DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED

YEAR IN REVIEW | 12.19.20

As I type, euphoria still lingers across Indian Country over the recent nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland for Interior Secretary. The day the news broke, I was reminded of a magazine profile we were working on together for Pacific Standard during the summer of 2019 in New Mexico. When the publication suddenly shuttered, my assignment did, too. By that time, I had attended Haaland’s reelection kickoff party in Albuquerque; I had watched her scale atop a giant windmill on an energy farm in the East Mountains. We also discussed our ties to Laguna, the Pueblo where we both share citizenship.

No one could have predicted back then that Haaland would be poised to make major history, again, this time as the first Native American to be appointed as a cabinet secretary. If confirmed by the senate, the prospects are an extraordinary match to an extraordinary and trying year. From the pandemic, to protests, to historic victories in the nation’s highest courts and major sports franchises, the travails and triumphs have set in motion a reversal of centuries-old Indigenous erasure, invisibility, and discrimination — all within a single year —and in large part, the result of new activism. Haaland’s nomination has its place in this enthralling plot-twist, and symbolically so.

Indigenously will be highlighting some of the stories that made history in Indian Country this year on Instagram. We started with Haaland, followed by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, McGirt V. Oklahoma, the most important legal victory for Native Americans in decades, if not in the last century. Follow along, here.

On my Sunday reading list, actually is My Winter Reading List: I’m taking a pause from the practice of newslettering and sinking into some longform over the next few weeks, which currently involves A Whale Hunt by my friend, Robert Sullivan, Maria’s Once I Was You, something from this selection about restorative justice, and Matt Fletcher’s Indian Hating. I have plans to be back here, Jan. 15, 2021.

And in case anyone noticed or cared, this latest edition dropped on a Saturday morning rather than on a Friday night, as originally scheduled. Consider it weary metaphor for my wrap to a wild year. I love knowing you were with me for parts of it, here.

Dawaa’e. Stay safe and happy holidays! And I’ll see you next year.

Jenni Monet

THE INDIGENOUS INTERNET

INDIGENOUSLY INDEX

Total doses of Pfizer, Moderna vaccines being allocated by Indian Health Service: 68,425

Number of people following the Facebook group, Social Distance Powwow: 222.3K

Number of people following the group on March 16, soon after it launched: 77K

Total days Dept. of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was hospitalized for Covid-19: 3

Number of days before the Dept. of Interior holds ANWR lease sales as of 12/19/20: 18

Total people on Biden’s Climate Team, including DOI Secty. Nominee, Deb Haaland: 6

Total amount behind the Biden-Harris climate plan: $2T

Total years since the Red Paper inspired today’s expanding #LandBack movement: 50

Number of arrestees from a July 4, 2020 #LandBack protest near Mount Rushmore: 21

Total raised by protest organizer NDN Collective for “legal costs”(7/10/20): $2.4M

Percentage of Hopi voter turnout increase in 2020 from 37% in 2016: 23%

Total years the NFL team from Washington relied on a racial slur for its mascotry: 78

Total years Natives requested a name change before its retirement, July 13, 2020: 48

Exact number of professional sports teams that still rely on racist mascotry: 3

Number of views reached on NativeTikTok in 2020: 1.1B

THE CRISIS

In mid-November, Coral Davenport of the New York Times, published a story about Rep. Deb Haaland’s surging rumors about being vetted as a nominee for the Department of the Interior. This was before the week of #DebForInterior memes, or the wave of Hollywood celebrities that joined in. To be sure, it was the first time anyone had really learned that another Native American was being considered for the position — Micheal Connor, Taos Pueblo—and that he came highly qualified.

As Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Connor served three years under the Obama Administration and is somewhat of a water rights nerd. He served on his tribe’s water task force, similar to the one his grandfather joined. Five years after his career began at Interior, he became the second in command at the Water Rights Office. And there are a number of other Interior posts: counselor for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; head of the Bureau of Reclamation.

But you heard little about Connor in the headlines that glowed about nominating “the first Native American cabinet secretary”— just not that Native, was the message by omission. I can’t stop thinking about how he’s taking the news; the erasure by other Native Americans and their favoritism. As Davenport wrote, he lacked Haaland’s “star power” but shined in policy experience—and his appointment would have offered the same historic weight, placing a Native American in charge of a department with great responsibility to tribes.

Native activists chided what few journalists called out these traits. One journalist, who’s White, joined in on the chorus and labeled Connor a “lesser-known man who is Native” but offering little else. Again, how must he feel?

How many other stories weren’t written about Connor because of this pressure? How many people remain unaware that Native activists themselves were dismissive of a career Interior bureaucrat who has Native interests at heart? This was a journalism fail—not because of any opinions against Haaland—but because the published narrative largely did not match the facts on the ground.

ENDORSEMENT

FEEDBACK

“Pilamiyaye, for everything you do to further Indigenous media and promote visibility.”

Benita, Tacoma, WA

Dawaa’e, Benita. Our stories and words are here to be heard.

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QUOTE

The Indigenously newsletter is produced by Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo) with assistance from Tsanavi Spoonhunter (N. Paiute, Lakota, N. Arapaho)

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