Deb Haaland
Deb Haaland is a prominent Native American politician and member of the Pueblo of Laguna, born on December 2, 1960, in Winslow, Arizona. She made history in 2019 as one of the first two Native American women elected to the U.S. Congress and further broke barriers in 2021 by becoming the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary when appointed as Secretary of the Interior by President Joe Biden. Haaland's educational background includes degrees from the University of New Mexico and a law degree from the University of New Mexico Law School, highlighting her commitment to both education and public service.
Her political career began with grassroots organizing efforts aimed at increasing voter turnout among underrepresented communities, leading to significant roles in various campaigns and her election as chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico. Throughout her tenure in Congress, Haaland has focused on progressive issues such as renewable energy, economic improvement, and the rights of Indigenous peoples, particularly addressing the concerns of missing and murdered Indigenous women. As Secretary of the Interior, her initiatives have included creating task forces for Indigenous rights and environmental conservation efforts, underscoring her dedication to both cultural and ecological advocacy. In addition to her public service, Haaland is active in her personal life, enjoying cooking and marathon running while engaging as a mother and community member.
Deb Haaland
US congressional representative, secretary of the interior
- Born: December 2, 1960
- Place of Birth: Winslow, Arizona
Education: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque; University of California at Los Angeles (attended 2000); University of New Mexico Law School
Significance: Deb Haaland, a former chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico and a longtime political campaigner, became one of the first two Native American women in Congress in 2019. Then, upon her appointment to secretary of the interior in 2021, Haaland became the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.
Background
Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, was born on December 2, 1960, in Winslow, Arizona. Her father, J. D. “Dutch” Holland, was the grandson of Norwegian immigrants, and her mother, Mary Toya, a member of the Laguna Pueblo whose ancestry in New Mexico dates to the thirteenth century CE. Both of Haaland’s parents were in the military: her father in the US Marine Corps, her mother in the US Navy. Haaland, her sisters Denise and Zoe, and her brother, Judd, moved frequently during their childhoods. By the time she graduated from Highland High School in Albuquerque in 1978, she had attended thirteen schools. Despite those frequent moves, she spent summers at her maternal grandparents’ home in Mesita, New Mexico, with the Laguna Pueblo, where she learned tribal traditions.
Haaland worked as a cake decorator in a bakery from the age of fifteen. Then, when she was twenty-eight, she enrolled in the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1994. In 2000, she briefly attended the University of California at Los Angeles before returning to New Mexico and entering the University of New Mexico Law School. During this time, she started a salsa business and worked in an antique auction shop. She earned her juris doctorate in 2006.
Early Political Career
Rejecting her parents’ Republican party affiliation, Haaland registered as an independent when she was eighteen. Later, she registered as a Democrat. Inspired by the desire to increase voting by members of underrepresented communities, Haaland became active in politics as a phone volunteer, calling on Native American voters and urging them to vote. That led to her working as a grassroots organizer on John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004 and a full-time volunteer canvasser on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. She also served as a delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Haaland worked on dozens of campaigns at the local and state levels, including as the Native American vote manager for Diane Denish’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. She served in the same role during Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. From 2012 to 2013, Haaland chaired the Democratic Party of New Mexico’s Native American Caucus. She also was chair of the Laguna Development Corp. from 2010 to 2015 and a tribal administrator for the Pueblo of San Felipe from 2013 to 2015.
Haaland’s outreach work on campaigns inspired her to seek a greater voice for Native Americans in New Mexico, and she ran for her first elected position as the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor of New Mexico in 2014. She and running mate Gary King lost the race, but her candidacy was historically significant as it was the first time a major political party had nominated an Native American candidate in a New Mexico gubernatorial race.
The following year, Haaland was elected chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, a position she held until April 2017. As state party chair, her achievements included overseeing a major outreach and voter registration campaign of Native American, Latino, and independent voters that led to a 24 percent increase in voting in the 2018 midterm elections and numerous Democratic candidates winning seats in the state house, the governorship, the races for secretary of state and attorney general, and more. In addition, Haaland led efforts to pay back the party’s significant debt.
In 2016, Haaland joined other Native Americans and activists in North Dakota protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was being dug under waterways and through burial grounds near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The threat to the water supply, the environment, and Sioux sacred sites inspired Haaland—and many other Native American activists—to run for elected office in order to have a greater voice on a national level for issues that affect Native Americans.
US Congress and Later Political Career
Haaland beat six other contenders to win the Democratic nomination to run for a seat in the US House of Representatives representing New Mexico’s First Congressional District, which covers Albuquerque and many rural and tribal communities, in the 2018 midterm elections. She ran on a progressive platform focused on Medicare for all, employment opportunities and economic improvement, 100 percent renewable energy, and campaign finance reform. She also supported universal childcare, abortion and family planning, free college, and issues of special concern to Native Americans, such as shifting her state’s economy away from gas and oil extraction, protecting sacred sites, and investigating the large number of missing and murdered Indigenous women. A unifying theme was her pledge to stand up to President Donald Trump and hold him accountable for his policies and actions. A supporter of defunding the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), Haaland drew parallels between the Trump Administration’s immigration policies that separated children and parents seeking asylum in the United States and her own family history—the US government’s separation of Native American children, including her great-grandfather and her grandmother, from their families and placement in residential boarding schools to be assimilated.
In the November 2018 general election, Haaland defeated her chief challenger, Republican Janice Arnold-Jones, taking 59.1 percent of the votes to Arnold-Jones’s 36.3 percent. Haaland took office on January 3, 2019. In the 2020 general elections, Haaland defeated Michelle Garcia Holmes to retain her seat.
In 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Haaland to serve as secretary of the interior. Upon her confirmation by the US Senate later that year, Haaland became the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary. Haaland's tenure as secretary of the interior included the creation of a task force within the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2021 to investigate and prevent unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native Americans; the 2021 implementation of a revised Cherokee Nation constitution; and the 2021 founding of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, an organization centered on investigating crimes committed against Native Americans under the 1819 Civilization Fund Act. (The act passed by Congress that removed Native Americans from their homes and placed them in boarding schools in the name of forced integration.) In 2023, Haaland announced that the U.S. government would be allocating $25 million for bison conservation. In 2024, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
Impact
Deb Haaland became a member of the most diverse US House of Representatives, with a high number of women and a record-breaking number of women of color. She and Sharice Davids of Kansas, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, became the first Native American women in Congress. Not only do she and Davids give Native American women a voice in Congress for the first time, they doubled the representation of Native Americans in the 116th US Congress as they joined two Native American congressmen, Tom Cole (Chickasaw) and Markwayne Mullin (Cherokee). Haaland broke further barriers by becoming the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary when she was named President Joe Biden's secretary of the interior in 2021.
Haaland sits on the House Committee on Armed Services and the House Committee on Natural Resources, where she is the vice chair, and cochairs the Native American Caucus.
Personal Life
Haaland has a grown daughter, Somáh, an LGBTQ writer, activist, and actor. Haaland’s personal interests include cooking and marathon running. Haaland married her husband, Skip Sayre, in 2021.
Bibliography
“1st Congressional District Candidate Debra Haaland.” Albuquerque Journal, www.abqjournal.com/1166959/us-district-1-candidate-debra-haaland.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Brown, Matthew. "US to Focus Bison Restoration on Expanding Tribal Herds." AP, 3 Mar. 2023, apnews.com/article/bison-restoration-tribes-haaland-6f5ad9227c70377a94a2a4efc809f3d8. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Chaves, Nicole. “Deb Haaland Creates Unit to Investigate Killings and Disappearances of Indigenous People.” CNN, 6 Apr. 2021, amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/06/us/deb-haaland-native-american-missing-murdered-unit/index.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Haaland, Deb. “Meet Deb Haaland, Native American Congresswoman.” Interview by Steve Curwood. Living on Earth, 7 Dec. 2018, loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00049&segmentID=1. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Killough, Ashley. “Deb Haaland Redefines Congress: ‘She’ll Help Us See What Native Americans Mean.’” CNN Politics, 25 Jan. 2019, www.cnn.com/2019/01/25/politics/deb-haaland-profile-barrier-breakers/index.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
NoiseCat, Julian Brave. “The First Native American Congresswoman in US History Could Be Elected This Year.” The Nation, 10 May 2018, www.thenation.com/article/the-first-native-american-congresswoman-in-us-history-could-be-elected-this-year. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Stuart, Tessa. “Meet Deb Haaland, Likely to Be the First Native Woman Elected to Congress.” Rolling Stone, 18 Aug. 2018, www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/deb-haaland-first-native-woman-elected-congress-712408. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.