Native American leaders are drawing attention to their demographic as a potentially decisive group in the 2024 election, especially in what Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, calls the “tribal wall” — Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Michigan, states with relatively high proportions of Indigenous voters.

On Oct. 9, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz made a stop in Arizona to meet with tribal leaders about what they could expect if Kamala Harris wins next month's presidential election. The Tucson Sentinel reports that Lewis stressed the importance of Indigenous voters in President Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Arizona in 2020.

“Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina and Michigan all have substantial tribal populations,” Lewis said. “And if we make our voices heard by voting, we can do in the rest of the country what we did here in Arizona in 2020: help elect the next president and vice president of the United States.”

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There are roughly 4.7 million eligible Native American voters in the United States, and many of them are concentrated in some of this year’s most contested states. In Arizona, a state........

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