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Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

“This has probably been the best year for Native Americans” says Tom Cole, the only person now both elected as a member of Congress and enrolled as a member of an American Indian tribe. The latest sign of success, says CQ Politics: American Indian voters helped elect Minnesota’s Al Franken.

Increased voter registration and turnout among tribal members helped push Franken to his 312-vote victory, writes CQ Politics-Roll Call reporter Kerry Young.

Indeed, Franken took 95 percent of the votes on the Red Lake Indian Reservation last year.

Native Americans in Minnesota were celebrating Franken’s win at a pow wow days ahead of rival Norm Coleman’s concession last summer.

Franken also won a seat on the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs.

A greater role in government under the Obama Administration means a new chance for Native American communities to tackle persistent problems like poverty, unemployment and crime. But the nation’s hard times may hamper those efforts, Young writes:

While American Indian advocates say they are pleased with such changes in tribal fortunes, some with long experience worry that the attention may be fleeting, especially during hard fiscal times.

“Native Americans have the ability for the first time to sit at the table with competing interest groups,” said Diane Humetewa of Arizona, the first American Indian woman to serve as a U.S. attorney and who is now a principal with the Squire, Sanders & Dempsey law firm in Washington. But she said maintaining that momentum “is going to be the challenge, because of the fiscal situation that the nation is in at the moment.”