Deb Haaland’s Groundbreaking Confirmation

Representative Deb Haaland at her confirmation hearing. [AFP/Leah Vogel]

Deb Haaland’s confirmation as the first Native Secretary of the Interior is a remarkable turn for the agency, which has long overseen the notorious Bureau of Indian Affairs. The bureau (formerly called the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs) was founded in 1824 and originally placed within the Department of War, a pretty clear indication of how the federal government regarded Indigenous people.

In the 1870s, the BIA helped establish off-reservation “boarding schools” designed to “assimilate” Indigenous children. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz wrote in her groundbreaking book An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States that these children “were prohibited from speaking their mother tongues or practicing their religions, while being indoctrinated in Christianity” and beaten for speaking their own languages. Further insults from the Bureau followed over many decades, including leasing and selling reserved land despite previous treaties and holding the profits from land sales in trust, investing however the bureau saw fit.

A century later, organizers for Indigenous rights carried out high-profile protests against the U.S. government, including the famed occupation of Alcatraz Island. On that occasion, activists issued a statement that must rank among the world’s greatest pieces of satire. Among other things, they suggested a new “Bureau of Caucasian Affairs,” offered to purchase Alcatraz for the same price a similar island had been purchased from the Native community ($24 in glass beads and red cloth), and reassured residents that they would “further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our education, our life-ways in order to help them achieve our level of civilization and thus raise them and all their white brothers up from their savage and unhappy state…”

The Bureau of Caucasion Affairs never came to be, but Deb Haaland’s appointment is, as The Red Nation pointed out, the result of decades of Indigenous organizing. Those movements have emphasized that Indigenous people will only see justice by regaining control over their own affairs.

The proof of Haaland’s value will be in her actions. But, for once, Indigenous organizers are optimistic.