Who Is Deb Haaland?
Who Is?
iHeartRadio + NowThis
4.1 • 803 Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2021
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
In 1851, then Secretary of the Interior Alexander H.H. Stuart wrote the following: “What is to become of the aboriginal race? … A temporary system can no longer be pursued. The policy of removal, except under peculiar circumstances, must necessarily be abandoned; and the only alternatives left are, to civilize or exterminate them.” In 2021, Congresswoman Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo woman, was confirmed Secretary of the Interior. Haaland, a single mother who enrolled in college at 28 and would later experience homelessness, is a remarkable person--and politician--whose presence in the Biden Administration marks a profound assertion of Indigenous political power in the United States.
- Julia Bernal, Alliance Director at the Pueblo Action Alliance
- John Leshy, who has dedicated much of his career to America’s public lands and the laws that govern them, served as Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior throughout the Clinton Administration. His political history of public lands in the United States, “Our Common Ground,” will be published in late 2021 by Yale University Press
- Jenni Monet, a journalist who writes about Indigenous Affairs
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm proud to stand here on the ancestral homelands of the Lenape tribal nation. |
| 0:06.0 | The President-elect and Vice President-elect are committed to a diverse cabinet, and I'm honored |
| 0:12.0 | and humbled to accept their nomination for Secretary of the Interior. |
| 0:18.0 | Growing up in my mother's Pueblo household made me fierce. My life has not been easy. |
| 0:24.3 | I struggled with homelessness. I relied on food stamps and raised my child as a single mom. |
| 0:30.7 | These struggles give me perspectives, though, so that I can help people to succeed. |
| 0:36.7 | My grandparents who were taken away from their families as children and sent to boarding school |
| 0:41.3 | in an effort to destroy their traditions and identities maintained our culture. |
| 0:48.3 | This moment is profound when we consider the fact that a former secretary of the Interior once proclaimed his goal |
| 0:55.9 | to, quote, civilize or exterminate us. |
| 1:00.1 | I'm a living testament to the failure of that horrific ideology. |
| 1:05.3 | That was then-congresswoman Deb Holland in December 2020, after President-elect Joe Biden nominated her to be Secretary |
| 1:13.3 | of the Interior. |
| 1:15.4 | Three months later, she was confirmed. |
| 1:17.9 | For Secretary Holland to now helm a department whose very definition for Indigenous peoples |
| 1:27.1 | has been to abuse us and to eliminate us. |
| 1:32.3 | It almost is surreal, to be quite honest. |
| 1:37.3 | But that's not all. |
| 1:38.3 | Well, she has a substantial authority over most public lands. |
| 1:43.3 | So she has a very, very wide and kind of eclectic |
| 1:46.7 | portfolio. I think one of the big challenges of the job, since I've observed the last, I don't |
| 1:53.6 | know, dozen or so secretaries of the interior operate, one of the big challenges of the job is |
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