In Historic Move, Biden To Pick Native American Rep. Haaland As Interior Secretary
at 1:47 pm NPR
In a historic first, President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate Rep. Deb Haaland to lead the Department of the Interior, a source familiar with the decision told NPR s Franco Ordoñez.
If confirmed by the Senate, Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, would be the country s first Native American Cabinet secretary. Fittingly, she d do so as head of the agency responsible for not only managing the nation s public lands but also honoring its treaties with the Indigenous people from whom those lands were taken.
Biden Isn’t a Lost Cause for the Left
The selection of Deb Haaland for secretary of the interior is a hard-earned and jubilant win for progressives, who have otherwise been disappointed by the Biden transition team.
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New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo nation, and among the first class of Native women elected to Congress in 2018 will reportedly be nominated by the Biden administration to lead the Department of Interior. The agency tasked with overseeing the country’s public lands and natural resources has long contained the Bureau of Indian Affairs but has never been headed by a Native person. Nor, for that matter, has it ever been led by an open critic of fossil fuels.
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380 different organizations have all endorsed a draft plan for the United States to address climate change. That draft has been sent to President-elect Joe Biden. The first step, according to the plan, is to declare a National Climate Emergency.
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In a historic first, President-elect Joe Biden is expected to tap Rep. Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, to lead the Department of the Interior.
If confirmed by the Senate, Haaland would be the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary. Fittingly, she’d do so as head of the agency responsible for not only managing the nation’s public lands, but honoring its treaties with the Indigenous people those lands were taken from.
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“I thought about my daughter and how this is a new normal for my daughter,” Nikki Pitre, executive director of the Center for Native American Youth and a member of the Coeur d Alene Tribe, told The Hill. “Seeing what it s like to have an indigenous woman in the highest levels of government it’s hard to put into words now that I’m seeing it and get to experience it. It just feels incredibly overwhelming in the absolute best way.”
Haaland, a progressive, generated significant momentum for the position, backed by groups and lawmakers on the left as well as many tribes.