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These successes, shortcomings will define Deb Haaland’s legacy as Interior secretary

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland officially delists the Apache trout as a threatened or an endangered species at Bass Pro Shops in Mesa on Sept. 4, 2024.
Gabriel Pietrorazio/KJZZ
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland officially delists the Apache trout as a threatened or an endangered species at Bass Pro Shops in Mesa on Sept. 4, 2024.
Coverage of tribal natural resources is supported in part by Catena Foundation

President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team named outgoing North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to lead the agency that manages the nation’s natural and cultural resources.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland made history as the nation’s first Indigenous Cabinet member, leading an agency that manages the country’s natural resources. Four years later, some observers have reflected on how her tenure will be remembered.

Advance Native Political Leadership national director Jordan James Harvill characterized Haaland’s ascent an “incredible comeback story.”

“She faced poverty and built herself,” said Harvill, who is Cherokee and Choctaw, “and is representative of so many of the experiences that our community sees.”

The nonpartisan nonprofit has recruited more than 700 Native candidates for federal, state and local races nationwide. To them, Haaland has been a source of inspiration for Indian Country.

“And the two names that come up most often in almost every single interview, Deb Haaland and Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan,” admitted Harvill. “We still to this day have people say in our interviews that Sec. Haaland [is] the reason why they’re running for office.”

A member of the Laguna Pueblo, Haaland was born in Winslow, Arizona, but describes herself as a 35th generation New Mexican. She spent her youngest years on the move as part of a military family, eventually settling in Albuquerque when she was 14.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was born in Winslow, Arizona, and is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. She elevated Indigenous issues from the Southwest by leaning into her roots as the nation’s first Native American Cabinet secretary.

Personal and professional difficulties followed. Within the next decade, she became a single mom living on public assistance. A drinking problem resulted in two DWI convictions.

Haaland found sobriety in 1988 upon enrolling at the University of New Mexico, where she earned her bachelor’s and law degrees but failed to pass the state bar exam by 5 points.

Still, Haaland succeeded politically as a progressive organizer by helping reelect President Barack Obama as New Mexico’s Native American vote director, serving as the state’s Democratic party chair and running in a failed bid to become lieutenant governor before setting her eyes on the nation’s capital.

Haaland and Kansas Democrat Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, were the first Native women ever sworn into Congress in 2019. She broke barriers again a year later, when President Joe Biden tapped the freshman to become the 54th secretary of the Interior.

She reportedly wasn’t his initial pick, but Biden’s short list named some of her fellow neighbors, including Tucson native and then-New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall — nephew of longtime late Arizona congressman Mo Udall, and son of Stewart Udall, who headed the Interior Department under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland’s official congressional portrait.
U.S. House of Representatives
New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland’s official congressional portrait.

As Haaland’s star kept rising on the national stage, a grassroots campaign of Indigenous and progressive groups coalesced. They lobbied for her nomination while the “Interior for Deb” slogan organically grew in popularity on social media.

“It would not be right for two Udalls to lead the Department of the Interior,” reads a letter penned by the NDN Collective and other advocates, “the agency tasked with managing the nation’s public lands, natural resources and trust responsibilities to tribes, before a single Native American.”

Former House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva, who represents Arizona, eventually backed his committee colleague, Haaland, after expressing his own interest in vying for that same role until he decided to step aside.

Haaland was confirmed in a 51-40 vote by the U.S. Senate.

Only four Republicans backed her, while the rest claimed she had too-radical views on fossil fuels. But once she became the nation’s trailblazing Indigenous Cabinet member, Harvill explained that “Haaland took the fight inside” for the first time.

Highlights of her tenure include protecting swaths of sacred lands, renaming nearly 650 derogatory geographic features, and — perhaps most significantly — shining a light on 150 years of boarding school abuses.

Native American Rights Fund deputy director Matthew Campbell believed the agency’s Federal Boarding School Initiative that culminated in the nation’s first presidential apology is “really a pin her cap for sure.”

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks before introducing President Joe Biden outside the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen.
Gabriel Pietrorazio/KJZZ
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks before introducing President Joe Biden outside the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen in Oct. 2024.

The Washington Post discovered three times as many deaths inside these boarding schools than the Interior Department’s official count. Haaland stressed that Biden’s apology, made just outside of Phoenix, still matters.

“Tribes heard that,” she told KJZZ News. “He did it on Indian land, he was sincere. That is done and nobody can take that back.”

This endeavor has been a deeply personal one to Haaland since her maternal grandmother, Helen Toya, was sent by train from the village of Mesita to St. Catherine’s Industrial Indian School in Santa Fe.

Co-stewarding public lands is another accomplishment Haaland has touted.

The Biden administration entered into more than 400 agreements among the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes. Some of those partnerships are helping to preserve more than 674 million acres of lands and waters from extractive industries, like mining, fracking and offshore drilling.

President Joe Biden
Al Macias/KJZZ
President Joe Biden speaks before signing a proclamation designating the Baaj Nwaavjo I'Tah Kukveni National Monument at the Red Butte Airfield on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023, in Tusayan, Arizona.

So far, Biden established 10 new national monuments, like Arizona’s Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, expanded two and restored protections for three others, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah. With each step, Haaland was there beside him.

“The way I look at it, President Biden has conserved more land than any president in modern history,” she added. “Many of those were tribally led conservation efforts, and we did that with the intention that we are protecting these lands for future generations.”

Even then, Biden and Haaland weren’t perfect for Indian Country.

“I don’t think any administration is going to be, and I don’t think this one was either,” said Campbell, a member of the Native Village of Gambell in Alaska. “But this administration has taken steps that I think no other has. They’ve made a lot of progress in a lot of places.”

Assistant Interior Secretary Bryan Newland agreed.

“[Haaland] never elevated herself above the people she served, and she’s never elevated herself above the people she serves with,” Newland told KJZZ News. “She has exceeded the enormous expectations that Indian Country placed upon her when she started, and she did it with her humanity, her humility and compassion for others.”

Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flore greets Interior Secretary Deb Haaland behind a podium in April 2024.
Gabriel Pietrorazio/KJZZ
Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flore greets Interior Secretary Deb Haaland behind a podium in April 2024.

But some tribal leaders say their expectations weren’t met.

“I commend her for the effort that she put forward. I was disappointed. We repeatedly tried to sit down,” said Mark Fox, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota. “For whatever reason, there was a reluctance by the Secretary to sit down with not only my tribe, but others can say the same.”

From Cayuga to Nooksack, tribes shared disappointment with Haaland’s leadership.

Carla Keene is chairwoman of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. Her Oregon-based tribe is one of four opposed to a new off-reservation casino project in the Pacific Northwest for the Coquille Indian Tribe, which has been greenlit by the Biden administration during its final days.

“I was very excited about her. It faded very quickly,” Keene said. “Consultation is one of the things that she does best. Well, I have not seen that personally.”

KJZZ News pressed Haaland during her exit interview.

“We have given them opportunities to spend the time how they saw fit,” Haaland answered. “So, you know, I would say that if there are still tribes out there that need to speak with someone, they should give us a call.”

Not long after Haaland’s remarks about her tribal relations record were posted online, the Keep Your Promise Coalition — a campaign made up of Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation, Karuk Tribe and Elk Valley Rancheria — spread an attack ad, quoting her message on social media.

Keep Your Promise Coalition ad

Keene shared she felt Haaland’s response was tone-deaf with only a few weeks left before the next administration takes over, but the chairwoman accepted Haaland’s invitation and attempted to reach out once more.

“We’ve tried over and over,” Keene recalled. “Our lines are still open, but a joke that is, because that’s not true at all. The last straw for me was when I left two voicemails.”

“But [Haaland] called Assistant Secretary Newland and had him call me, and I find that to be so extremely disrespectful. This is my take, but anything that has conflict, she wants nothing to do with it.”

Some critics even view Haaland as a puppet for the federal government, but Harvill challenged that portrayal.

“It’s often talked about in our circles that she now sits in the seat of our colonizer — the department tasked with our own genocide — and I don’t think that is lost on a single member of our community.”

“To even be in the seat, is tremendous,” Harvill elaborated. “And so to think that after four years of the first Native woman to ever serve in that role, that we could rewrite 250 years of federal policy, is a little ridiculous. What I hear in that is a yearning of our community to have always been at the table and we weren’t.”

Haaland at the
U.S. Department of the Interior
Deb Haaland at the White House Tribal Nations Summit on Dec. 9, 2024.
More Tribal Natural Resources News

Gabriel Pietrorazio is a correspondent who reports on tribal natural resources for KJZZ.