‘A New Sheriff’ Will Make History at the Interior Department

March is Women’s History Month and Native American Heritage Month, too. Any day now, the Senate will vote on the confirmation of Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., as President Biden’s secretary of the Interior. Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo nation in New Mexico, is poised to make history as the first Indigenous woman to head Interior and join a president’s cabinet.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, declared last week that they will vote to confirm Haaland, ensuring bipartisan support for her. Mississippi’s Republican senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, did not return calls about how they’ll vote.

Chief Cyrus Ben of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians said he was proud to call Haaland a friend whom he texts and calls. He is particularly excited about her ability to inspire younger  generations of Choctaw, and has invited her to visit Mississippi.

Haaland says her nomination’s “profound” symbolism is not lost on her. As secretary of the Interior, she will be in charge of all U.S. public lands, 500 million acres from which many Native American nations were forcibly evicted.  (In New Mexico, which has more Indian nations than any other state, most are still living on their ancestral lands.)

U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., a Native American, is expected to win Senate confirmation as secretary of the Interior. Official portrait

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” said Mark Trahant, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock nation and editor-in-chief of Indian Country Today. He was referring to Haaland’s effect on Western Republican senators from Wyoming, Montana and elsewhere who are used to oil, gas and coal determining policy — not Biden’s mandates of science and climate change.

Trahant pointed out that the Biden administration already has made significant lower-level appointments of Native Americans. For example, Jaime Pinkham, a member of the Nez Perce nation and an organizer from Washington state, now is assistant secretary of the Army, meaning he oversees the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In short, someone who knows a lot about salmon will be considering licenses for dams that affect them.

Last month, Haaland posted on Facebook that New Mexicans understand why land and wildlife are important: “In New Mexico, we have a deep appreciation of our state’s natural beauty and cultural sites. We top the list for having the most World Heritage Sites in the U.S.” New Mexico leads the U.S. in [UNESCO] World Heritage Sites: three, with a fourth being considered.  If you’ve visited any of these three sites — Taos Pueblo, Chaco Canyon or Carlsbad Caverns — you know why.

Among Haaland’s other responsibilities will be supervising the Bureau of Indian Education and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. From 1860 until 1978, the latter bureau ran boarding schools that all Native American children had to attend to learn to be White and Christian. Canada had the same policy. If any children spoke their native languages at these boarding schools, they were punished, and often physically and sexually abused.

A previous secretary of the Interior — all 53 of Haaland’s predecessors have been White — said his goal for Native Americans was “assimilation or extermination.” When Australia was a British colony, it ran equally oppressive boarding schools for aboriginal children, as you can see in the film Rabbit Proof Fence, based on a true story.

Haaland didn’t come out of nowhere. A single mother and owner of a small salsa business who held several positions in tribal administration, she went to college at age 30 and then law school. She started in state politics at the very bottom as a grassroots organizer and rose to chair New Mexico’s Democratic Party when her state was largely red. In 2014, she first ran for lieutenant governor, but lost. She is credited with reorganizing and empowering New Mexico’s Democratic Party, so that the state is now blue.

In 2018, she and Rep. Sharice Davids , D-Kan. and a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, made history for the first time when they became the first two Democratic Iindigenous women elected to Congress. There were two other Native Americans already in Congress, but they were Republican men.

Last week, at Haaland’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she sat with an Acoma pot to her left. Such pottery, with distinctive black, white and terracotta designs made with cactus needles, comes from Acoma, another New Mexican pueblo that is the oldest continuously inhabited site in the Americas. The pot was a stark reminder that Indians belong here, and their voices belong in government.

At the hearing, several legislators praised Haaland’s ability to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans and that, since she arrived in Congress, she has cosponsored more bills that have become law than any other representative. One of her bills is the Great American Outdoors Act, major conservation legislation that encourages access to national parks for all.

Mississippi Choctaw Chief Ben believes Americans should make a point of learning about Indian country in their state: “There’s another culture, right next door to you, and you might not even know it’s there.”

When Haaland becomes Madame Secretary, we’ll all know that Native Americans are here.

 Ann Marie Cunningham is a Columbia University Lipman Fellow for 2020 who will be working with the Mississippi Center for investigative Reporting. She is a veteran journalist/producer and author of a best-seller. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Technology Review, The Nation and The New Republic. Contact her at amc@mississippicir.org.