{"id":38107,"date":"2025-11-13T10:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T10:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/38107\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T10:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T10:25:08","slug":"the-original-new-york-voters-natives-for-zohran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/38107\/","title":{"rendered":"The original New York voters: \u2018Natives for Zohran\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pauly Denetclaw
ICT<\/a><\/p>\n

Delfina Roybal has been canvassing for Zohran Mamdani\u2019s campaign since last year \u2014 crossing four of the city\u2019s five boroughs to reach voters. The only borough she didn\u2019t reach was Staten Island, she said with a laugh. The 29-year-old was born and raised in Lenapehoking, which is widely known as New York City, the original homelands of the Lenape.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pain when it comes to local politics and voting,\u201d Roybal, Navajo, told ICT, referring to the history of voting rights of Indigenous peoples in the United States and those rights were challenged by state courts as late as the 1960s. \u201cBut for me, as someone who lives in an urban space, and especially in a place where I am an occupant, it is really important to me that I\u2019m able to do what I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York City has the largest urban population of American Indian and Alaska Native people in the country with more 180,000, alone and in combination on the 2020 Census.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More Native people live in the five boroughs of the city than any reservation in the United States but Native voters continue to be ignored in local city politics and elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite this, Native voters and residents continued to be engaged in the Zohran Mamdani campaign because his platform spoke to the broader issues they face like affordability, child care, and access to public transportation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They hope to see more meaningful engagement with and acknowledgement of the urban Native community, and Lenape people who still live on their ancestral homelands under Mamdani\u2019s leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand this is a grassroots team,\u201d Roybal said. \u201c(Mamdani) takes no money from AIPAC. He didn\u2019t have this major funding and (other) major resources that all of these other candidates had. I think their communications team has done an incredible job. I think their organizers have done an incredible job. But I think this is a part of a much larger conversation that we\u2019re consistently ignored.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last year, Roybal reached out several times to Mamdani\u2019s campaign team to discuss issues that face Native constituents but didn\u2019t get a response. This made her hesitant to push forward any initiatives to engage Native voters as a campaign volunteer.<\/p>\n

In the couple weeks before the Nov. 4 election, Roybal created the Natives for Zohran Instagram page to reach Native voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was such a last-minute push because I did have this personal hesitancy towards getting behind a candidate who wouldn\u2019t necessarily acknowledge or meet us directly,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regardless, Roybal and many other Native people who call New York City home were elated when Mamdani won the mayoral race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally have never been behind a candidate that I truly believe in so much,\u201d she said. \u201cIt gives me hope that (New York City) can be a bit of a safer space for undocumented folks and people of color. So I\u2019m feeling really good. I\u2019m excited, but I\u2019m more so excited to hold him accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roybal would like to see New York City join several other major U.S. cities that have formally recognized Indigenous Peoples Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a ton of Lenape people. We have a ton of people who are Shinnecock. People who have been here forever that continue to be erased on their own lands,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just three subway stops north of City Hall, Mamdani\u2019s soon-to-be office, is Astor Place, or Kintecoying. It served as the place to trade, talk out issues, or play lacrosse for the Lenape in the 1600s. The skyscrapers that tourists look at in awe at night were built by the hands of Haundenosaunee ironworkers in the beginning of the 1900s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like the biggest push \u2014 and it\u2019s sad, because we should have been light years ahead of this \u2014 but the biggest push right now is to just be recognized,\u201d Roybal said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last several years, recognition of Indigenous culture, art and fashion has grown in New York City. The first Indigenous Fashion Week happened in September. There have been art exhibits featuring Native American and Alaska Native artists at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. For the first time, the Columbia University Powwow was held in Central Park earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roybal hopes that the recognition of Indigenous people across the five boroughs continues to grow especially under a progressive mayor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eva Brander Blackhawk, Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, grew up on the East Coast in New Haven, Connecticut. She studied economics and anthropology with an emphasis on Indigenous studies at Columbia University. She graduated in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s exciting to think about what might be possible with a supportive local administration,\u201d Blackhawk said. \u201cThere are Lenape people who I\u2019m sure would love more formal recognition from the city and the state.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city is also home to generations of urban Native American and Alaska Native people who left their communities in search of more opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are Native families that are really well-known in the city that have been living here for generations,\u201d Blackhawk said. \u201cThe (American Indian Community House) and Spiderwoman Theater are these hallmark organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American Indian Community House was founded in 1969 and Spiderwoman Theater was founded in 1976.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blackhawk isn\u2019t a registered voter in New York City but still felt it was important to help campaign for Mamdani. It\u2019s common for Native voters to continue voting where they were born and raised over where they currently live. She cast her absentee ballot back home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an inspiration to people across the country,\u201d Blackhawk said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s campaign garnered international interest and support.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are Indigenous representatives even from Greenland that are really tapped into this election,\u201d Charitie Ropati told ICT.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ropati, Yup\u2019ik, like many other young Indigenous people, left her homelands in Alaska to attend college. She graduated from Columbia University in 2024 and became the first known Alaska Native woman to graduate from its 155-year-old civil engineering program.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ropati was part of the 19 percent of eligible young voters<\/a> who cast their ballots in the city\u2019s general election. In 2013, just 8 percent of voters aged 18 to 34 participated in the mayoral election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so excited, so thankful to be in a city where over 2 million voters turned out, and that\u2019s pretty historic here in New York City, and what I saw is especially for voters under 30, Generation C, the majority of those voters voted for Zohran Mamdani,\u201d she said. Generation C is the generation of young people impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cIf anything it was a relief. It was a big sigh of relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a recent college graduate, working her first full-time job, Mamdani\u2019s campaign commitment to making the city more affordable resonated with Ropati.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s an issue that speaks to many people here, but especially Indigenous people here,\u201d she said. \u201cMany of us are young, many of us have just graduated college, or many of us are here, like working at the (United Nations) or are literal artists, really creating these movements and increasing visibility of Native people. Not only here in this country, but really at an international level. So, the affordability aspect really spoke to me. This city needs to be more affordable, but it especially needs to be affordable for New Yorkers born and raised here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blackhawk lives in a rent-controlled apartment which is crucial for her. She sub-leased her first apartment in the East Village for $1,500 a month in 2021, today that same apartment is $3,000. She is glad that Mamdani supports freezing rent for the city\u2019s 30 percent of housing that is designated rent-control.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI do live in a rent-controlled apartment, and typically, rent in New York will go up year to year,\u201d Blackhawk said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen people get pushed out of apartments for that reason. New York being such a big city, it can be a little bit crazy finding apartments at all. So it\u2019s sad if you have to leave an apartment you love because of a 20, 30 percent (rent) increase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roybal grew up in a low-income household on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. She watched her neighbors get priced out of the community they grew up in, which is why freezing rent is an important policy for her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen a large portion of my neighborhood, who are mostly people of color, completely pushed out of their neighborhoods,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can no longer afford food. Commute is impossible. Many people in my generation aren\u2019t able to have kids because they can\u2019t afford it, and they want to have another generation of New Yorkers, but they just can\u2019t afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mamdani campaign didn\u2019t speak directly to or acknowledge Native voters, but his platform did address the important issue of freezing rent prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no direct respondents from his team, and it really made me sad, but we\u2019re used to it,\u201d Roybal said. \u201cWe\u2019re used to that erasure. Now that he\u2019s been elected, I hope that we can work together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor-elect Mamdani will be sworn in Jan. 1, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pauly DenetclawICT Delfina Roybal has been canvassing for Zohran Mamdani\u2019s campaign since last year \u2014 crossing four of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[20903,22249,22250,22251,9,24,11,10,87,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-38107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-lenape","9":"tag-lenapehoking","10":"tag-native-vote","11":"tag-native-vote-25","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}