Read the full feature and see the photo essay in TIME Magazine.

(L-R) Tara Benally and Dalene Redhorse pose for a portrait in front of Church Rock in Navajo County, Arizona on December 4, 2020. CREDIT: Adria Malcolm for TIME Magazine Adria Malcolm for TIME Magazine—Adria Malcolm

ARIZONA

“The change really happened when the people were able to see what this current administration was doing to them during a worldwide pandemic—that it was basically playing with people’s lives,” says Tara Benally, 47. As field director of Rural Utah Project, a nonprofit that focuses on outreach to underrepresented voters, she led a group of nine organizers who drove more than 66,274 miles across the Navajo Nation, which has been hard hit by COVID-19. They registered almost 6,000 voters in Arizona and Utah, many of whom helped turn Arizona blue for the first time since 1996. “It was indigenous nations that put Biden in office,” Benally (left) says, “and there should be some return on his part because we will hold him accountable to that. No more broken promises, no more falling short of what the people need.”