Vox Populi:

When Deb Haaland was chosen as the secretary of the Interior by President Joe Biden in 2021, she was the first Native American ever to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. It was a seminal moment for tribal citizens: For more than 150 years, the Interior Department had been the arm of the U.S. government in charge of managing relationships with tribes, which included executing its colonial agenda. The agency helped oversee forced assimilation of Native children through federal boarding schools, where children taken from their parents were barred from speaking their Indigenous languages. Today, the department is best known for managing more than 85 million acres of national parks, many of which sit on land stolen from tribal nations.

The agency’s mandate is broad: It also oversees federal mining permits, national monuments and sanctuaries, and federal wildlife refuges, making critical decisions about conservation and mining that have implications for global biodiversity and carbon emissions. It is charged with managing U.S. relationships with island territories like Guam and Puerto Rico, and fulfilling federal trust obligations to tribal governments, including funding for health care and education. Most recently, the agency has funneled money to tribes to help them with climate change adaptation and, in some cases, relocation.

When Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, was tapped to lead the agency, she was serving as a congressional representative for New Mexico. 

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