A Look Back at a Year of Advocacy
A Year of Growth, Challenge, and Meaningful Progress
2025 was a year marked by growth, challenge, and meaningful progress, both for me personally and for Western Native Voice.
In Montana, we moved through a successful legislative session during a time when voting rights across the country were under direct threat. Much of my work focused on standing alongside partners, lawmakers, and advocates to push back against harmful attacks on voting access and to ensure that Native voters were not silenced or pushed aside. One of the most meaningful victories of the year was the passage of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This hard-won achievement recognizes the history, resilience, and contributions of Indigenous peoples in Montana. It represented more than a policy win—it was the result of nearly a decade of education, relationship-building, and persistence finally coming together.
At the same time, my work expanded beyond Montana in a significant way. This year, I relocated to Washington, DC to open Western Native Voice’s first federal office. Establishing a presence in DC meant building something entirely new—introducing Western Native Voice (WNV) to federal partners, strengthening relationships with members of Congress and their staff, and ensuring Native perspectives were part of conversations happening at the highest levels of government.
From DC, I worked to elevate issues impacting Native communities, including voting rights, access to healthcare, federal trust and treaty responsibilities, and equitable funding for Tribal and rural communities. I met with offices on both sides of the aisle, engaged with federal agencies, and collaborated with national partners to help ensure that policy decisions reflected the realities facing Native people on the ground. This work helped position Western Native Voice not only as a Montana-based organization, but as a trusted voice in national policy spaces.
What defined this year for me was the balance between defending what we’ve built and expanding what’s possible. I spent much of the year moving between state and federal spaces—tracking legislation, meeting with lawmakers and agency staff, coordinating with partners, and making sure Native communities were not an afterthought in decisions that directly affect them. Opening our DC office required learning new systems, building relationships from the ground up, and creating a consistent presence for Western Native Voice at the national level—work that will strengthen our advocacy well into the future.