A portrait of Andrew Jackson – arbiter of forced removal for tens of thousands of Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and Choctaw people – came down from the Oval Office wall just hours after Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Out went Jackson, with a stoic expression, and in came the most diverse Cabinet in U.S. history. Among the president’s historic picks are the first openly gay Cabinet secretary, the first Black deputy secretary of the Treasury, and notably, the first Native American nominee for secretary of the Interior.
At the beginning of her Feb. 23 confirmation hearing, Republican senators were quick to pepper Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., with harsh questioning, to which she consistently answered with grace – repeating “thank you” and “I look forward to working with you” throughout. Sen. Barrasso, R-Wyo., said in a statement that Haaland, the first Native American woman elected to Congress, held “radical views,” “squarely at odds with the responsible management of our nation’s energy resources.”
No, what’s radical is that a Native American has never occupied the position managing the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Education, the Bureau for Trust Funds Administration and the majority of the lands where tribes have a right to hunt, fish and sustain their cultures.
Our federal government has a fraught, tragic and obscured history with the nation’s tribes. Chivington still retains the name of a war criminal who proudly paraded into Denver after the massacre of hundreds of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapahoe people. The U.S. government has long abused, confused and misrepresented the Native American people upon whose land America sits
The position of secretary of Interior has been historically dominated by those of the extraction mindset who often acted against tribal interests. Alexander H. H. Stuart, secretary of the Interior in the 1850s, recommended Native Americans be “civilized or exterminated.” The two most recent secretaries, Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, reduced national monument sizes, stripped protections for endangered species – including Colorado’s own greater sage grouse – and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home of the Gwich’in people, to oil and gas leasing.
Amid the dual crises of biodiversity and climate, the Department of the Interior could use someone with a vision for the future, committed to pausing fossil fuel leases, restoring sacred national monuments like Bears Ears, and preserving the land, resources and biodiversity that have sustained Native Americans – all Americans – for generations. Someone who, like Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, a proponent of the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964, saw not an opportunity for a dam at the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers, but a national park.
Haaland embodies the notion of conservation – she’s advocated for protecting 30% of U.S. land and ocean by 2030; she’s sponsored the Green New Deal; and she has a virtually perfect score from the League of Conservation Voters. Haaland is a fierce advocate with a cross-party record to boot – among all House freshmen, she introduced the highest number of bipartisan bills. She is a guardian and a negotiator who, when asked about her support for protecting the grizzly bear, responded with a simple, “I imagine, at the time, I was caring about the bears.”
In her closing statements, Haaland spoke the language of preservation, stewardship and Indigenous wisdom.
“Navajo Code Talkers in World War II used the Navajo word for ‘our mother’ as code for ‘the United States.’ I feel very strongly that sums up what we’re dealing with,” she said.
She added, “You’ve heard the earth referred to as Mother Earth. It’s difficult to not feel obligated to protect this land.”
America’s lands are America’s soul, the wellspring of community, worship and deep history for our nation’s Indigenous people. The Department of the Interior needs someone who understands lands and the organisms that inhabit them not as things for which we stake a claim, but which we have an obligation to protect.
As Shelly Fyant, chairwoman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai people, said in reference to Haaland’s nomination, “It’s about damn time.”
Soleil Gaylord is a junior at Dartmouth College majoring in government and environmental studies. She is from Telluride.
