Vice President Kamala Harris has won enough endorsements from Democratic delegates to make her the party’s presidential nominee, according to unofficial delegate trackers.

A delegate tracker from The Associated Press counted 2,688 delegates who had said by Tuesday morning they would vote for Harris on the first ballot of the party’s nominating vote. A candidate needs 1,976 delegates on the first ballot to secure the Democratic nomination.

If the delegates who have endorsed her follow through, Harris will officially become the nominee when the vote occurs next month.

Several state parties met Sunday and Monday after President Joe Biden — who had been the party’s presumptive nominee after racking up delegates by sweeping primaries and caucuses this year — took the unprecedented step Sunday afternoon of ending his reelection bid.

Biden endorsed Harris shortly after bowing out, as did many of the state parties holding emergency meetings, elected officials, unions and influential outside groups.

Harris claimed victory in the uncontested nomination race in a Monday night statement after her home-state California delegation endorsed her.

“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top,” Harris said in the statement. “I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”

The Democratic National Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday to set up a nomination framework and virtual roll call to select a presidential candidate ahead of the party’s national convention from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22 in Chicago.

The pre-convention virtual roll call was meant to comply with an Ohio law requiring parties select a candidate 90 days before Election Day, which Democrats said would have caused problems with their convention schedule.

Harris will also need to select a running mate. The campaign has requested vetting materials from five potential picks, according to an MSNBC report. They are Govs. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tim Walz of Minnesota and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.

Schumer, Jeffries support Harris

Also Tuesday, the Democratic leaders in each chamber of Congress endorsed Harris.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, praised Biden’s record as president and his “patriotic” act of stepping aside.

Schumer explained their holding out on endorsements – which came less than 48 hours from Biden’s announcement but still later than many in their caucuses – saying that Harris had told him she wanted to earn the nomination “on her own.”

“She said she wanted the opportunity to win the nomination on her own,” Schumer said. “We deeply respected that, Hakeem and I do.”

Schumer also said that the swift consensus behind Harris had given Democratic voters a jolt, calling the party “brimming with excitement, enthusiasm, unity.”

“President Biden’s selfless decision has given the Democratic Party the opportunity to unite behind a new nominee and boy, oh boy, are we enthusiastic,” Schumer said.

Harris was scheduled to appear Tuesday at her first campaign event in a battleground state since Biden exited the race with a visit to Milwaukee.

Biden said Tuesday he would speak at the White House on Wednesday evening to say how he would “finish the job for the American people.” The primetime Oval Office address will be Biden’s first public remarks since he dropped out of the race. He left campaign trail last week to recover from COVID-19.

At summertime social powwows and spiritual ceremonies throughout the Upper Midwest, Native Americans are gathering around singers seated at big, resonant drums to dance, celebrate and connect with their ancestral culture.

“I grew up singing my entire life, and I was always taught that dewe’igan is the heartbeat of our people,” said Jakob Wilson, 19, using the Ojibwe term for drum that’s rooted in the words for heart and sound. “The absolute power and feeling that comes off of the drum and the singers around it is incredible.”

Wilson has led the drum group at Hinckley-Finlayson High School. In 2023, Wilson’s senior year, they were invited to drum and sing at graduation. But this year, when his younger sister Kaiya graduated, the school board barred them from performing at the ceremony, creating dismay across Native communities far beyond this tiny town where cornfields give way to northern Minnesota’s birch and fir forests.

“It kind of shuts us down, makes us step back instead of going forward. It was hurtful,” said Lesley Shabaiash. She was participating in the weekly drum and dance session at the Minneapolis American Indian Center a few weeks after attending protests in Hinckley.

“Hopefully this incident doesn’t stop us from doing our spiritual things,” added the mother of four, who grew up in the Twin Cities but identifies with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, whose tribal lands abut Hinckley.

In written statements, the school district’s superintendent said the decision to ban “all extracurricular groups” from the ceremony, while making other times and places for performance available, was intended to prevent disruptions and avoid “legal risk if members of the community feel the District is endorsing a religious group as part of the graduation ceremony.”

But many Native families felt the ban showed how little their culture and spirituality is understood. It also brought back traumatic memories of their being forcibly suppressed, not only at boarding schools like the one the Wilsons’ grandmother attended, but more generally from public spaces.

It was not until the late 1970s that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act directed government agencies to make policy changes “to protect and preserve Native American religious cultural rights and practices.”

“We had our language, culture and way of life taken away,” said Memegwesi Sutherland, who went to high school in Hinckley and teaches the Ojibwe language at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

The Center’s weekly drum and dance sessions help those who “may feel lost inside” without connections to ancestral ways of life find their way back, said Tony Frank, a drum instructor.

“Singing is a door opener to everything else we do,” said Frank, who has been a singer for nearly three decades. “The reason we sing is from our heart. Our connection to the drum and songs is all spiritual. You give 100 percent, so the community can feel a piece of us.”  

In drum circles like those in Minneapolis, where many Natives are Ojibwe and Lakota, there is a lead singer, who starts each song before passing on the beat and verse to others seated at the drum, which is made of wood and animal hide (usually deer or steer).

A drum keeper or carrier cares for the drum, often revered as having its own spirit and considered like a relative and not like personal property. Keepers and singers are usually male; according to one tradition, that’s because women can already connect to a second heartbeat when pregnant.

These lifelong positions are often passed down in families. Similarly, traditional lyrics or melodies are learned from older generations, while others are gifted in dreams to medicine men, several singers said. Some songs have no words, only vocables meant to convey feelings or emulate nature.

Songs and drums at the center of social events like powwows are different from those that are crucial instruments in spiritual ceremonies, for example for healing, and that often contain invocations to the Creator, said Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe language and culture professor at Bemidji State University.

Meant to mark the beginning of a new journey in life, the “traveling song” that the drum group wanted to sing at the Hinckley graduation includes the verse “when you no longer can walk, that is when I will carry you,” said Jakob Wilson.

That’s why it was meant for the entire graduating class of about 70 students, not only the 21 Native seniors, added Kaiya Wilson, who trained as a back-up singer – and why relegating it to just another extracurricular activity hurt so deeply.

“This isn’t just for fun, this is our culture,” said Tim Taggart, who works at the Meshakwad Community Center – named after a local drum carrier born in the early 20th century – and helped organize the packed powwow held in the school’s parking lot after graduation. “To just be culturally accepted, right? That’s all everybody wants, just to be accepted.”

The school had taken good steps in recent years, like founding the Native American Student Association, and many in the broader Hinckley community turned out to support Native students. So Taggart is optimistic that after this painful setback, bridges will be rebuilt

And the drum, with all that it signifies about community and a connected way of life, will be brought back.

“Nothing can function without that heartbeat,” said Taggart, whose earliest memory of the drum is being held as a toddler at a ceremony. “It’s not just hearing the drums, but you’re feeling it throughout your entire body, and that just connects you more with the spirit connection, more with God.”

As dancers – from toddlers to adults in traditional shawls – circled the floor to the drum’s beat in the Minneapolis center’s gym, Cheryl Secola, program director for its Culture Language Arts Network, said it was heartwarming to see families bring children week after week, building connections even if they might not have enough resources to travel to the reservations.

On reservations too, many youths aren’t being raised in cultural ways like singing, said Isabella Stensrud-Eubanks, 16, a junior and back-up singer on the Hinckley high school drum group.

“It’s sad to say, but our culture is slowly dying out,” she said, adding that several elders reached out to her and the Wilsons after the graduation controversy to teach them more, so the youth can themselves one day teach their traditions.

Mark Erickson was already about 20 when he went back to Red Lake, his father’s band in northern Minnesota, to learn his people’s songs.

“It’s taken me a lifetime to learn and speak the language, and a lifetime to learn the songs,” said Erickson, who only in his late 60s was awarded the distinction of culture carrier for Anishinaabe songs, a term for Ojibwe and other Indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States.

Believing that songs and drums are gifts from the Creator, he has been going to drum and dance sessions at the Minneapolis Center for more than a decade to share them, and the notions of honor and respect they carry.

“When you’re out there dancing, you tend to forget your day-to-day struggles and get some relief, some joy and happiness,” Erickson said.

NOTE: The original airdate of the video attached to this article is July 17, 2024. 

FARGO — It started as the Gateway Football Conference 40 years ago, with a young administrator assuming the role of commissioner. On Tuesday, in her annual state of the address of what is now the Missouri Valley Football Conference, Patty Viverito announced her retirement.

It’s time, she said. She’s a grandmother. She’s been through the wars of NCAA regulations and legislation and perhaps that’s enough, too. Certainly, it will end one of the most long-standing and fruitful administrative runs in Division I football history.

“I have different priorities,” Viverito said. “It’s like a Biden decision, I decided it was time to step aside.”

The plan for succession has been in the works since Viverito signed her last three-year contract starting with a group of athletic directors and college presidents called the Strategic Vision and Planning Subcommittee.

“We’ve already talked about some non-negotiables and what we want to make sure happens moving forward,” Viverito said. “I think it’s safe to say the group is pretty well set on maintaining a single-sport league where we are all equal members within that structure.”

She expects a few preliminary decisions to be made this fall with a successor to be named next winter or spring.

She stands to go out on top. Under her leadership, the Valley has been one of the most stable and successful leagues at the Division I-AA /FCS level. It’s ridden the backs of the likes of North Dakota State, South Dakota State, Youngstown State, Northern Iowa, Southern Illinois to consistent playoff success.

“I would be lying if I didn’t say I’m awfully proud of the accomplishments but I’m also smart enough to know I didn’t play a single down,” Viverito said.

The Valley has had a team reach the FCS national championship 13 straight years, with NDSU winning 10 of them, SDSU the last two and Youngstown making the title game in 2016.

The conference had six teams reach the field of 24 playoff teams last year. SDSU has won 29 straight and is a threat this year to break NDSU’s FCS record of 39 victories in a row.

“I use that as a backdrop in the year prior when some people were suggesting the Missouri Valley was down and perhaps we were a dynasty in decline,” Viverito said.

The Valley had just three playoff teams in 2022, but NDSU and SDSU reached the title game in Frisco, Texas. Viverito said the league will continue its association with ESPN, with two regular season games this year tabbed to be on one of the linear ESPN networks. That includes the SDSU at NDSU Dakota Marker game on Oct. 19 at Gate City Bank Field at the Fargodome.

For one of the few times in Viverito’s 40 years, a school announced it was leaving the league with Missouri State set for FBS Conference USA next year.

“Conference realignment is absolutely not over at FCS or FBS,” she said.

With Western Illinois departing to the Ohio Valley Conference, it will take the Valley back to 10 schools, which was the number for most of NDSU’s years in the conference. Viverito considers it a positive that the Valley schedule will be just one short of a full round-robin eight-game slate.

“The more Missouri Valley rivalries we can create through a full schedule is a good thing,” she said.

It’s doubtful the Valley will take a serious look at expansion to immediately replace Missouri State mainly because of the league’s geographical footprint of the Midwest.

“I don’t think we want to get too far from our time zone,” Viverito said. “I think we’ll be thoughtful and we’ll be diligent.”

Jeff would like to dispel the notion he was around when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he is on his third decade of reporting with Forum Communications. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked at the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 The Forum, where he’s covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU’s Division I FCS national football titles and has written three books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough” and “Covid Kids.” He is the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” April through August.