survey question that asked respondents to indicate whether they agree that sexual harassment against women continues to be a major problem in our country. Given the literature above, the issue of harassment should be central to Native American views of Trump and of other political issues. Trump continues the long tradition in U.S. politics of diminishing the status of Native American women and increasing their vulnerability. As existing scholarship shows, threats to the well-being of Native American women are fundamental attacks on Native nations.

We control for other factors that prior scholarship identifies as important to political attitudes. For example, and most notably, we control for partisanship, with Democrat being the positive category in our model (Herrick and Mendez 2018). We also control for income, education, and age to account for sociodemographic factors that could influence Native American attitudes beyond gender (Huyser et al. 2017).

We recognize that Native Americans are heterogeneous peoples. Accordingly, we include variables that reflect differences in Native American identity. The survey asks respondents whether they prefer to be called Native American or American Indian. We include respondents’ preference in our model. As Wilkins and Stark (2017) note, the choice between these terms relates to judgments about Native American history and contemporary social relations.¹³ The survey also allows for the opportunity to account for national origin of Native American voters. We limit which national origin groups we include in our models due to low cell sizes for many national origin groups that were identified by respondents, but we control for the two largest tribal nations in the United States: Cherokee and Navajo/Diné. The shares of Cherokee and Navajo/Diné in our sample are approximately the same as their shares of the American Indian/Alaska Native population in the 2010 Census.¹⁴

Results: Descriptive Findings

We begin our discussion with the descriptive frequencies of our dependent variables. We compare Native Americans to non-Native Americans before turning our attention to our analysis of gender variation among Native Americans. Although midterm congressional elections are always a referendum on the president and his party, the 2018 election was uniquely tied to the polarizing agenda and messages of President Trump that cued both race and gender. The survey provides several measures of the Native American electorate’s view of President Trump and the Republican Party more broadly.

First, we examine reactions to President Trump and his actions and comments. As depicted in Figure 1, something the president has said or done angered 61 percent of Native Americans and 57 percent felt disrespected. We suggest elsewhere (Evans et al. 2018) that in addition to gendered politics, Native Americans’ feeling of outrage over Trump’s lack of respect for the nation-to-nation relationship that shapes interaction between Native nations and the federal government¹⁵ and his lack of respect for Native American cultural sites and lands likely influence these attitudes.¹⁶ Bivariate regressions reveal that Native American respondents are not statistically different than non-Native Americans in their reaction to President Trump’s actions or words.

Figure 1.

Because of something he has said or done, has Trump made you feel: angry or disrespected?

More directly tied to the focus of our theory, in Figure 2 we see that 68 percent of Native American women felt angered by President Trump and/or his actions, compared with 53 percent of Native American men. Bivariate regression analysis reveals that this relationship is statistically significant at the .01 level. There is a smaller gender gap among 2018 Native American voters who felt disrespected by something the president has said or done, with 59 percent of Native American women feeling disrespected by Trump compared with 55 percent of Native American men, and this relationship is not statistically significant in bivariate logistic-regression analysis. We, therefore, find support for our hypothesis that Native American women would be more offended by President Trump and his actions than their male counterparts.

Figure 2.

Trump has made me angry/felt disrespected.

The final dependent variable in our analysis is attitudes toward gender pay equality. As shown in Figure 3, a robust 70 percent of Native American voters agree that employers should have to pay men and women the same wages for their labor, indicating that Native Americans are highly progressive on this issue overall. However, there is a wide gender gap on this policy among Native Americans. As reflected in Figure 3, while a majority of Native American men support pay equity (59%), a much greater percentage (79%) of Native American women support gender-based wage equality. This 20 percent difference based on gender is statistically significant at the .01 level in a bivariate regression analysis and much greater than reactions to the President’s actions.

Figure 3.

Employers should pay men and women equally (% agree).

In Figure 4, we include descriptive results for our measure of attitudes toward sexual harassment, a key explanatory variable in our analysis. The survey reveals that 82 percent of Native American voters believe that sexual harassment against women is a major problem in our country. This is higher than the percentages of all other groups except blacks, who came in at 84 percent and this relationship is statistically significant in a bivariate regression analysis at the .01 level. When we look at results from this survey item by gender (Figure 5), we see a gender gap, with 85 percent of Native American women reporting that sexual harassment is a problem compared with 79 percent of Native American men which is statistically significant at the .05 level in bivariate regression analysis.

Figure 4.

Is sexual harassment against women a major issue in our country? (% reporting yes).

Figure 5.

Sexual harassment toward women remains a problem in society.

As reflected in our “Theory” section, the data discussed so far indicate that Native American concern for women’s well-being provided context for the election. We posit that gender discrimination was highly salient and a mediating factor for many Native American voters’ decisions. These descriptive results provide a foundation for our regression models and provide preliminary evidence to support our hypotheses. In the section that follows, we assess whether there are significant gender differences across our three dependent variables when other factors are accounted for.

Results

We begin our discussion with the two measures of how Native American voters responded to the President and his actions. As reflected in Tables 1 and 2, we see mixed results for our hypothesis that Native American women would have a more negative emotional reaction to President Trump, given his negative conduct regarding women, Native Americans, and Native American women specifically. We find that Native American women are more likely to indicate that they have been angered by something the President has said or done, even after controlling for a host of other factors that influence attitudes about the President. However, we do not find a statistically significant gender gap in the model of feeling disrespected by the President and his actions. We, therefore, see that the emotional reactions to the racialized and gendered statements and actions from the President are nuanced among Native American women and men.

Table 1.

“Trump Has Made Me Angry” among Native Americans.

Independent Variables	Coefficient (SE)	Odds ratio
Female	0.606*** (.198)	1.83
Harassment views	1.54*** (.221)	4.69
Democrat	1.23*** (.210)	3.42
Education	−0.023 (.023)	1.02
Age	−0.161** (.068)	0.851
Identification—American Indian	−0.282 (.258)	0.753
National origin—Cherokee	−0.340 (.228)	0.711
National origin—Navajo/Diné	−0.410 (.313)	0.663
Battleground state	−0.001 (.201)	0.998
Observations	565
Pseudo-R²	.20
Log likelihood	−332.11

Logistic regression.

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Table 2.

“Trump Has Made Me Feel Disrespected” among Native Americans.

Independent Variables	Coefficient (SE)	Odds ratio
Female	−0.022 (.196)	0.977
Harassment views	1.98*** (.222)	7.29
Democrat	0.512** (.206)	1.66
Education	0.020 (.022)	1.02
Age	−0.225*** (.068)	0.797
Identification—American Indian	−0.615** (.259)	0.540
National origin—Cherokee	−0.304 (.206)	0.737
National origin—Navajo/Diné	−0.024 (.312)	0.737
Observations	529
Pseudo-R²	.13
Log likelihood	−372.48

Logistic regression.

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

In another key finding, we find that respondents who believe that sexual harassment remains a major problem in the United States are more likely to indicate that President Trump has both angered and disrespected them. The large substantive effect of this variable (stronger than partisanship) indicates that Native American voters who have a progressive ideology regarding sexual harassment are much more likely to have a strong and negative reaction to the President. This suggests that the President’s own issues with sexual harassment, that were on full display during the 2016 Presidential campaign, remain salient to Native American voters.

Not surprisingly, partisanship is also statistically significant across both models in Tables 1 and 2, with Democrats being more likely to say that President Trump angered and disrespected them. This is a key control variable, as our gender and sexual harassment variables prove to be meaningful despite controlling for partisanship.

Among other control variables, we find that age is statistically significant in both models tied directly to the President and his actions. As seen in Tables 1 and 2, younger Native American voters were more likely to indicate that President Trump angered and disrespected them. In light of higher enthusiasm and engagement of young Native American voters (Evans et al. 2018), the result suggests that the President’s racialized and gendered actions were potentially a strong mobilizing factor for the younger generation of Native American voters.

Finally, the findings affirm the heterogeneity of Native American peoples. We find that voters who prefer to be called American Indian are more likely to report that President Trump angered and disrespected them when compared with those who either prefer Native American or do not have a preference. It is important to note that national origin was not statistically significant in either model.

The final dependent variable in our analysis is attitudes toward gender pay equality. In this model, we examine attitudes about the treatment of women beyond the topic of Trump in particular and on an issue that is not immediately connected to Native American women’s physical well-being. Here, we evaluate whether the forces driving attitudes about Trump have broader political relevance and whether they are relevant to other questions of women’s status. As reflected in Table 3, we find that Native American women voters are more likely to believe that employers should pay their workforce equally regardless of gender, even after controlling for other relevant factors. We, therefore, find that there is a clear gender gap among 2018 Native American voters, a year where the context of President Trump’s unique challenges cued gender identity with his behavior toward women.

Table 3.

“Equal Pay for Women Is Important” among Native Americans.

Independent Variables	Coefficient (SE)	Odds ratio
Female	0.921*** (.194)	2.51
Harassment views	−0.062 (.217)	0.939
Democrat	1.53*** (.224)	4.68
Education	0.000 (.017)	1.00
Age	0.067 (.065)	1.06
Identification—American Indian	−0.274 (.235)	0.760
National origin—Cherokee	−0.739*** (.220)	0.477
National origin—Navajo/Diné	−0.968*** (.287)	0.379
Observations	537
Pseudo-R²	.22
Log likelihood	−372.48

Ordered logistic regression.

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

When we look at the control variables, we find that the effects of partisanship, age, education, and ethnic identification are consistent across all three models. However, national origin is statistically significant in the pay equity model only: Native American voters who self-report as Navajo/Diné or Cherokee are less likely to support equal pay for women when compared with Native American voters from all other Native nations.

Conclusion

The 2018 election increased the visibility of the Native American electorate, a subgroup that rarely receives much attention in national political discussions and in political science. There was also a strong rise in gender salience among women voters, driven largely by a desire to push back on President Trump’s words, actions, and policy agenda. We employ a unique national dataset of Native American voters to explore potential gender variation across multiple measures of emotional reaction to President Trump, as well as indicators of public policy that are tied to gender inequality.

Our results demonstrate that there was a meaningful gender gap in the political attitudes of Native Americans in 2018. However, there were important nuances to this general outcome from our analysis that suggest the need for further investigation. In particular, the President’s words and actions cue the emotional reactions of Native American women and men differently. While Native American women were more likely to say that they have felt angered by the President, our data suggest that distinct feelings of anger were more common among this subgroup of the larger Native American population than feelings of disrespect. The gender gap associated with anger was substantial and statistically significant even after accounting for other factors, but the gap associated with disrespect was insubstantial and insignificant. Our findings on anger are doubly important, as anger mobilizes voters in other contexts, which implies that the high rates of participation among Native American women in 2018 will likely jump to even higher rates in 2020 when President Trump is on the ballot.

As we note in our literature review, there is a small yet growing literature focused on Native American political attitudes and behavior. With the increasing availability of survey data of Native American voters and Native Americans more broadly, we hope that scholars will expand on this work to advance our knowledge of how Native Americans engage in American politics, both formally and informally. This article models the importance of considering variation across the Native American electorate, a community that is incredibly diverse and tremendously understudied. Our findings also indicate that the dimensions of women’s and men’s gender identity are different for Native Americans than for non-Native Americans. Put differently, there are vital differences in the salient criteria for gendered political attitudes. There are clear and meaningful differences in how Native American women react to the President and evaluate policies that cue gender identity.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Laura E. Evans

Notes

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