First Native American women elected to Congress

Kansas City, Mo.-In the November 6 USA mid-term elections, the first Native American women were elected to Congress.

Deb Haaland was voted to replace Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who vacated the New Mexico seat to run for governor, and Sharice Davids unseated Kansas GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder. Davids is reported to be a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, and Haaland is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna.

Haaland served for two years as the chair of the New Mexico Democratic Party, whose platform is grounded in progressive values. An Arizona native, she graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and earned her Juris Doctor in Indian law from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 2006. She served as the tribal administrator for the San Felipe Pueblo from January 2013 to November 2015, when she began serving as the Chair of the New Mexico Democratic Party for two years.

Sharice Davids graduated from Johnson County Community College and then the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a bachelor's degree in 2007. She graduated from Cornell Law School in 2009 and has worked at the Pine Ridge reservation as director of the economic development initiative. She then started a coffee company and then moved to the Lakota Thunder Valley Community Development Center in Porcupine, South Dakota. She also was a professional mixed martial arts fighter and worked as a White House Fellow for a year under the Obama administration.

Indian Life encourages you to pray for these two women, along with other elected leaders in the United States and Canada, that they may serve God as they serve their countries and that He will give them wisdom to lead well.