Ivan Posey is used to scrutiny from being the 'only one' in the room.
"I worked for the United States Forest Service in the Shoshone National Forest. And I was the only Indian there," the 64-year-old said. "I'm the only Indian, and it's named after us."
Thirty years after his tenure in the forest service, Posey, who has slicked-back silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses, announced his candidacy for the Wyoming legislature. If he wins, he'll be the only Indigenous representative in the Cowboy State following the retirement of Affie Ellis (R-Cheyenne).
Posey is running for House District 33 against incumbent Sarah Penn (R-Lander), a Utah-raised nurse practitioner who moved to the area in 2014 and was motivated into public service by COVID lockdowns and mask mandates. House District 33 encompasses much of the Wind River Reservation, which is nearly one and a half times the size of Delaware.
Posey's response is simple when asked why he'd do a good job as a representative.
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"My ancestors were here before the State of Wyoming was even here. We've been here for time immemorial almost," Posey said. "I care about our area, our land here. I care about Wyoming."
The Wind River Reservation is home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Nations. Posey is enrolled Eastern Shoshone and has Northern Arapaho descendancy - being enrolled means that someone is a legal, 'card-carrying' member of a tribal nation. The reservation's vast swaths of sagebrush are cradled by the jagged peaks of the Absaroka, Owl Creek, and Wind River mountain ranges and its borders form a rough square with saw-toothed edges.
Posey grew up on the reservation in a house without running water and was the youngest of 13 siblings born to a Shoshone and Arapaho father and a Northern Cheyenne mother. He is careful not to romanticize the poverty, but places great importance on the closeness of the community that raised him and how it tied him to his heritage.
"Us younger kids would hang out at the river and swim and have black teeth from eating chokecherries," Posey said. "I remember going down to the river, and my mom and aunties would be tanning deer hides….My mom was fluent in Cheyenne, and her and her sisters and cousins would be talking Cheyenne down there."
Posey has a penchant for making his points clear through anecdotes and punctuates his stories with deliberate, sweeping hand movements. He says "I love you" at the end of his goodbyes—to the people at the Central Wyoming College veteran's coffee hour, at the Fort Washakie school board meeting, and in the parking lot of the Shoshone Rose Casino.
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Deb Smith, enrolled Eastern Shoshone and Superintendent of Fort Washakie schools, stressed the depth of Posey's ties across the reservation, and the importance of having a representative who has direct experience in fostering the futures of its tribal communities.
"He really does care about our people and care about the future of our young people and how they are going to be successful and carry on the traditions that we have in a good way going forward," Smith said. "He has that potential to really make those connections with people to let our voice be heard as a tribal community."
Smith continued to say she was concerned about the district's current representation.
"And that's important because I feel now that the individual that's in this position does not represent our tribal voice. And we have a strong voice. I think that person thinks they do, but they don't," Smith said. "And he [Ivan] really knows the needs of the community. He knows the needs outside of the reservation."
In a statement to USA Today, Penn confirmed that she is seeking re-election and pointed to her helping pass Wyoming's Indian Child Welfare Act codification and her husband's Lakota heritage when asked about representing tribal communities.
"My husband is native, his father being an enrolled tribal member, Lakota Sioux, Omaha tribe. My family and children are of descent. I know their stories and experiences, and better understand some historical issues of concern," Penn wrote.
Posey's path to candidacy has been far from linear, but no matter where he's wandered, from a Bureau of Indian Affairs-run boarding school in Oklahoma to military bases in Alabama and South Carolina, his feet have always carried him home. Posey's shift to public service was awakened by a yearlong stint as a Kellogg Fellow in 1993, where he studied and met with other Indigenous communities from around the United States and beyond.
Since the fellowship, Posey has put in around two decades on the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, served on the Rocky Mountain Tribal Council and was the state's first-ever tribal liaison under Governor David Freudenthal. In 2017, Posey culminated years of fundraising around the state and founded the Institute of Tribal Learning at Central Wyoming Community College.
The Institute exists at the intersection of Posey's crucial characteristics—his role as a bridge between the reservation and the resources of the outside world,preserving Indigenous history through education, and empowering Indigenous communities to tell their own stories.
"We've got lots of stories, but they're told by non-tribal people," Posey said. "People don't know enough about us, so they make their own interpretation of who we are."
Lynette St. Clair, enrolled Eastern Shoshone, works toward preserving the Shoshone language and has known Posey since childhood. She views Posey's work with the Institute as vital to the future of the reservation's nations.
"Historically, our history has been written from a white settler's perspective. It's not written by us, for us. It's written by other people who don't really have context, the lived experience," said St. Clair. "And so that's why it's important for us to do the work that we're doing—so that we amplify the voices of our people."
St. Clair, Posey, and others interviewed argued that the United States' history of violence toward Native Americans has left a complicated web of rules that bleed into tribal life today, furthering the need for Indigenous representation. Take blood quantum, a sort of inversion of the Jim Crow South's one-drop rule, which measures the amount of "Indian blood" somebody has and has historically been used to determine tribal citizenship.
"If they're [Indians] four-fourths now, their kids will be half of that, and down the road, there will be nobody to meet these qualifications," Posey said. "The only ones that go by blood quantum is basically dogs and horses, in terms of purebreds."
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Along with blood quantum, other aspects referenced included the federal government's actions that put the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho on the same reservation, the legacy of assimilationist boarding schools, lingering racial discrimination, and the complicated legal status of reservation lands.
Andi Lebeau, an enrolled Northern Arapaho who represented District 33 for four years before losing the seat to Penn in 2022, described Indigenous participation in politics as a necessary but difficult undertaking.
"It's still battling systems that were not designed for Indigenous participation, nor really to protect us. It was always to carve us out," Lebeau said. "At the same time, I want us to empower ourselves. I don't want us to be stuck in those stories."
Running to win a purple district in the core of a famously red state, Posey bills himself as a conservative Democrat. He believes that tribal nations have been "overregulated," advocates for "responsible spending," and laments what he sees as the "rubber-stamping" of far-right social issue bills identical to those in other states. Wyoming has seen a jump in spending in recent election cycles and a proliferation of anonymous mailers. Posey says he's not daunted by the prospect of a tough race or personal attacks – his experiences with racism have prepared him for those.
"I've lived with those my whole life… It's my experience, still to this day. I don't let it get in my way, but it's there," Posey said. "When you run for public office, you need to have somewhat of a thick skin."
Posey views his biggest challenge as getting frustrated voters around Wind River to show up to the polls and participate in a system that was not designed with them in mind (Native Americans were only given citizenship in 1924). Nevertheless, he hopes that his election could be another step towards what he's dedicated his life to, which is helping ensure that American Indians have control over their futures.
"What makes us unique is some of those challenges and opportunities that are there for Indian people, tribal people," Posey said. "And I think we need to really have a voice in the process, even if it's just one representative in the state legislature."
Cy Neff reports on Wyoming politics for USA Today. You can reach him at cneff@usatoday.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter,@CyNeffNews
