NUIFC Sit Down // A Conversation with Seattle Mayoral Candidate Casey Sixkiller
Bringing the Neighborhood Together - Casey Sixkiller Seattle Mayoral Candidate
Casey Sixkiller, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, is running to lead the City of Seattle as its mayor. If elected, Sixkiller would be Seattle’s first Indigenous mayor. Sixkiller served as Seattle’s Deputy Mayor for operations and has worked in the King County Executive Office, Cherokee Nation’s first Washington, D.C. office, and Sen. Patty Murray’s legislative staff. It’s with this experience he hopes to energize the city, bring people together, and make government work properly again to address the challenges facing Seattle. He spoke with the NUIFC in our second installment of our Sit-Down Series to discuss why he got in the race, why he wants to prove that City Hall can work, and why Seattle is in its Gadugi moment.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
What motivated you to run for Mayor?
The most important thing is that I want Seattle to work again. The city is facing so many challenges right now and we seem to have forgotten about how we go about problem-solving. Getting back to the basics of bringing folks together to solve problems, to make government work, to deliver the services that folks expect from their city government. As we emerge from the pandemic we should use it as an opportunity to build back stronger, reestablish that connective tissue between our communities and our neighborhoods that I think has been really broken. Not just from the pandemic, but also from years and years of division that has really kept us from being able to meet the challenges facing our city.
What would you say has been your biggest focus while running for Mayor? The specific issue you want people to associate with your campaign.
Well, number one is I think we must be focused on what the daily experiences are for our residents and our business owners across the city. That means making sure that our policies, our investments, and our general approach is really tied to addressing those things we all experience when we walk out our front door every day. Everything else is sort of ancillary to that because it gets back to those core issues of feeling safe when you walk down the street, regardless of the color of your skin or the zip code you live in. Obviously, fixing a very broken homelessness response and crisis response system that has been allowed to continue through many, many years and record amounts of money and isn't getting the results that we want.
The third thing is when we look at this past year and we look at the issues that folks are talking about, we've got to make sure that Seattle can be a city where every family can see a future here. That means you've got access to a job that helps pay the bills, you've got a place that you can live and it's a place that you can raise a family without the cost of childcare crushing you. For me, it's really as simple as just being really grounded in that daily experience of our residents on what those challenges are and what the opportunities there are for us to partner with them in so they can call Seattle home.
One thing we always want to ask about here at the NUIFC, is how has being a Native candidate influenced your campaign? What teachings or lessons from your background have you brought with you for this run for Mayor?
For me, we have a Cherokee saying, Gadugi, and it’s a way I have always tried to live my life and what it means is to put aside our differences and come together to solve for something for the greater good. I feel like right now in Seattle, this is our Gadugi moment. We don't have to agree on everything, but we need to find ways to come back together around those core things that we all share in common and not let perfect be the enemy of the good and be focused on progress. As a native person, I focus on just being really grounded and remembering that we all share so much. It's amazing to me because it's so easy for us to retreat to our corners and we can’t do that, we all got to sit around that big table and we've got to figure out how to make it work. I feel like as, as a Native person, that's the thing we've always done, we've always found a way to persevere. We've always found a way to make something positive out of something that is really complex or challenging or even negative and really dig deep to understand and acknowledge that we can get through hard times.
What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about yourself while running for Mayor?
Well, I've learned a couple of things! Number one, I have learned that despite all the public discourse around divisions and politics, at the end of the day our residents, generally, all agree on the big issues facing our city. That to me is a really important thing because it tells me that we've got a place to start. If you're starting from the same place of understanding that these are the issues, that's something to build on.
I would say the biggest thing for me is just moving from being somebody who has spent my entire career sort of out of the spotlight, just doing the work whether it was working in the house or Senate or managing the day-to-day of King County. When you actually put yourself out there, when you look around the room when someone asks a question, you’re the one that has to answer that now. It's a very different experience and it challenges you in a way that I'm sure every first-time candidate has to go through. I do feel really fortunate that I’ve had great teachers and great mentors and great bosses throughout my career that have really helped me prepare for this moment.
So many statistics around Native people, urban Native people specifically, are usually bleak. We are disproportionately at the bottom of most socioeconomic indicators. What would be your strategy as mayor to address those inequities in our communities?
In Seattle, we're very fortunate that we have great urban native organizations that have been working to lift up the voices of our urban population here in Seattle. So number one is partnering even more intentionally with those organizations and understanding that these native-serving orgs are really well-established and can create a direct line of communication and partnership. Remember, in Indian country, and it's the same for our urban population as well, we're not just one thing. We've got interests around healthcare, housing, economic opportunity, and mobility, but we also have Native people that want to start a business. Native people that want to grow their business. We are so many different things and I want to make sure that we’ve got native people in every one of those decision-making rooms, every one of those conversations. I feel like in my experience working with Indian country over the last two decades you often hear this idea; ‘this is the room where the Indians should be in’. No, no, no, no, no, no. We need to be in all the rooms.
What would be your number one priority if elected as Mayor?
One of my biggest concerns is sort of this increasing lack of confidence and faith by our residents that we can turn any of this around or that we do anything about these challenges. Can we actually solve homelessness and reimagine public safety and law enforcement? For me, it really is a mindset of coming in on day one, as the only candidate that has run large complex multi-billion-dollar organizations and saying we have got to make government work for the people and start solving problems. That means working in partnership with community organizations and the business community and getting out of that us vs. them mindset. And I'm not attributing that to the current administration. I just think it's sort of politics writ large across our country and we have a microcosm of that here in Seattle. People expect us to get to work and as mayor, I want to be bold and try new things and if that doesn’t work I want to be accountable and try something else. We’ve got all the data we need, we’ve done every study and every community blah blah blah, let us just start doing. I want to reestablish that we can be action-oriented and focused on practical solutions that people can actually see with their own eyes. I want people to see how we’re doing it, that we’re not just moving the ball downfield but that we’re doing it the right way, doing it in that gadugi sense. That we’re all in this together, we’ve all got this shared sense of success that we can use to approach all the other challenges we’re facing.
How are you keeping yourself grounded during election season? When you have the free moment, what do you do to unwind?
I've got young kids they keep me very…grounded. The most important thing in my life is being a dad. They’re both the reason it took me so long to get into the race and why I'm running. I want them to see that we can make positive change, I want them to see that we can use this moment to come together and address these challenges so they've got a better place to grow up in. So I have them to help and it is fun to be able to campaign this time of the year when you can be outside, even if maybe it’s a little too warm but, you know, you can be outside and enjoy the scenery of Seattle. I’m also not a runner but it is one form of stress relief, to the extent my knees can handle it. But really, it's my kids, they are the best distraction and also the best reminder of what’s important in life. And you know, since they are kids they don’t hold any punches!