A e Ellis/Andi Cli ord

Ellis and Clifford both serve on state’s tribal relations committee

CHRIS AADLAND

For the Star-Tribune

Two Indigenous Wyoming women are bringing their experiences to the state Legislature, especially when it comes to issues affecting Indian Country.

Sen. Affie Ellis, R-Cheyenne, a citizen of the Navajo Nation has served since 2017. She is the first Native American to have been elected to the state Senate and third overall to have been elected to the Legislature.

Rep. Andi Clifford, D-Fort Washakie, was the first Northern Arapaho woman to be elected to the state Legislature when she won in 2018. Clifford recently announced that she intends to seek re-election.

While the two women have different backgrounds, approaches and parties, the two also share some common goals, like addressing the high rates of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Both women serve on the Legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations, which Ellis co-chairs. Both have worked on legislation addressing missing and murdered Indigenous people that will be debated during this year’s session. They’ve also combined to work on a resolution they hope the Legislature will sign off on to send to the U.S. Congress, encouraging it to more aggressively tackle the problem.

Ellis’ and Clifford’s elections come as other Indigenous women are winning elections. In 2018, Minnesota voters elected an Ojibwe woman as the state’s lieutenant governor, making her the second Native American woman to ever be elected to statewide executive office in the U.S. That same year, the first two Native American women in history won seats in U.S. Congress.

And despite the 100th anniversary of U.S. women winning the right to vote, Clifford said the anniversary means something different to many Indigenous women because that didn’t mean they could then vote — and they are still fighting to be treated equally.

She’d like to see women, despite race or background, hold more leadership roles.

“We still have a ways to go on the national, state and even my tribal level for women to be equal,” she said. “My hope would be to inspire women and men, girls and boys to support each other, to encourage each other to get past the stigma of a woman being in leadership positions. I

CAYLA NIMMO PHOTOS, STAR-TRIBUNE LEFT: Sen. Affie Ellis poses for a portrait Jan. 13 at the Capitol building in Cheyenne. RIGHT: Rep. Andi Clifford poses for a portrait Jan. 18 in Lander. INDIGENOUS WOMEN bring expertise to capitol

hope that’s my legacy. ... Women are sacred. We give life.”

Unapologetically Indigenous

Clifford previously served as a Fremont County commissioner and currently works as a human resources and employment consultant in addition to her work as a lawmaker.

Clifford and her husband have eight children between them and 19 grandchildren, who she said she enjoys spending time with — whether that’s visiting them in South Dakota, California or taking them to Disneyland.

When her uncle, Patrick Goggles, said he was retiring his legislative seat, she ran to fill in for him in 2014. She lost that first bid but narrowly won in 2018.

Growing up and listening to passionate family members advocate for issues on the reservation, like allowing women to enroll their children in their tribe or to establish a reservation school, helped instill a drive to one day serve her people, a goal hardened by other experiences like serving as president of University of Wyoming student group Keepers of the Fire.

“It was those two who really inspired me to speak out and fight for what I believe in, sometimes standing alone,” she said.

She said she’s spent much of her first term observing, forming relationships and learning how to be an effective legislator — advice given to her by Goggles.

Still, she acknowledged that she’s “ruffled some feathers” when speaking out about issues around using tribal IDs to vote or a police shooting of a Northern Arapaho.

Despite that, she said she doesn’t mind being seen as frank or outspoken, adding that she hopes she’s seen someday as “an unapologetic Indigenous women” who always spoke up for her people.

Now that she’s feeling more comfortable with the process, she said she’s looking forward to tackling more issues. One she hopes to take on is passing legislation requiring all Wyoming school districts to allow Indigenous students to wear regalia during their graduation if those students want to.

And in the end, she hopes people view her as someone who fought for Indigenous voices to be included in discussions and to have helped educate Wyomingites about their Indigenous neighbors.

“I’m going to go sit at that table. I’m not going to wait to be invited because sometimes we’ll never be invited to the table,” she said. “There’s a lot of tables that we still are not at consistently at.”

‘Do they let girls in the Senate?’

For Ellis, a Wyoming native, it took a question from her daughter to decide to seek office.

“I think I’ve always been interested and involved with government politics in some way, shape or form,” she said. “... But it wasn’t until ... I took her to the Wyoming Legislature to just watch some of the debate and she heartbreakingly asked me if they let girls in the Senate, because she looked in the chamber and didn’t see any. And so after just a lot of soul-searching and reflection, I decided to kind of transition from being a more behind-the-scenes observer into a candidate and decided to run.”

Ellis works as an attorney for law firm Holland & Hart has deep experience in tribal affairs and law. She also participated in a group that studied the high rates of Indian crime and helped author a report a few years ago about the problem and recommendations to fix it. That’s expertise she’s taken to the Legislature.

“There are some areas in federal Indian law where I don’t have as great a depth of knowledge, but certainly in other areas I do,” she said. “So, being one of the few people that practice in this area in Wyoming, being a Native person and then serving in the Legislature, is a wonderful combination of skills that, I think, really have started advancing some conversations that I think are long overdue or have been long overdue in Wyoming.”

She also serves on the education committee, where she says she’s proud of legislation she helped pass around computer science education. She added she’s thought a lot about the state’s Indian Education for All act and the history that Wyoming students get about the country and state’s Indigenous people.

Ellis grew up in Jackson. Her parents, who grew up in the Navajo Nation, moved to the state about 60 years ago.

She and her husband have three kids, and although she said she’s missed some events, she hopes her children recognized what that means. Working, being a parent and legislator means being busy, something Ellis said she doesn’t mind.

“I have a really hard time just kind of relaxing,” she said. “That’s actually something I want to work on, that ... I probably have too many hobbies.”

Although she said she’ll be recognized a state lawmaker, ultimately, she hopes her friends and family view her more as a loving mother who loved seeing her children laugh, a voracious reader, passionate sewer, for her frybread or her renovation of a vintage camper.

“It’d be fine at my funeral to say, ‘Well, she cared about computer science legislation,’” she said. “I would hope that at my funeral, people don’t mention or get hung up on the fact that I served in the state Senate. ... So I kind of have that duality of like, that’s what I want on a personal level to be remembered by, versus knowing that my public service will always be larger than anything.”