With less than 100 days to go before the 2024 election, Native women and Two Spirit leaders are energized — and organized — as they get out the vote for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

During a virtual call that drew several hundred participants on Sunday evening, speakers highlighted Harris’s pro-tribal record as a member of President Joe Biden’s administration. As they cited record numbers of Native people in high-level positions and historic levels of funding for Indian Country, they drew a sharp contrast with Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was described more than once as a criminal.

“This is a choice between two visions,” stressed Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna who is making history as the first Native person to serve in a presidential cabinet, where she leads the Department of the Interior, the federal agency with the most trust and treaty responsibilities in Indian Country.

“Donald Trump wants to take us backwards,” Haaland continued. “Kamala Harris is building a future for everyone. Kamala is fighting for a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.”

Sharice Davids, a Two Spirit citizen from the Ho-Chunk Nation, also drew attention to the differences between Harris and Trump, whose running mate has derided Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a “fake” holiday. She said Native voters once again have a chance to show their power by showing up to the polls to vote for Democrats on November 5.

“I know she will absolutely continue to work hard on behalf of Native communities, just like the current president has — legitimately elected current president, I will also mention,” Davids, who made history of her own as being one of the first two Native women elected to the U.S. Congress, said of Harris and Biden.

“Us coming together to do everything we can to defeat Donald Trump and this extreme agenda that we’re seeing, whether we’re talking about voting or organizing, doing everything we can to make our voices heard, is so important,” said Davids, who is running for re-election to serve a fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives for the 3rd Congressional District in Kansas.

Peggy Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, is the highest-ranking Native woman in a state-level executive office, serving as lieutenant governor in Minnesota. She pointed out that the Harris campaign’s first official surrogate event took place among Native voters in Arizona last Tuesday — only two days after the vice president jumped into the 2024 race.

“I think Native voters are going to make the difference again,” Flanagan said on the virtual call. “We are strategically located in swing states all across the country, and I know that when Indian Country shows up, we win.”

Arizona and Minnesota are among the several battleground states where Native advocates are focusing efforts to get out the vote for Harris during the presidential election season. Both are home to dozens of tribes and significant American Indian and Alaska Native populations, attendees of the call were reminded, and both went for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

Alicia “Liish” Kozlowski (they/them), who traces their Ojibwe roots to the Grand Portage Band and the Fond du Lac Band, credited the work of Haaland, Davids and Flanagan for helping them make history as the first Two Spirit lawmaker elected to the Minnesota Legislature. They said the Republican ticket’s rhetoric on Indigenous peoples, Two Spirit issues and women’s rights will only encourage turnout among Native voters.

“Now I’m on the inside with our ancestral anger and tapping into our radical joy and really waving our playful defiance at those who seek to eradicate us again,” said Kozlowski. “But jokes on them. It didn’t work the first time and it’s not going to work now because we know that we have just about 100 days to keep digging deep, to lean into each other and not away from each other, to have truth telling conversations and organize, organize, organize for sovereignty and liberation.”

Trump and his vice presidential running mate James David “J.D.” Vance accepted their party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin — another one of the battleground states — earlier in July. The event featured just one Native presenter, Forest County Potawatomi Community Chairman James Crawford, who did not utter either candidates’ name during his speech on the main stage, and did not voice an endorsement for the GOP ticket.

The 2024 Republican platform does not include any mention of American Indians, Alaska Natives or Native Hawaiians. But Trump, during a campaign rally in North Carolina, last week claimed that one particular Indian nation has been “so supportive” of his efforts.

“Chief of the Catawba Nation, Brian Harris,” Trump said at the rally in Charlotte on July 24, calling out the tribe’s elected leader. “Brian. Where are you Brian?”

“They’ve been so supportive,” the one-term former president said of the tribe. “Thank you very much.”

The Catawba Nation, however, is not endorsing any candidates for political office. A statement from the tribe portrayed the chief’s attendance at the Trump rally as one of good will.

“The Catawba Nation is in a period of strong Nation-building,” the statement to Indianz.Com read. “The Nation is focused on this Nation-building effort and is not involved in political campaigns and does not endorse candidates for political office, whether at the national or local level.”

Along with Arizona, Minnesota, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, North Carolina is one of the battleground states where Native advocates are focusing efforts. The state narrowly went for Trump in 2020, when he also singled out the Catawba Nation, as well as the Lumbee Tribe, during a rally a month before the election in that year.