Jean Reith Schroedel’s Voting in Indian Country: The View from the Trenches offers a detailed study of the barriers to political participation for American Indians. The book explains the historical foundations of these barriers, deconstructs issues of current vote dilution in Indian Country, and presents interviews detailing the efforts of activists and organizations fighting for American Indian voting rights. Voting in Indian Country is timely, valuable, and approachable, with a range of information, voices, and perspectives that inform readers about the historic and contemporary challenges to voting rights for American Indians.

Schroedel’s work builds on and expands the existing literature on American Indian voting rights issues, such as Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the Right to Vote by Daniel McCool, Susan M. Olson, and Jennifer L. Robinson (2007) and Laughlin McDonald’s American Indians and the Fight for Equal Voting Rights (2010). Schroedel’s book is straightforward in purpose, with a goal of offering a “nuts and bolts understanding of the legal issues involved in Native American voting rights cases, the ways that they resemble and differ from voting rights cases involving African Americans, and their relationship to broader social justice movements for Native inclusion and self-determination” (p. xi).

Voting in Indian Country is organized in three parts, with the first providing an overview of American Indian citizenship across history, the second a more detailed exploration of the Voting Rights Act and voting rights issues in Indian Country, and the last part giving voice to voting rights lawyers, activists, and plaintiffs in voting rights cases. The second and third parts present the strongest contributions to the literature on Indian voting rights. In these parts, Schroedel offers the “view from the trenches” promised in the title, including the analysis of the findings of her research team’s survey-based research in Jackson County, South Dakota, and a compilation of 10 detailed interviews from individuals involved in voting rights in various ways.

The second part of the book provides a detailed, in-depth look at legal cases and issues related to second-generation abuses of American Indian voting rights. These are distinct from first-generation overt denials of the right to vote and are harder to challenge in court and more difficult to prove. Schroedel covers both the cases in Indian Country that overlap with concerns brought by other racial and ethnic minorities in the United States and those groups of cases that raise issues particular to Indian Country. Specific hurdles for American Indian voters include those related to language rights, challenges for using tribal identification to vote, issues related to reliance on post office boxes on reservations, lengthy travel distances due to reservation geography, and closed polling sites. The section, “Emerging Issues in Voting Rights,” covers the specific challenges of voting by mail on reservations and a lack of trust related to mail-in ballots, which seem particularly relevant when read in November 2020. As further evidence of the strength of her work, Schroedel’s conclusions are very similar to those found in the report issued by the Native American Voting Rights Coalition (founded by the Native American Rights Fund) in June 2020 titled “Obstacles at Every Turn: Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters.”

The book incorporates a case study of voting in Jackson County, South Dakota. Schroedel and her team conducted a survey of 9% of the county’s voting-age population in 2014, with 85 white and 83 American Indian respondents. This sample may seem small, but many academic studies of political participation do not have enough American Indian respondents to make significant conclusions (if they address the population at all); this study helps fill that gap. It determines the impact of travel distances on the ability of American Indians to register and vote and explores the “totality of circumstances” that affect electoral participation (p. 73). The analysis shows a negative effect of travel distances on American Indian voters in rural areas. American Indian respondents are more likely not only to be required to travel longer distances to vote but also to struggle with poverty and a lack of resources that adversely affect their ability to reach the voting booth. This is important for understanding systemic racism and barriers to voting on many reservations, which tend to be in rural states. As the 2020 election shows, these rural outcomes are very important for federal elections.

The transcribed interviews in the third part of the book provide a unique component of the work and a departure from typical political science research. In this section, Schroedel presents interviews in which 10 contacts offer narratives of their experiences with voting rights. In the preface to Speaking of Indigenous Politics (2018), a collection of interviews from J. Kehaulani Kauanui’s radio show, Robert Warrior writes that interviews can be another exercise of white domination of Native peoples, places, and stories by controlling the frame, storyline, and direction of a narrative. Kauanui’s radio show subverted this history, respecting Indigenous peoples’ power to speak for themselves, their experiences, and the contemporary challenges they faced. Schroedel follows this example of empowering, rather than dictating or driving, the interview subjects. She presents the interviews as oral histories directed by the subjects, taking shape and direction according to their own understanding and experiences on the ground. Eight of the 10 interviews are from Native people with a range of tribal affiliations. The interviews contribute a different approach from the more academic tone of earlier chapters. Readers should not expect brief or succinct storylines in this section but can instead gain rich insight into the breadth of these individuals’ lives, careers, relationships, and involvement with voting rights both on- and off-reservation.

The importance of voting rights in Indian Country is evident in the news coverage of the 2020 federal elections. After the primaries and the shift under COVID-19 to mail-in voting, several media outlets raised concerns about issues with primary mail-in voting on reservations. The Electoral College votes in key states such as Arizona and Wisconsin in favor of President Joe Biden were based on a popular vote that was significantly influenced by the participation of American Indian voters. A record-breaking six American Indians and one Native Hawaiian were elected to the federal Congress in 2020. American Indian votes matter, and the ongoing pursuit for voting rights can have significant effects.

Voting in Indian Country offers an important addition to work on American Indian voting rights and Native politics, incorporating on-the-ground research and Native voices and experiences. Schroedel closes her book with two voting rights stories from the 2018 election as “reminders that winning a particular legal battle does not mean the struggle is over” (p. 229). Indeed, the many contemporary examples she offers in her work and its relevance in the 2020 elections make it profoundly clear that the struggle for voting rights in Indian country is far from over. With its “view from the trenches,” Voting in Indian Country brings this struggle and the ongoing pursuit of justice vividly to life.