by Stevaughn Bush · June 29, 2014 4:18 PM
Welcome to our ongoing interview series highlighting young elected officials and young candidates. This month we spoke with Anna Diaz-Takes The Shield, a 26-year-old Native American who is running for state representative of South Dakota’s 27th district.
Anna is also the County Commissioner for Shannon County, which represents District 2 in her hometown of Oglala, South Dakota. She ran for the office when she was 23 and is the youngest Native American woman in history to hold the office. Residing in one of the five South Dakota counties entirely on an Indian reservation, Anna is motivated to enter public service by a pressing commitment to the welfare of her people, a commitment that she hopes to expand to the rest of South Dakota’s 27th District. “We need to get our youth active and get them to step up for our elderly and for our people”, Anna says. “And I take that as a challenge.”
Anna brings a sense of focus to longstanding problems in the Native community. “Many of the most important issues stem from the reservation itself. Education, for one, is a huge factor. Certain things are not working,” Anna says. “With the No Child Left Behind Act, we’re still seeing children left behind, and it’s largely Native American children,” she continues. Access to quality healthcare is another problem. “It’s the Indian Health Service’s responsibility to preserve the health of the reservation, but, no matter where you’re from, it’s always a struggle to actually get [to the facilities].”
Anna tells us some of the biggest challenges she continues to face in the political process. “There were three main factors that kept coming up everywhere I went, the first one being that I’m a female,” she says. “The second one is being a Native American in politics,” she continues. “There’s always a bad light coming from people who don’t typically see Natives taking the time to try to further their community, whether it be from people who say that Natives are alcoholics, or the like.” But Native American political leadership is something that is very important to her. “It’s very difficult to explain the political struggles [of the tribes] to someone who is trying to represent you who is not from where you’re from.”
The third challenge, Anna says, is her age. She tells us about one of her experiences on the campaign trail for County Commissioner. “I went to a statewide convention meeting people, and I walked into a room of a hundred plus older white males, and they were all telling me, ‘You’re young. You don’t know what you’re doing. You need to go back to school.’”
All in all, Anna sees leadership by Millennials as very important. “There have been politicians who have been in office for years, and we have yet to see a change,” she said. “It’s time for young people to step up and become the leaders they are educating themselves to be.”