In an historic for Indian Country, President-elect Joe Biden has named New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland as the new secretary of the Interior. Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, will be the first Native American to lead the Interior Department in history.
And by directing the Interior Department she will oversee relations with 524 federally recognized tribes, a relationship that has often been stormy. She will also play a critical role the administration’s climate change policy, which includes a pledge to halt production of gas and oil on federal lands under the management of the Interior Department. New Mexico is a big oil-and-gas state but Haaland his on board with Biden’s plans.
“I come from New Mexico. It’s a big gas and oil state. And I care about every single job,” Haaland told the Washington Post. “We don’t want to go back to normal, right? We don’t want to go back to where we were because that economy wasn’t working for a lot of people.”
She was just re-elected to Congress for a second term. Prior to her election she was chairwoman of the tribal gaming corporation, the second-largest tribal gaming enterprise in the state.
Haaland herself through college and earned a law degree from the University of New Mexico by operating a salsa business she started. During her run for Congress, she noted that she was still paying off student loans.
The rocky relationship between the department and Native Americans goes back decades. Tribes were moved off their ancestral lands frequently at the orders of the department, including Yellowstone, when it became the first national park. In 1972, a group of militant Native Americans occupied the building of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for several days, an agency of Interior.
Relations with tribes had eroded under President Trump, whose Interior leaders removed protections from sacred tribal sites in Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and allowed drilling on sensitive land in Alaska.
Haaland said those things would end.
“The Trump administration has not been kind to Indian Country,” Haaland said. “He has thrown tribal consultation essentially out the window.”
