Who We Are
The Native Vote Initiative (NVI) is a collaboration of Alaska Native Non-Profits, Alaska Native Regional and Village Corporations, Regional Non-Profits, and Tribes with the purpose to address voting disparities, decreasing institutional and chronic problems to voting in rural Alaskan communities, and create meaningful communications, education, and dialogue through a robust year-round get out the vote initiative.
The Partners
The Native Vote Initiative partnership includes the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), Get Out the Native Vote (GOTNV), Alaska Regional Association (ARA), Interior Native Votes, Southcentral Foundation (SCF), Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), First Alaskans Institute (FAI), Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC), Native Movement (NM), Native Peoples Action Community Fund (NPACF), Rural Indigenous Outreach Team (RIO), Koniag, Tlingit & Haida Central Council (T&H), Sealaska, YK GOTNV Coalition, Calista, United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), and more continue to join this collaborative effort.
Our Purpose and Goals
A healthy democracy requires full participation of Alaskans of all languages, geographies, abilities, and identities. To accomplish our bold and necessary mission of increasing election turnout across the state with robust voter education and outreach efforts to develop more informed, empowered and confident voters, we minimize barriers to voting of anticipated problems, and in real-time developments. We have built an impressive statewide partnership with organizations across Alaska and in Indian Country who share in this mission and vision.
NVI works in partnership to engage and increase voter turnout with our under-represented constituencies, address and advocate for policy reforms, and be a resource for our people and communities. All our communities deserve to have their voices heard in every single election, from local to state, federal and Tribal elections, and we must address the inequity and injustice that has been perpetuated for generations. We have the vision and mission to make system changes with a goal of near universal voter turnout of our Alaska Native people, who now represent a quarter of the state of Alaska’s vote.
Our goal is to build power for self-determination by engaging directly with our communities through voter contact led by voter engagement specialists. By deepening our understanding of voters, we aim to address persistent voter apathy and implement consistent communication and education strategy. This includes distributing educational materials, hosting events and trainings, and expanding community capacity and access to critical funding. We will also leverage tools like the census and federal surveys, which directly influence funding allocations—including emergency response resources—and play a vital role in redistricting and apportionment.
It is our intention to continue to reach out and add more partners to our roundtable, to grow our boots on the ground organizing, integrate new ideas and best practices, and to provide the materials we create with other organizations, communities, Tribes, Native Corporations and more.
Action & Tactics
- Direct Voter Contact and Community Building – The AFN Navigators, RIO Team, Interior Native Vote Ambassador program, and more, are already set up to engage with our communities through direct organizing. Our experience has already demonstrated that hiring people within the community and the region is one of the most successful tactics, one that needs growth and effectiveness.
- Voter Education – Voter Guides & Regional Voting Toolkits were identified as a gap in our communities as voters sighted not knowing who (or what) was on the ballot or information on voting in general. We recognized development for more outreach with really specific information for each region was needed and are key to ensuring a confident voter’s plan to vote.
- Voting Focus Groups – the intent is to understand why there is a demonstrable level of voter apathy. Now that it has been identified, we need to figure out what issues and messaging will engage our people in the voting process to design our communications around it in culturally appropriate and appealing ways.
- Communications – building and implementing a strident voter engagement plan to include video, radio (including CB), mail, and digital to increase information with takeaways from our focus groups and requests from the community.
- Increase Volunteers & Poll Workers – We are working with the Division of Elections to more effectively recruit, train and retain volunteers for poll work, translations, and other voter education to add to voter confidence.
- Infusing Art and Media – art speaks to us in a different way and appeals to our Indigenous ways of communicating. Art and culturally appropriate approaches may reach our audience the way presentations may not.
