First Native American could join Cabinet
Haaland would be first Native American in post
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Rep. Deb Haaland to be secretary of the Department of Interior, home to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her appointment would be historic.
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Rep. Deb Haaland to be secretary of the Interior. If confirmed, she will be the first Native American to serve in that position.
The Department of the Interior is home to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Haaland, 59, D-N.M., is an enrolled citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna Native American tribe and serves on the House Natural Resources Committee. She was one of the first two Native American women elected to the United States Congress, the other being Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan.
Biden has vowed to appoint a diverse Cabinet, noting on several occasions that he wants his administration to look like the United States. Haaland’s appointment is the latest example of that effort.
His Cabinet selections thus far have included several historic appointments, including Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban American, as the first Latino head of the Department of Homeland Security; Janet Yellen as the first woman to head the Treasury; and Pete Buttigieg for Transportation secretary, the first openly gay Cabinet secretary, if confirmed by the Senate.
The selection was confirmed to USA TODAY by a source familiar with the decision who was not authorized to speak publicly.
On Nov. 23, Haaland told NPR that if she was nominated for the Interior role, it “would mean a lot to Indian country.”
“It means a lot to a group of people who have been here since time immemorial to know that they’re truly being represented,” she told NPR. “I think it would really change the way people see our federal government.”
Under the Obama administration, several Native Americans served in top positions in the agency, such as assistant secretary of Indian Affairs; director of Indian Health Service; and as deputy secretary of the Interior. But the 171-year-old Cabinet-level department has never had a Native American at its helm.
On the campaign trail last year, Biden did not explicitly promise to make history by appointing a Native American to the position. But in a questionnaire he submitted as part of a Native American presidential forum in January, the former vice president pledged to diversify his Cabinet.
“As president, I will nominate and appoint people who look like the country they serve, including Native Americans,” he wrote in the seven-page questionnaire provided to USA TODAY by Four Directions, an advocacy group that co-sponsored the forum. “That will be true across my Administration, but I also recognize the special importance of appointing Native Americans to play critical roles in upholding the government-to-government relationship.”
As part of the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs manages and administers 55 million acres of estates held in trust by the United States for Native American tribes.
The United States government has a complicated and violent history with Native American tribes. Over centuries, the U.S. government has broken dozens of treaties with tribes, pushed Indigenous people off of their ancestral land and for years forced Native American children into boarding schools that worked to strip them of their native identity.
Before being elected to the House of Representatives, Haaland served as the chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico. Before that, she ran for lieutenant governor of the state in 2014.
Haaland’s appointment is a win for progressives, who had the congresswoman at the top of the list of whom Biden should appoint to Interior.