TACO­MA, WASH. — Chester Earl, 45, and about 300 mem­bers of Wash­ing­ton state tribes — from Tulalip, Yaka­ma, Lum­mi, Quin­ault, Port Gam­ble S’K­lal­lam, Earl’s own Puyallup com­mu­ni­ty and more — are gath­ered at an elec­tion night par­ty in a Taco­ma cater­ing hall, singing, drum­ming, danc­ing, feast­ing and watch­ing returns from around the state and coun­try. ​“It’s incred­i­ble,” Earl exclaims as the big news comes in: Ini­tia­tive 940, a Wash­ing­ton state bal­lot ini­tia­tive which approves new police reform mea­sures, has passed with more than 60 per­cent of the vote.

Deb Haaland of Laguna Pueblo and Sharice Davids of the Ho-Chunk Nation will be heading to the U.S. House of Representatives to represent New Mexico and Kansas, respectively.

Earl and about 15 of the atten­dees have just returned from a two-week reser­va­tion-to-reser­va­tion tour, N8tive Vote 2018. The tour held ral­lies on the state’s 29 trib­al home­lands and encour­aged mem­bers to get to the polls, par­tic­u­lar­ly to say yes to I‑940, which, among oth­er reforms, makes it eas­i­er to pros­e­cute law enforce­ment offi­cers who mis­use dead­ly force.

As In These Times has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, Natives are killed by police at the high­est rate of any pop­u­la­tion group — which is rarely chron­i­cled in the media. One vic­tim was Earl’s cousin and trib­al mem­ber Jacque­line Saly­ers, a 32-year-old preg­nant moth­er of four, shot and killed in Jan­u­ary 2016 as she pulled out of a park­ing space. Police were seek­ing her boyfriend, who was in the pas­sen­ger seat. The offi­cer who shot her in the head claimed that the mov­ing car was life-threat­en­ing, which Salyers’s fam­i­ly dis­putes. The offi­cer was cleared of wrongdoing.

The shoot­ing gal­va­nized the Puyallup tribe to join with oth­er advo­cates to help craft new police account­abil­i­ty mea­sures. The group then gath­ered near­ly 360,000 sig­na­tures (100,000 more than need­ed) from peo­ple all across the state — not just on reser­va­tions — to bring a reform bill to the leg­is­la­ture. The bill requires that police offi­cers receive train­ing to de-esca­late sit­u­a­tions, rec­og­nize men­tal-health crises, and give first aid to those they harm. It also requires inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions of dead­ly and harm­ful incidents.

The law also elim­i­nates the cur­rent lan­guage on the books in Wash­ing­ton that excus­es offi­cers for a killing unless they have act­ed with ​“mal­ice,” which had put pros­e­cut­ing attor­neys in the dif­fi­cult posi­tion of try­ing to prove an officer’s men­tal state. A Seat­tle Times study showed that under that statute, 213 police-caused deaths from 2005 to 2015 result­ed in just one prosecution.

The leg­is­la­ture passed the bill in March, after which the state Supreme Court decid­ed it need­ed to be approved by vot­ers. The Puyallup tribe worked with Lum­mi and Quin­ault offi­cials to put togeth­er a get-out-the-vote tour, con­fi­dent they would earn pub­lic sup­port. I‑940 was offi­cial­ly endorsed by the state’s tribes, sev­er­al police asso­ci­a­tions, the Seat­tle Times and 10 oth­er news­pa­pers, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers of Wash­ing­ton and 22 more labor unions, pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal par­ties and elect­ed offi­cials, and some 100 church groups, edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tions, vet­er­ans asso­ci­a­tions and more.

“The results give me such relief,” Salyers’s moth­er, Lisa Earl, says on elec­tion night. ​“The peo­ple spoke. Jack­ie didn’t get killed and die in vain. We have worked so tire­less­ly for so long and have suc­ceed­ed in doing some­thing that will help pre­serve future gen­er­a­tions. She has been with me the whole way.”

Lisa Earl believes the new law will make every­one safer, build­ing trust between offi­cers and the pub­lic. ​“We want to reach out and help every­one,” she says. ​“I don’t know how I would feel if my tribe had not wrapped its arms around me with love after Jackie’s death. We want our police offi­cers to learn com­pas­sion. We want them to have the skills they need when they’re run­ning into sit­u­a­tions, per­haps with­out back­up. Nur­tur­ing is what we are about.”

The elec­tion night par­ty­go­ers also cel­e­brat­ed his­toric wins by Native Amer­i­can can­di­dates across the coun­try. Deb Haa­land of Lagu­na Pueblo and Sharice Davids of the Ho-Chunk Nation will be head­ing to the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to rep­re­sent New Mex­i­co and Kansas, respec­tive­ly. Natives also won a slew of state and local races, includ­ing Yvette Isburg, who won the post of audi­tor for the Crow Creek Sioux reservation’s South Dako­ta coun­ty. Audi­tors, called recorders in some states, con­trol crit­i­cal on-the-ground imple­men­ta­tion of elections.

That’s impor­tant for Native vot­ers, who have been dis­en­fran­chised in a vari­ety of ways. For exam­ple, the near­est reg­is­tra­tion sites and polling places may be far from reser­va­tions. In North Dako­ta, his­tor­i­cal­ly high Native turnout proved the state couldn’t sup­press the Native vote, as it tried to do with an 11th-hour demand that vot­ers pro­vide IDs with detailed street address infor­ma­tion that trib­al mem­bers typ­i­cal­ly don’t have. Young Native vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed avid­ly in North Dako­ta, part of a nation­al swell of youth vot­er turnout.

Wash­ing­ton state’s tribes and trib­al mem­bers may have been eager to see I‑940 approved, but, more broad­ly, they want to ampli­fy the Native voice by increas­ing the num­ber of trib­al peo­ple who reg­is­ter and vote. Every­where the rez-to-rez tour went, it stressed par­tic­i­pa­tion and the pow­er of the vote. ​“We’re stronger togeth­er,” says tour par­tic­i­pant Tim Reynon, 49, a Puyallup trib­al coun­cil mem­ber. He not­ed the I‑940 effort as proof. ​“This was such an impor­tant elec­tion for us.”

Chester Earl adds that the tour began reassem­bling the statewide trib­al coali­tion that was instru­men­tal in defeat­ing Washington’s then‑U.S. Sen­a­tor in 2000, a Repub­li­can known as an ​“Indi­an fight­er,” replac­ing him with Maria Cantwell, a Demo­c­rat who sits on the Senate’s Com­mit­tee on Indi­an Affairs and is per­ceived as respon­sive to Native issues.

“The ​‘oth­er Wash­ing­ton’ being the way it is nowa­days,” Earl con­tin­ues, refer­ring to D.C., ​“we need to elect peo­ple who will pro­tect the rights of Native peo­ple, women, LGBTQ peo­ple, immi­grants, and more.”

There’s a proven way to do that, Earl says: ​“We will awak­en the Native vote, get our peo­ple reg­is­tered, and get them out to vote.”