DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED

MADAM SECRETARY 🦋| 3.19.21

Built in the 1870s, everything about the Eisenhower Executive Office Building is austere.  Its dense porticos and colonnades reach for palatial grandeur. Inside, post-Reconstruction Era woodwork is a reminder of America, the striver - working hard to attain what it had not yet achieved: world power and dominance. It was, after all, the headquarters for the Department of War, the arm of the federal government whose most storied enemies were Native warriors defending their ancestral homelands. 

So when Deb Haaland, a Pueblo woman, found herself here more than a century later, placing her left hand on a Bible while raising her right in a promise to uphold the U.S. Constitution - the scene felt overwhelmingly dreamlike. The blue ribbon skirt she wore, symbolizing her matriarchal path break, merely added to the magic. 

As of Wednesday, Haaland officially became the first Indigenous person appointed to a Cabinet position in America, and to lead a department directly responsible for upholding the nation-to-nation trust relationship with today’s 574 federally-recognized tribes and their citizens: the Department of the Interior. The weight of this pivotal moment is not lost on anyone.

“We have a voice now. It’s basically uncharted territory,” said Shayai Lucero, the Laguna florist and former Miss Indian World that I featured a few newsletters ago. I checked back in with her following the events of this historic week. 

Shayai said she live-streamed Monday’s Senate confirmation vote from her flower shop on the reservation. Her mother, Cecilia, was there too, crying like so many people were across Indian Country that day. What flows from those happy tears can be easily summed up in a single word: visibility.

“My mom said, ‘I just keep thinking about all those Indian leaders who trekked from their homes to try to get the government to listen to them - centuries of chiefs and tribal leaders…’” 

Shayai’s voice trailed off into tears of her own. 

In 1881, during construction of the War Department building, the Eisenhower, Haaland’s great-grandfather from Laguna Pueblo was put on a train to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania - part of the military-led cultural genocide of Indigenous Peoples. As many as 10-thousand Native boys and girls from 140 different nations attended the government boarding school. Their braids were shorn; their languages beaten out of them. My great-grandfather, James Santiago Luther, also Laguna, was one of them. His school records document how they taught him the ways of the White man. But this chapter in the Indigenous struggle tells only a part of the story.

For too long, our greater narrative has been buried, ignored, or altogether dismissed. Haaland’s historic helming will no doubt change that - it already has. For Indian Country, this week has only intensified a radical imagining of an Indigenous future. For some, that involves a beautiful dream about getting the land back. For others - a push to eradicate by-blood limitations on Indigeneity. For me, I long more broadly for a near future where it doesn’t take two New York Times reporters to do the work of one informed and qualified Indigenous journalist. 

“We’ve been patient for centuries,” said Shayai about waiting for change. “We can be a little bit more patient and work.” 

Indigenously’s coverage of this historic week and what it means is summed up in a six-minute read we published. Enjoy, and if something strikes you from this newsletter, don’t be shy. Send me your thoughts. I love receiving your emails. 

Dawaa’e, thank you so much for being here,

Jenni

THE INDIGENOUS INTERNET

INDIGENOUSLY INDEX

Number of secretaries in the first U.S. Cabinet: 4

Total paid to Sec. of War, Henry Knox, for illegal sale of Penobscot land in 1796: £107K

Number of Congresses when the Dept. of War was renamed to the Dept. of Interior: 30

Number of years the Dept. of War operated the Carlisle Indian Boarding School: 39

Number of years before the first female Cabinet secretary was confirmed: 143

Total number of women ever appointed as Interior Secretary, including Deb Haaland: 3

Total number of secretaries who have led the Interior before Haaland: 53

Number that Haaland is in line of succession to the presidency: 6

Total duration of Haaland’s swearing-in video posted by the White House: 1:12

Number of Republicans who voted to confirm Haaland: 4

Total states where tribes are based whose senators voted against Haaland: 16

Number of conservatives who urged the Senate to reject Haaland’s nomination: 88

Total Democratic candidates vying for Haaland’s 1st Congressional Seat in NM: 8

Number of candidates who are Indigenous: 1

Total number of days candidates must be declared before the June 1 special election: 56

SIGNAL BOOST

On Secretary Haaland’s first day on the job at Interior, the Pueblo Action Alliance posted an image on their Instagram account. “It’s Auntie Deb’s first day as Secretary of the Interior, and she’s repping PAA in her office!,” read the caption. On the cover of Haaland’s black Moleskine was a sticker - the logo for the emerging advocacy organization. As explained on their website, it’s led by today’s “descendants of Pueblo revolutionaries,” a throwback to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.

Their Instagram feed is definitely worth a follow, a doorway to education including this latest post about the ins and outs of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. Also, next month, they’ll be unpacking their next big campaign, #Waterback, along with the Environmental Futures program at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Click on the flyer below to register and support this group.

FEEDBACK

“I’ve been reading your newsletter. It’s really powerful.”

Mel, Piscataway Homelands, New Jersey

Mel ❤️ We go back a few years. She’s got some films coming up about Indigenous and Black land defense—Building Movements to Defend Life.

Check them out 🌍 March 20th and March 21st

QUOTE

The Indigenously newsletter is produced by Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo)

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