This story was commissioned by The Los Angeles Times and was published on Nov. 4, 2018. It’s been adapted here to reflect headlines, wording, grammatical and style-guide edits preferred among Indigenous Peoples, including the final image and caption layout. Segments featured in bold represent content that was either omitted by the editor or additions made by the journalist. Author’s notes can be found here.

It was less than a decade ago when, across North Dakota, street signs with names such as Buffalo Avenue began sprouting in reservation communities like Fort Yates — home to tribal citizens like Terry Yellow Fat.

Yellow Fat, a great-grandfather who has raised his family on trust lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, had never before had reason to identify his government-issued house by colonized standards — by numeric addresses. When his mail arrives, it’s not delivered to his door, but to a post office box a mile down the road, a circumstance typical of reservation life.

With Election Day nearing, though, the focus on Yellow Fat’s address has become problematic. Under a law the Supreme Court allowed to take effect last month, voters here cannot vote without a residential address. A post office box, once good enough to secure a ballot in this state, just won’t cut it anymore.

Election officials and tribal governments are scrambling to respond to a voter ID law that critics say has been untested, unplanned and involves last-minute work-arounds such as so-called 911 coordinators tasked to quickly assign an address based simply on a description of where would-be voters live.

But tribal citizens like Yellow Fat said that fix isuneven at best.

Terry Yellow Fat, a tribal citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe never before had a reason to identify his government-issued home by numeric addresses. But securing his voting rights has now changed that. (Photo: Jenni Monet)

The Friday before Election Day, the former school superintendent was frustrated. In an attempt to cast an absentee ballot, Yellow Fat said the Sioux County election auditor needed his tribal enrollment number along with his proof of address, a bogus requirement in complying with the state’s voter ID law. This turned him right off.

“That’s a number assigned to us by the Bureau of Indian Affairs — our pedigree,” he said about the federal recognition tribes and its citizens have historically been burdened by.

“That’s not how I want the state to start identifying me by.”

Election officials and political leaders have failed to understand the everyday realities of Native Americans, where people don’t need addresses to find neighbors on reservations and where long-held grievances over broken treaties, stolen lands and harmful assimilation policies have spurred a culture of distrust against state and federal governments.

On Thursday, a North Dakota federal judge denied the Spirit Lake Nation and six other individuals, including Yellow Fat, a bid to halt the voter ID law. The judge said that while the suit raised serious questions about the statute, it would only create greater confusion to grant an injunction this close to the election.

A sense of discord was also central to the lawsuit which argued that many Native Americans living on reservation lands do not have addresses or were assigned invalid addresses. Meanwhile, some of the same addresses have been assigned multiple times to different voters.

“This problem threatens hundreds if not thousands more on Election Day,” the suit said.

The litigation argued that the voter ID law, introduced by Republican legislators claiming to prevent voter fraud, is actually aimed at disenfranchising Native American voters. It is among a handful of voter suppression cases — from a rigid voter ID law in Georgia to a tough-to-reach polling station in Kansas — unfolding in the U.S. in which marginalized communities claim their votes are at risk.

North Dakota Secretary of State Alvin Jaeger denies that the law, as implemented, was intended to deprive any person from voting. Even before the voter ID law was upheld by federal courts, Jaeger sent a preemptive memo to tribal leaders directing voters to the 911 coordinators in each of North Dakota’s 53 counties to obtain an assigned residential street address to comply with the law.

However, it has been everything but easy for some would-be voters.

For Yellow Fat, the process has been, in a word, confusing. The day he tried to apply for an absentee ballot, he was issued not one, but two different addresses. The first one came from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The second from the state. Neither, however, reflects where he actually lives on the corner of Buffalo Ave.

“What have they done to us,” said Yellow Fat, a Vietnam veteran. “It makes me not even want to vote.”