FILE - U.S. President Calvin Coolidge wears a Native American headdress of the Sioux tribe as he is adopted as Chief Leading Eagle and first white chief of the tribe at the celebration of the 51st anniversary of the settlement of Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1927. Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. FILE - U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Japan, Feb. 23, 1945.
That legislation took shape in the aftermath of World War I in which thousands of Native Americans had volunteered to serve overseas in the military. The state’s new voting rights legislation for Native Americans provides new tools for tribal communities to request convenient on-reservation voting sites and secure ballot deposit boxes with consultation requirements for county clerks and an appeals process.
Native Americans have held widely divergent views about citizenship and voting, said Torey Dolan, a research fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School and citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Some view U.S. citizenship as incompatible with being Indigenous people; others see it more like dual citizenship.