Rep. Deb Haaland: Nominee Currently: David Bernhardt
Under Trump, the Interior Department opened public lands and waters, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for fossil fuel extraction and logging. Biden pledges to reverse those efforts, aiming to restrict fossil fuel exploration on public lands and waters and expand conservation efforts.
Westerners have occupied the post for more than 120 years, with the single exception of Rogers Morton, who served under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Rep. Deb Haaland (D)
Congresswoman from New Mexico
Haaland has served as congresswomen of New Mexico’s 1st district since 2018. But picking her would be historic. Haaland, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, would be the first Native American to run the department charged with overseeing federal and tribal lands.
Source: Washington Post Reported by Dino Grandoni, Juliet Eilperin, Kate Rabinowitz and Steven Mufson.
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About | Representative Debra Haaland
2021-01-21 Deb Haaland: What to know about Biden’s Secretary of the Interior nominee Haaland would make history with appointment, but some Republicans are raising concerns. Haaland has repeatedly called for an all-out ban on fracking, rhetoric that has conservatives concerned despite Biden’s claims on the campaign trail that he does not intend to completely end the controversial method of extracting oil and gas.
Haaland told The Guardian in a 2019 interview that she was “wholeheartedly against fracking and drilling on public lands” — a sentiment shared by Biden’s proposed plan for a “clean energy revolution.” In 2018, she tweeted that “as a Native American woman whose ancestral homeland is under attack from the Fossil Fuel Industry: I 100% support a Green New Deal and a Congressional Climate Commission.”
2021-01-20 The Radical Possibility of Deb Haaland at the Department of Interior Many see Laguna Pueblo Rep. Deb Haaland’s nomination to be the next secretary of the Department of the Interior as a paradigm shift where Indigenous demands for mass land return are no longer aspirational, but possible. Organizations like NDN Collective have their sights for #LandBack set on the more than 500 million acres of public lands that fall under DOI’s oversight.
More than 100 tribal leaders penned a letter to the Biden-Harris administration in December advocating for Haaland’s appointment, citing the reinstatement of Bears Ears National Monument—a move that both Biden and Haaland support—as a central issue. After taking office in January 2017, Trump swiftly slashed the acreage of the monument established under Obama, reducing it to less than 15% of its prior size to make way for oil and gas production. Haaland potentially protecting Bears Ears would be a huge victory for Indigenous nations and grassroots movements, but it could be just the start.
Interior’s support for resource extraction on public lands has created a situation where the destiny of Native nations is increasingly tied to the fate of U.S. public lands. As a result, frustrations with the DOI have been brewing—and growing—in Indian Country, at times erupting into large stand offs with the government like the #NoDAPL uprising at Standing Rock in 2016, which Haaland participated in.
Many in Indian Country have come to view the DOI’s pro-extractive stance as a policy that continues the centuries-long genocidal campaign of colonization through the sacrificing of Native lands, culture, and sovereignty for the greater public (read: white settler) good.
2020-12-17 Biden taps Deb Haaland as first Native American interior secretary If confirmed by the Senate, Haaland would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary.”A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland wrote in a tweet Thursday evening. “Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land. I am honored and ready to serve.”
2020-12-17 With historic picks, Biden puts environmental justice front and center
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