Deb Haaland

Her mother, Mary Toya, was Laguna, served in the Navy, and worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her father was a Marine major from Minnesota who took a Silver Star in Vietnam and was buried at Arlington in 2005. A military family means moving, and Haaland attended 13 public schools before her parents settled in Albuquerque to be near the Laguna relatives. She finished at Highland High in 1978 and calls herself a 35th-generation New Mexican. She took an English degree at the University of New Mexico in 1994, studying under Joy Harjo, who later printed her poems in an anthology. Four days after commencement she gave birth to her child, Soma, and raised Soma alone. In those years, she has said, she sometimes could not afford housing.

She went back for a law degree, counseled adults with developmental disabilities, then administered a tribe and ran its casino at San Felipe Pueblo. She lost a race for lieutenant governor in 2014, chaired the New Mexico Democratic Party from 2015 to 2017 and is credited with rebuilding it after the wipeout, and won the state's first congressional district in 2018. In December 2020 Joe Biden named her secretary of the interior, and the Senate confirmed her 51 to 40 on March 15, 2021, with four Republicans crossing over. She was sworn in wearing Laguna regalia and a ribbon skirt made for her by Agnes Woodward. She was the first Native American to hold a Cabinet secretaryship, at the department that had administered Native nations for a century and a half.

In June 2021 she opened the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative and turned her own department loose on what it had done. The first volume, published May 11, 2022, identified 408 boarding schools and at least 53 burial sites across 150 years. The second found gravesites at 65 federal schools and at least 973 children dead in the system. Her own grandparents had been sent to those schools. She sat through the Road to Healing sessions and listened. But Interior also runs the leasing, and on March 13, 2023, the department approved ConocoPhillips's Willow project on Alaska's North Slope, up to 750 million barrels of oil from a coast that is thawing. Haaland's name is not on the approval. Her deputy, Tommy Beaudreau, signed it. Environmental groups sued the next day.

She left Interior on January 20, 2025, handing it to Doug Burgum, and eight days later announced she was running for governor of New Mexico. She won the Democratic primary on June 2, 2026, taking 40.6 percent of a six-way field, and faces the general election in November. What she leaves at Interior is a written federal record where there had been none: two volumes naming the schools, the burial sites and the children, and a task force that stripped a slur for Native women off 650 place names on federal land. The rest of it — the leases and the monuments held in the same hands — has not been judged yet.

Deb Haaland's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Missing and Murdered Unit, Bureau of Indian Affairs company
  Created to keep cases from going cold 2021
• Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative mission
  The department's investigation of its own schools and burial grounds 2021
• Order declaring a slur for Native women derogatory law
  Sent a task force to rename 650 places on federal land 2021
• Avi Kwa Ame National Monument building
  One of the designations built around Native participation in management 2023
• Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni National Monument building
  Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon 2023
• Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument building
  The first boarding school made a national monument 2024

• 1978 aged ~18 Graduates from Highland High in Albuquerque after 13 schools
• 1994 aged ~34 Takes an English degree, and gives birth four days later She raised the child alone, at times without steady housing.
• 2014 aged ~54 Loses a race for lieutenant governor of New Mexico
• November 6, 2018 aged 57 Elected to Congress from New Mexico's first district
• March 15, 2021 aged 60 Confirmed as secretary of the interior, 51 to 40 Four Republicans voted to confirm. She was sworn in three days later in Laguna regalia.
• June 2021 aged 60 Creates the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Announced at the National Congress of American Indians mid-year conference.
• May 11, 2022 aged 61 The first volume names 408 boarding schools and 53 burial sites A second volume found at least 973 children dead in the federal system.
• March 13, 2023 aged 62 Interior approves the Willow project in Alaska Her deputy signed the record of decision. Her name is not on it.
• June 2, 2026 aged 65 Wins the Democratic primary for governor of New Mexico She took 40.6 percent in a six-way field.

• Joe Biden b. 1942
  46th president who enacted major infrastructure and climate legislation after decades in the Senate and vice presidency. nominated her to the Cabinet
• Vine Deloria Jr. 1933–2005
  Writer and legal scholar whose work transformed public understanding of Native sovereignty, treaty rights, and Indigenous religion. shaped the sovereignty argument she acted on
• Sarah Winnemucca 1844–1891
  Northern Paiute author and lecturer who petitioned Washington over reservation abuses. earlier Native advocate in Washington
• Wilma Mankiller 1945–2010
  First woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, known for institution-building and community development. first woman to lead the Cherokee Nation
• John Muir 1838–1914
  Naturalist and organizer whose advocacy helped create national parks and the modern wilderness movement. the public-lands tradition she inherited