Native Americans praise choice to have Haaland lead Interior

WASHINGTON — For Oliver“OJ” Se mans, President-elect Joe Biden's expected choice of New Mexico Democratic Congress woman Deb Haaland as the first Native American secretary of the Interior Department isn't just about the policies she'll pursue for Indian Country or the tribal relationships she'll be overseeing.

It's also about the simple act of acknowledgement.

“Deb being in the Interior would be removing that invisible cloak that they have put on us all these centuries and making more and more people aware we are here and who we are,” said Semans, a political activist and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota.

For more than 171 years, the federal agency responsible for managing the U.S. relationship with hundreds of recognized tribes has never had a Native American at its helm.

Many Native Americans have viewed that lack of representation as not just a lack of respect. It has been viewed as proof that the country that drove their ancestors off their l and, forced them into assimilation boarding schools, repeatedly broke treaties, and ignored the high unemployment and other injustices of reservation life had no abiding interest in resolving the wrongs of the past.

That changes with Haaland. “A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” she tweeted 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.”

An enrolled citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna Native American tribe, the 59-yearold Haaland serves on the House Natural Resources Committee. She is one of only two Native American women in Congress along with Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan.