‘Why not me?’: the boot camp giving Indigenous women the tools to run for office

Participants of Native Action Network’s inaugural ‘A Seat at the Table’ advocacy bootcamp at IslandWood on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Photograph: Jovelle Tamayo/The Guardian

On a picturesque island just a 30-minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle, Juanita Perez described losing a recent race for a delegate seat for the Tlingit and Haida tribes:

“I didn’t have all the tools to do it the right way,” she said.