On Oct. 9, just days ahead of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation to “reclaim” Columbus Day.
To those on the left, the proclamation was likely unsurprising, and while Trump has certainly triggered increased attacks on Indigenous people — blocking funding to Native communities, proposing cuts to tribal programs, instituting cuts to services that disproportionately impact Indigenous people and of course reversing protections for millions of acres of land — the reality is that even prior to Trump, the left’s relationship with Indigenous communities has been fraught.
From arguments about Native sovereignty in regards to federal labor laws to labor union interactions with tribes amid construction projects, the leaders of our movement have often placed themselves at odds with Indigenous workers, rather than building inclusion. Today, Indigenous people have some of the lowest rates of unionization in the United States, and only one union appears to have a dedicated caucus for Indigenous workers — the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU.
“The (Caucus) has been instrumental in getting land acknowledgements to be included in our union spaces, and raising general awareness that Native folks from all over are concerned with fairness,” said Jean Jones, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and SEIU Local 503.
Paulita Peña-Urenda, Lipan Apache, Mexican-American and a leader within both SEIU’s international and Local 503 Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus, said it took nearly two decades for the local to recognize the caucus.
“While that recognition was historic, it also highlighted how long Indigenous labor has existed unseen and unprotected within a movement that was built on collective struggle and solidarity,” Peña-Urenda said.
In a time of unprecedented attacks on working people in modern history, collective class solidarity is imperative for labor. But for many in the United States, personal politics are shaped by racial identity. In the labor movement, the stark absence of Indigenous people in prominent leadership positions shapes how the movement responds to Indigenous peoples’ issues, especially because union leadership prioritizes growing union jobs above all other goals.
Jacob Schmidt, a member leader of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation at the University of Oregon and a historian currently working on environmental and Native American history in the western United States, wrestles with this tension in his research regularly.
“The labor movement is very proud of having built the infrastructure that makes the Northwest what it is,” he said. “But then these other people I work with are like, ‘That infrastructure destroyed my family’s way of life.’”
Land acknowledgements are now common practice at union meetings, but these often acknowledge a past and nod at egregious wrongs done by white settlers — without a hint of Indigenous present or future on those same lands. Faced with the destruction of Indigenous lands, structures, culture and people — people who still exist, practice and hold relationships with said lands — labor seems to shrug at the past, as if to say, “There’s nothing we can do about that now.”
But what if we dared to imagine a past, present and future that includes Indigenous people in labor, not as a checked box, but as an ingrained, braided and inextricable part of the movement? They already are, have been and will be.
Prior to colonizers’ arrival, Indigenous labor already existed, intertwined with the land and communities. People constructed irrigation systems, planted crops, managed fires and floods and created grazing areas, along with huckleberry and shellfish gardens.
In 1893 and the years to come, Indigenous workers participated in Fraser River strikes in British Columbia. Vancouver, B.C.’s first union on the waterfront was organized by Indigenous workers in 1906, according to leftist writer Jeff Shantz. Two years later, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers stood in solidarity with Indigenous workers picketing at a mine in Manitoba.
Mohawk ironworkers were vital to constructing North America’s most prominent skyscrapers and bridges. And many Indigenous workers, both migrants and not, maintain our agricultural food systems, often in harsh conditions and without a living wage.
“Our labor has never been separate from our sovereignty,” the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus said in a Native American Heritage Month statement. “Long before there were unions, Indigenous nations practiced collective care, mutual aid, and shared responsibility.”
These contributions are often uncredited or tokenized, the Caucus said.
“We need allies and leaders who want to walk into board rooms and into the bargaining tables, carrying more than the demands,” Peña-Urenda said. “We need them carrying those generations, carrying the prayers of our grandmothers and our ancestors, those who scrub the floors, who are out here harvesting our fruits and vegetables and Christmas trees, and remember that as Indigenous people, as Native people, we’re carrying the prayers of our ancestors, carrying the cries of all the Indigenous relatives whose names were stolen.”
In effect, the labor movement needs to stop posturing and act.
Hire Native organizers, expand Tribal Employment Rights Office Memorandums of Understanding beyond construction, evolve collective bargaining agreements to recognize key dates for Indigenous workers and add sovereignty clauses to work project agreements, Peña-Urenda said.
“When we do this, we’re not just protecting jobs, we’re protecting people, lands and histories that have been exploited for generations,” Peña-Urenda said. “And we have to stop pretending that Indigenous justice and labor justice are separate fights.”
Indigenous inclusion often comes to a head when Indigenous land, water, energy and cultural practices abutt resource extraction.
“There’s always these competing interests to balance in terms of local union interests and broader community interests,” Schmidt said. “How do we make them work together, rather than viewing them only as trade-offs?”
Recent examples of Indigenous-labor relations in this area are energy grid projects in the West, Schmidt said.
For example, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs have worked to claim public ownership of the energy production so benefits of the project return to the community. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation in Montana have done the same.
“Maybe we come to the realization that as a democratic society we need some offshore wind, and we need some dams in order to meet our emission goals,“ Schmidt said. “But how can we then redirect the revenue of those things to repaying so much of the harm that was done to Indigenous people in that region?”
Whether in the public sector or the private sector, in a field or on a construction site, in a hospital or in a crane, Indigenous labor builds this nation, and we can’t continue to allow anyone’s dignity to be negotiated away.
To embrace true class solidarity, we must wrestle with the uncomfortable tension of the past, present and future. To include Indigenous workers, we must be led by Indigenous workers.
“We have to name the things that are, and we need to remember we’re not here to whisper,” Peña-Urenda said. “We’re not here to wait for our turn. We are the children of warriors. We are like the seeds that they try to bury and we keep coming — and we’re burning.”
Government shutdown impacts
With more than half a million government workers furloughed, cracks in a unified labor strategy are starting to show.
The American Federation of Government Employees (the largest federal employee union), four pilots’ unions and the Teamsters have all broken with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations by supporting the Republican-backed funding plan. Teamster President Sean O’Brien even went so far as to join Vice President JD Vance and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a press conference outside the White House.
The AFL-CIO and the majority of unions in the nation remain on message with the Democrats: A resolution will require a continuation of subsidies that keep health insurance affordable for millions of working class people.
Labor actions
Note: The National Labor Relations Board is closed due to the government shutdown. As a result, no new campaigns were filed or elections were held in October.
Throughout October, Starbucks Workers United baristas held practice pickets in at least five locations throughout Portland and in Eugene. In previous years, Starbucks workers have held strikes on the company’s infamous November “Red Cup Day,” the company’s most profitable day of the year.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 328 and Research Workers United held a practice picket at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland on Oct. 2, as nearly 2,000 researchers prepared for a potential strike in November. On Oct. 30, they gathered again to sign strike pledge cards.
The Lane Community College Education Association held a rally Oct. 4 amid contract negotiations.
On Oct. 15-19, approximately 4,000 Kaiser Permanente workers in Oregon and Southwest Washington joined thousands of others across the nation in striking to demand a fair contract. The Oregon Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals, which represents the local Kaiser workers, shared that patient safety and competitive wages were workers’ primary concerns. In a recent post, the union asserted that Kaiser had a higher profit margin in 2024 than Amazon, one of the wealthiest companies in the world.
Community members and the United Farm Workers union held a rally Oct. 26 outside Grocery Outlet in Salem as part of an ongoing boycott of Windmill Farm mushrooms.
On Oct. 28, Bend Bulletin newspaper workers held an informational picket outside the paper’s office to draw community support for their contract fight. The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild said the paper’s owner, Carpenter Media Group, is attempting to remove benefits from workers.
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This article appears in November 11, 2025.