A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Biden is expected to issue a formal apology today for the federal government's Native American boarding schools. With him in Arizona will be Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, America's first-ever Indigenous cabinet member. She made it a priority to right the government's historic wrongs, including abuses at boarding schools. Haaland recently spoke about it with NPR's Kirk Siegler at the Department of Interior.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: The cavernous Stewart Udall Department of Interior Building may be just off the National Mall in Washington, but it feels like a window into the Old West. Past the peculiar Indian Craft Shop, there are striking New Deal-era murals of firefighting and farming and an Ansel Adams photograph of the Acoma Pueblo of New Mexico.
DEB HAALAND: Our people were farming the desert for thousands of years - right? - at Bears Ears and...
SIEGLER: Acoma's just a few miles from where Deb Haaland spent much of her childhood, at her grandmother's rock home in Mesita Village, Laguna Pueblo. Upstairs in the office of the department's first-ever Native secretary, Haaland says she thinks about her elders, and the U.S. government's historical policy of assimilation, every day.
HAALAND: My grandparents worked on the railroad for 45 years because of that, right? They were trying to get Indians out of their communities and into mainstream America.
SIEGLER: Haaland's grandmother was sent to a Catholic boarding school as a little girl. School children were punished for speaking Indigenous languages. Many were abused, or worse, and there's still no full accounting of those who died.
HAALAND: It's an important piece of our history that every single American should know about. It's a painful part of our history.
SIEGLER: Haaland, who also oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, recently wrapped up a nationwide healing tour across the country.
HAALAND: I think of that every single day. Those voices resonate with me every single day. It is very, very painful.
SIEGLER: Haaland has also tried to right the wrongs of history by bringing tribes to the table on public lands decisions. Her department controls half a billion acres of land, including the National Parks, cattle ranges and oil and gas fields. She's increased tribal co-management agreements tenfold.
HAALAND: Tribal folks, they're - you know, they were our first land stewards. And so I feel that we've done an excellent job of lifting up Indian affairs and making sure that, like, across the board, it's important to our entire department.
SIEGLER: Haaland knows it's ironic that she is now leading Interior. Historians say the agency was created after this country had fought off the British colonizers, only to then begin colonizing the American West.
PATTY LIMERICK: The Department of the Interior - I don't know. You could almost call it the Department of Intense Irony and still keep the same initials.
SIEGLER: Patty Limerick is a Western historian at the University of Colorado.
LIMERICK: There's no question that the Department of the Interior comes into being to manage, direct and control Indian peoples.
SIEGLER: But Limerick says Deb Haaland's appointment will mark an important turn.
LIMERICK: This is proof that we are not stuck with a historical legacy. This is proof that we have the power to say, let's change this.
SIEGLER: Indeed, across Indian country, her appointment to lead federal agencies that long deprived Native people of their wealth and power - it means a lot. Chuck Hoskin Jr. is chief of the Cherokee Nation, one of America's biggest tribes.
CHUCK HOSKIN JR: Oh, I think her legacy is that she empowered Indian country and gave hope to particularly a generation of young Natives, who look at a powerful Native woman in a position of great power demonstrating strength.
SIEGLER: Haaland's appointment came with huge expectations. She herself points out that America's 574 federally recognized tribes are no monolith. And she's faced criticism for everything from tighter oil and gas drilling rules on the Navajo Reservation to not intervening in a lithium mining boom in Nevada on land tribes consider sacred. Here's how the longtime chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Arlan Melendez, framed it before retiring late last year.
ARLAN MELENDEZ: We want her to come out here, at least to explain to the tribes as to what she can do - you know, besides remaining silent on it.
SIEGLER: Haaland says she's learned it's nearly impossible to be all things to everyone and jokes that every day, at least half the country is mad at her.
HAALAND: With respect to some of these projects, they didn't start with this administration. They were - you know, there were past administrations who were working on some of these things.
SIEGLER: She also found herself on the defense more recently over the Not Invisible Act, which she got passed as a member of Congress in 2019. It created a commission to advise the Interior and Justice Departments on their failure to solve missing persons and murder cases in Native communities. Some members criticized her for not acting fast enough. Haaland is pleading for patience, saying Native women have been trafficked since colonization - for 500 years.
HAALAND: Can things happen faster? Of course, things can always happen faster, but we are moving forward on this issue, when before, nobody cared about it.
SIEGLER: As a tribal administrator, she remembers going to missing Indigenous people rallies, where only a few family members showed up. Like boarding schools, Haaland says these are now mainstream issues.
HAALAND: This was a turning point to acknowledge this painful era of our history, one that so many Americans had no clue about.
SIEGLER: Haaland won't say whether she'd stay on if a potential Kamala Harris administration were to ask. Donald Trump would likely roll back most of the Biden agenda, particularly a new, controversial rule that allows public land to be leased for conservation instead of drilling. But Cherokee Chief Chuck Hoskins says Haaland has raised the bar such that future presidents will appoint leaders who empower Indian country, not ignore it.
HOSKIN: We have seen, over the decades, progress and then some level of retreat. I think overall, we're on a path of progress in this country that is beyond party lines.
SIEGLER: Secretary Haaland points to the historic $45 billion the administration set aside for tribes for everything from clean water to schools to bringing electricity to homes that still don't have it.
HAALAND: We're proud that tribes have had these - this once-in-a-generation investment to make their communities better. Some - you know, there's tribes like the Hopi Tribe in Arizona, who are able to electrify homes with solar power for the first time ever.
SIEGLER: Haaland says she and the Biden administration have done things that will change Native people's lives forever, no matter who's in charge next.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Washington.
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