BOULDER, Colo.—According to IllumiNative and Advance Native Political Leadership, a record number of Native American leaders recently took office in the United States.
Of around 250 Native candidates who ran for political offices in 2024, 166 won seats. The groups report that 115 of these men and women are first-time office holders.
"We're proud to see our people represented in positions of power, where we can drive meaningful change for our communities," leaders from IllumiNative write. "As Native leaders take their rightful places, we affirm: WE BELONG IN THESE SPACES. Our voices, stories, and expertise are essential to creating a brighter future for all."
Advance Native Political Leadership, a group that works to increase Native American representation in government, says the number has grown greatly from the 100 who were running when it first started counting in 2016. About 55 percent of this year's candidates were women, and voters in 25 states had the opportunity to elect or reelect an Indigenous candidate to public office this year.
"The need for more Native representation is still apparent, said Jordan James Harvill, the national program director for Advance. Currently, Native candidates hold about 0.07 percent of all 519,000 elected offices in the country, despite making up at least 3.4 percent of the total U.S. population. Montana is the only state in the country where the percentage of Native officials in the state legislature at least matches their share of the population.
The organization estimates that number would have to be 17,000 to achieve parity based on the Native proportion of the U.S. population.
"The most ground that we've gained has been at the state level," said Elise Blasingame, an Osage Nation scholar in residence at the Advance Native Political Leadership, and an independent researcher at the University of Georgia, focusing on the impact of Native representation on publicly elected offices.
Blasingame said that between 1993 and 2023, the United States has seen a 300 percent increase, to about 80, in the number of state legislators alone who self-identify as Native American.
She predicted that one reason for the increase was a jump in Native American voter turnout.
