Who is Deb Haaland - Interior Secretary: Biography, Career, Time Life and Family

OCY [email protected] December 19, 2020 | 19:26

Biden picked Rep. Haaland as interior secretary on Thursday. This historic event will make her become the first Native American to lead a powerful federal agency. Deb Haaland is officially introduced to by Biden at an event Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware.

Deb Haaland is selected to become Interior Secretary by President-elected Joe Biden

Photo: USAToday.com

President-elect Joe Biden selected New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as his nominee for interior secretary on Thursday, a historic pick that would make her the first Native American to lead the powerful federal agency that has wielded influence over the nation’s tribes for generations.

Tribal leaders and activists around the country, along with many Democratic figures, cheered Haaland’s selection after urging Biden for weeks to choose her to lead the Department of Interior.

They stood behind her candidacy even when concerns that Democrats might risk their majority in the House if Haaland yielded her seat in Congress appeared to threaten her nomination.

With Haaland’s nomination, Indigenous people will for the first time in their lifetimes see a Native American at the table where the highest decisions are made — and so will everyone else, said OJ Semans, a Rosebud Sioux vote activist who was in Georgia on Thursday helping get out the Native vote for two Senate runoffs. “It’s made people aware that Indians still exist,” he said.

Haaland, 60, is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and, as she likes to say, a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico. The role of interior secretary would put her in charge of an agency that has tremendous sway not only over the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes, but also over much of the nation’s vast public lands, waterways, wildlife, national parks and mineral wealth.

Haaland tweeted after the news was made public that “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,” she pledged.

Biden plans to introduce Haaland — and other picks for his Cabinet — at an event Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware.

Her selection breaks a 245-year record of non-Native officials, mostly male, serving as the top federal official over American Indian affairs. The federal government often worked to dispossess Native Americans of their land and, until recently, to assimilate them into white culture.

Deb Haaland will take duty in dealing with environmental issues

The Interior Department upholds the federal government's responsibilities to the country's 574 federally recognized Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages. Its roughly 70,000-person staff also oversees one-fifth of all the land in the U.S. as well as 1.7 billion acres of the country's coasts. It manages national parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands, protecting biologically and culturally important sites while also shepherding natural resource development.

In an interview before her nomination, Haaland told NPR that would be her priority, too.

"Climate change is the challenge of our lifetime, and it's imperative that we invest in an equitable, renewable energy economy," she said.

A shift in priorities at Interior could have major implications for global climate change and the United States' outsized contribution to it. About one-quarter of all U.S. carbon emissions come from fossil fuels extracted on public lands, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That includes emissions from drilling, transporting and refining those fossil fuels before they're burned.

Haaland's experience as a lawmaker in fossil fuel-dependent New Mexico, and as the former head of the state's Democratic Party, leaves her well-positioned to navigate that transition, environmental advocates say. The state has one of the most aggressive climate plans in the country.

"You have to understand the complexity of public lands management," says Demis Foster, executive director of Conservation Voters New Mexico. "And I can't imagine a better representation of that than here in New Mexico. We have a vast network of public lands. We have extraordinary biodiversity, and we have a very unique cultural heritage."

State lawmakers also have to balance that, she says, with the "extraordinary force and influence of extractive industry."

How do other people think about her nomination?

Photo: Vogue.com

With Haaland’s nomination, “that in itself is a huge message,” Grijalva said.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez called it “truly a historic and unprecedented day for all Indigenous people.”

“I am SO ELATED,” the head of progressive Democrats’ Sunrise Movement, Varshini Prakash, tweeted. “This will be the first time an Indigenous person - and a badass climate champion woman at that - will hold any presidential cabinet position. Congratulations to @JoeBiden for making history.″

Get-out-the-vote activists believe their efforts, and the Native vote, helped flip Arizona in particular for Biden and secure the presidency.

“There’s a feeling something is changing,” said Ashley Nicole McCray, a member of the Absentee Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma and of an indigenous environmental coalition. “Finally, we’ve come to this point where Indigenous sentiment is no longer being silenced.”

But Biden’s pick could further deplete, at least temporarily, the narrow majority Democrats maintain in the House. Biden has already selected several lawmakers from the chamber, including Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond and Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, to serve in his administration.

Some on Biden’s transition team had expressed concerns about dipping further into the already thinned Democratic House majority for another senior administration posting. But Biden decided that the barrier-breaking aspect of her nomination and her experience as vice chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources made her the right pick for the moment.

The president-elect has been methodically filling the posts in his Cabinet, adding North Carolina environmental official Michael Regan as his nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Biden introduced former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg earlier this week as his transportation secretary and announced Thursday that former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was his nominee for energy secretary.

In a statement Thursday night, Biden said he had assembled a “brilliant, tested, trailblazing team” that “will be ready on day one to confront the existential threat of climate change.”

“They share my belief that we have no time to waste to confront the climate crisis, protect our air and drinking water, and deliver justice to communities that have long shouldered the burdens of environmental harms,” the president-elect said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear Wednesday that Biden had her blessing to choose Haaland, saying she would make an “excellent choice” as interior secretary. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House and a close Biden ally, also supported Haaland for the job.

Her Early Life

Haaland's family (Photo: Newsweek)

Born to a Marine veteran father and a Navy veteran mother, Haaland describes herself as a single mother who sometimes had to rely on food stamps. She says she is still paying off student loans after college and law school for herself and college for her daughter.

Haaland is one of the first two Native American women in the House. She told The Associated Press before her nomination that see the difference her position in Congress made for ordinary Native Americans who came to her with business before the federal government.

Haaland previously worked as head of New Mexico’s Democratic Party, as tribal administrator and as an administrator for an organization providing services for adults with developmental disabilities.