Why Rep. Deb Haaland's appointment as Secretary of the Interior Department is so important

[Geechie]

From historian par excellence, Heather Cox Richardson:

[link:https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-15-2021|]

The Biden administration seems eager to break the hold of the energy industry on the Interior Department. As soon as he took office, Biden appointed almost 50 top officials, and froze the new drilling permits issued by the Trump administration for review.

Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told Haaland that his state collects more than a billion dollars a year in royalties and taxes from the oil, gas, and coal produced on federal lands in the state, and warned that the Biden administration is “taking a sledgehammer to Western states’ economies.”

Haaland reassured him that having “lived most of my adult life paycheck to paycheck,” she understands the economic struggles of ordinary Americans and is fully on board with the administration’s plan to build back better, “to responsibly manage our natural resources to protect them for future generations—so that we can continue to work, live, hunt, fish, and pray among them.”

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland tweeted when Biden announced her nomination. “I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”

[Doc Sportello]

1. This world would be so much better off if we adopted Native American approaches

Especially regarding the environment. And stopped cowtowing to what the energy industry wants. Our resources are finite and if we keep destroying the planet in the name of greater profits for corporations that do not care about people, despite the Wyoming senator's pretending to care about jobs.

[Geechie]

2. Another excerpt.

It's a major understatement to say HCR has done her homework.

Congress established the Department of the Interior in 1849 to pull together federal offices that dealt with matters significant to the domestic policy of the United States and were, at the time, scattered in a number of different departments. Among other things, the Interior Department took control of Indian affairs and public lands.

Reformers hoped that moving Indian Affairs from the War Department to the Interior Department, where civilians rather than army officers would control Indigenous relations, would lead to fewer wars. Instead, the move swept Indigenous people into a political system over which they had no control.

[txwhitedove]

3. Help. Amidst all happiness to finally have Native American as Sec of Interior, I sent

a message of cheer and video of Deb Haaland's swearing in ceremony to family. One answer was extremely negative, said Bidens choice wasn't organic and she doesn't look like America. My answer was WTH? I trust Biden to make a studied and qualified choice for every cabinet position. My great-grandmother was Cherokee. I am overjoyed.
My neighborhood is mixed race, indeed Houston area is all mixed. She looks like America to me.

[Geechie]

4. She looks like America to me too!