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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to return to the topic of President-elect Joe Biden's Cabinet nominees now and focus first on one potential appointee who has excited the progressive wing of the party. Congresswoman Deb Haaland of New Mexico is still in her first term in the House, but she's already gained a reputation as a unifier and a dedicated public service.

Now she's being named to possibly get the job as US Secretary of the Interior, which is the position responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land and natural resources. Now, if appointed and confirmed Interior Secretary, she would be the first-ever Native American cabinet secretary in US history, and Native American lands do come under the interior secretary's jurisdiction in various ways.

What would Haaland's appointment mean for Native Americans, for the Democratic Party, for the Department of Interior, and the nation as a whole? With me now to answer these questions, and more, is Julian Brave NoiseCat, Vice President of Policy and Strategy with the progressive group Data for Progress. He's Narrative Change Director of the Natural History Museum, not the one in New York, not just an Estonian thing.

This is a traveling museum that highlights the socio-political forces that shape nature, the Natural History Museum. He's got a piece in Politico called "What a Joe Biden Cabinet pick might mean for Native Americans and Democrats." We'll touch on other transition issues too, as we go. Julian, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Thank you so much for having me to discuss this really important development.

Brian: Some of our listeners elsewhere around the country might only know Congresswoman Deb Haaland of New Mexico because they've heard her name. Can you give us an abridged biography for people who might be unfamiliar with her, and why you and many other people are so interested in her for Interior Secretary?

Julian: Absolutely. This will be the abridged version, but I guess I'll encourage your listeners if they're interested in learning more to read the piece in Politico Magazine. I've also written about Congresswoman Haaland for the nation on a couple of occasions. Congresswoman Deb Haaland is the representative of the First District of New Mexico. She's also a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, which is a tribal community in the State of New Mexico. She was one of the two first Native-American women elected to Congress in 2018, which I think is a crazy thing to think about for a second. The first peoples of this land, we only had an indigenous woman elected until two years ago.

Brian: I was shocked when I saw that in 2018.

Julian: Yes, it's a pretty crazy statistic. There's been something like 11,000 members of Congress through the United States history, and it took that long. She's also more  

than just being a historic first. She's also been a pretty uniquely savvy legislator. If you look at her track record, she's introduced more bills with bicameral support than any other House representative, that's including all members of Congress, and as a House freshman, she has led and co-sponsored more pieces of legislation, whipped more bipartisan votes, and also whipped more influential votes from House leadership than any other House freshmen.

She's been, at the same time, as she's lived this life as one of the first native women at this upper echelon of the United States government, she's also already made the mark in that place and actually has seen three of her acts signed into law, which I think in this era of a partisan stalemate, that's unheard of, to have anybody passing three bills in their first term in Congress.

She's a pretty remarkable politician. This is the abridged version. I'm not going to get too much into her biography. She also has a pretty remarkable life story that has taken her from living on food stamps and being a single mother to become a community organizer and volunteer with the Obama campaign and now all the way to Congress and potentially the first Native-American cabinet secretary.

Brian: I see from your article that 51 democrats in the House wrote the Biden transition team endorsing her. Even some of her Republican colleagues in Washington have expressed their support for her, based on that bipartisan cred that you were just describing. Congressman Don Young of Alaska, a Republican, called her a "consensus builder." With all the Cabinet picks that we've seen, why haven't we seen Congresswoman Deb Haaland for Interior Secretary yet?

Julian: It seems like it should be a slam dunk for President-elect Biden's team. I think that just to drive that point that you framed up as a question, there are probably no other politicians in the United States who can say that they have the support of the Justice Democrats, the leftist upstart pack on the one hand, and congressional Republicans on the other. Those Venn diagrams, I do not think, overlap anywhere else, except for support for Congresswoman Deb Haaland, to be the Secretary of the Interior, which, I think, is a pretty remarkable reality and observation.

I think that my understanding is that President-elect Biden is working through the names that he's putting forward pretty methodically. This week, we're getting the econ team. My understanding from the whisper networks and rumor mills and media leaks, as they occur, is that we will probably getting the names for the environmental agencies and the nominations for those, either late next week or maybe the week after that. That would be Interior, it would also be the Environmental Protection Agency, the Council on Environmental Quality. Maybe this domestic climate's [unintelligible 00:07:03] role and a few others, potentially.

Brian: You're saying it's not necessarily indecision about Congresswoman Haaland or any other nominee? It's the pecking order of the way these positions get rolled out more than likely? What would the significance be, not just symbolically, but in practical terms for indigenous Americans of having Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary?

Julian: I think here it's important to just layout for your listeners what the Department of the Interior does. The Interior Department is the agency, a quite sprawling agency actually, that manages public lands, natural resources. I think here it's really important to point out that those are lands and resources that were at one point in time taken from their original owners, indigenous peoples.

It's also the agency that oversees the lion's share of the programs that are directly serving and relating to the 574 federally recognized American-Indian and Alaska Native tribal communities across the country. It's more than just the symbolic power of having a Native American in the Cabinet, the first Native American in the Cabinet.

There's also a very purposeful policy's personnel, as Senator Warren says, angle to all of this wherein having Deb Haaland at the helm of Interior can help, I think, do things like promote environmental stewardship and conservation on public lands, do more clean and renewable energy on public lands while the Trump administration has been leasing to oil and gas left and right, then also to repair the relationship with the federally recognized tribes across this country, and in some instances, potentially even to start returning lands to indigenous control.

Brian: Listeners, and specifically Native-American listeners, we have time for a few calls. Any questions about Congresswoman Deb Haaland, for Julian Brave NoiseCat from Data for Progress, or anything else about the Biden transition? We'll have a few more minutes for some phone calls here, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Making a segue from the indigenous issues, in particular, to the larger environmental issues, as they affect everybody, the current Secretary of the Interior under President Trump, David Bernhardt, is an oil and gas lobbyist and is a predecessor, Ryan Zinke, opened up so much federal land to oil and gas extraction. Is that a particular policy item that you're focused on as somebody who's done environmentalist work in the past for whoever the next interior secretary is?

Julian: Absolutely. I think that your listeners would be probably very upset to learn that the United States has been leasing out its public and federal lands to oil and gas corporations for literally pennies on the dollar. There's actually a pretty good report from the Center for American Progress about this that came out a few years ago. It really points out that these oil and gas corporations which are- I guess they're strapped for cash in the pandemic, but they're usually pretty wealthy folks, are really basically looting public lands and turning it into private profit.

We've seen that in places like, now, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge which actually, on December 7th next week, is going to be opened up to oil and gas leasing which is of course part of the deal that congressional Republicans pushed through to say that they were going to have some revenue to pay for all those tax cuts for billionaires and corporations that they jammed through in 2017. The Interior Department, again, has a lot of functions related to public lands and natural resources and throughout, definitely, the last four years, it has been really a conduit for industry and has certainly not been helping in the fight against things like climate change.

There are definitely actions that the next Secretary of Interior, whoever they are, can take to reverse those policies to start using public lands to promote renewable energy for example, to start promoting environmental stewardship and conservation, then also potentially one thing that I'm very interested in is, in countries like Canada and Australia and elsewhere, there are actually federal policies that actually returned lands to indigenous stewardship to promote conservation, to protect forests and things like that so that they can be the carbon sinks that we need to be drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Doing that at the same time as we're restoring and protecting the rights and sovereignty of native nations, and I think that it'd be really exciting to explore similar possibilities on public lands and in national parks across this country.

Brian: I'm sure I don't have to tell you that climate activists and other progressives are raising concerns about some of Biden's other cabinet picks. One of them is Congressman Cedric Richmond of Louisiana. He's a senior Biden advisor being pulled out of Congress, who the president elect has chosen to lead the office of public engagement. He has ties to the oil and gas industry coming from Louisiana. Is this an issue for you? Do you care about this Cedric Richmond pick?

Julian: I think that on its face, this looks like an offensive pick, and I think it's understandable that activists took it that way. Here is a Congressman who has ties to industry, also to my understanding is defense industry as well. Not pretty stuff. It would be great if more of these establishment Democrats when they got nominated, it didn't come out immediately afterwards that they're tied to big oil and big weapon and things like that, I think that that might help the party a little bit, but that's just my perspective.

At the same time, though, actually I think that there was a fairly savvy lefty organizer who pointed out to me that actually there's a reading of this that use it as a potential net for the progressive wing of the party in the sense that the office of public engagement is actually not a cabinet position, it's also not really a policy-making position. It's mostly an interfacing with the public kind of position. The fact that one of Biden's campaign co-chairs as someone who is really close to the president-elect is only getting the office of public engagement not a bigger role, keeps seats open for more progressive leaders. At the same time also, he's coming from the House of Representatives.

There's now the opportunity for this long time incumbent seat to be replaced by someone who is more progressive and is going to fight for particularly communities in Louisiana's Cancer Alley, who have been most impacted by the fossil fuel industry and, of course, also now this pandemic, so there is a way to-- Go ahead.

Brian: Oh, I was just going to say he comes from leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus as well. It's one of those moments where we see the complexity of trying to have a diverse set of appointees, but that can sometimes come into conflict with some of the individual records of those individuals.

Julian: Absolutely. I think that it's important to point out here that, while I often bristle  

at the identity politics, critique that gets leveled the idea that just representation based upon race does not mean more progressive ideas being at the table, I think that it's important to point out that in this instance, also the Secretary of Interior role, just appointing someone who is of an oppressed community does not necessarily mean that we are going to get the institutional change, but I think a lot of particularly the young folks like me across this country are really hoping to see in a Democratic administration.

Brian: Yes. Devita in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Devita.

Devita: Oh, thank you so much for your great program. I want to pose the question. Although Deb Holland has Republican support, can there be some pushback because some see a conflict of interest as she is a Native American overseeing matters relating to Native Americans?

Brian: Oh boy, if we stop white people from overseeing every matter that relates to white people, we wouldn't have a Cabinet, but Julian, what's your answer to that?

Julian: I would think that that was a quicker witted the reply that I'll come up with. I think that the real concern that could be raised about Congresswoman Haaland is actually more around the fact that she visited the encampments at standing rock and cooked for the demonstrators there. She has spoken out against fracking in her ancestral homelands or sacred lands in Chaco Canyon.

,I'm actually a little bit more concerned that from the complete opposite side of the spectrum, the oil and gas interests, the mining interests there might be pushback that she's too progressive, which, I think, is part of the reason why it's actually really important that she's getting this support from congressional Republicans.

Brian: I did see in the Hill that news organization from Washington that Michael Connor, descendant of the Taos Pueblo tribe, who served as Deputy Interior Secretary in the Obama administration, is also being seriously considered to lead the Department. There's more than one Native American potential Interior Secretary Peck. Deb Holland seems to be getting all the press, though.

Julian: Yes. I think it's safe to say that the push for a Native Interior Secretary actually began as an implicit push for Congresswoman Haaland and that Michael Connor, who I actually had not heard of until his name started getting floated for this role, and then I started asking around about him and learned a little bit more, has been riding on the coattails of that grassroots energy and support. I think it's going to be very interesting to see if President-elect Biden's team views to be a little bit, in exactly my words here purposefully, any old Indian, not to say that Michael Connor is not a great bureaucrat and a great policy-maker.

I think that there is some potential here that they interpret the energy behind Congresswoman Haaland as energy for any Native person to get that role. I think if you ask her colleagues, any of the organizations behind her, whether that be from Indian country, the progressive world environmentalists, this is very specifically excitement about Congresswoman Haaland. While, of course, I would be incredibly

excited to have a Native Interior Secretary. I wrote a profile about Congresswoman Haaland and not about anyone else, for a reason.

Brian: We've got about a minute left in this segment. I see that we're getting a call from Congresswoman Haaland's district. Hillary in New Mexico, you're on WNYC. Hi, Hillary, thank you for calling in.

Hillary: Hi. I am here to put in my good word for Deb Haaland. While we would be really sorry to lose her, I have had personal interactions with her. I've called in before. I'm a midwife and I've seen the work that she's done on maternal mortality and women's health and health panels in general. Just know that she's a good listener. She brings all people to the table. I think she would be wonderful as an Interior Secretary.

I also think that New Mexico often gets overlooked. Gosh, there are so many people who don't even know where the state is, including [inaudible 00:20:39]. New Mexico has done a whole lot on alternative energy. We export wind turbine, [inaudible 00:20:49] we do a lot with solar energy. There's been a push within the Navajo Nation to be transitioning people where there's a coal plant looking at helping people become transition from coal to alternative energy and have jobs within the industry.

Brian: Hillary, I'm going to have to leave it there for time, but please call us again. I appreciate you chiming in on this with your endorsement, both of Deb Haaland and New Mexico. We're going to have to make that the last word because we are out of time, but my guest has been Julian Brave NoiseCat, Vice President of Policy and Strategy with Data for Progress and Narrative Change Director of the Natural History Museum. His article on Politico is "What a Joe Biden Cabinet pick might mean for Native Americans and Democrats." Thank you so much for being here. Let's do this again.

Julian: Thanks so much, Brian. I'm a big fan.

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