Indigenous people from throughout the country are calling upon U.S. Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland to address Indigenous human rights violations that have continued during the Biden administration.
As the first Indigenous presidential cabinet member, Secretary Haaland has gone to great lengths to reckon with historical injustices suffered by Indigenous people in America, but she has increasingly ignored current human rights abuses on Indian lands.
In northern Washington state, for example, dozens of Nooksack Indigenous family members are being ejected from their federal rent-to-own homes without due process. The United Nations has twice told the Biden administration to halt those human rights violations, only to have the U.S. State Department cite “tribal sovereignty” as its excuse for inaction. Secretary Haaland was personally made aware of the injustice at Nooksack in early 2022, when it made the front page of the New York Times, but she’s since shied away from it. The Nooksack families recently asked her to honor the UN’s pleas, by halting impending evictions. Secretary Haaland’s office declined to meet with the families.
In central California, hundreds of citizens of the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians are being ejected from their Tribe also without due process. The Biden administration has ignored those Indigenous citizens’ repeated pleas for human rights protection, despite at least two federal laws allowing for Secretary Haaland’s intervention in unlawful disenrollment actions. When she was in the U.S. House of Representatives, Secretary Haaland promised to address disenrollment, but she did not.
In eastern Oklahoma, at least four Tribal nations that signed Reconstruction Era Treaties that promise Tribal citizenship rights to those nations’ freed slaves, now refuse to confer citizenship to those commonly known as the Freedmen. Secretary Haaland “encouraged” those four Tribal nations’ “to meet their moral and legal obligations to Freedmen,” but stopped short of enforcing those federal Treaty promises.
In upstate New York, both Cayuga Nation citizens and the Seneca County Board of Supervisors implored Secretary Haaland to protect civil rights on Tribal lands, after “the deployment of an apparently illegitimate tribal police force, erosion of property rights [i.e. the bulldozing of tribal buildings], and confusion as to civil rights and obligations for both tribal and non-tribal members of the local community.” It appears Secretary Haaland ignored the situation altogether.
These injustices arise in great part because there is no federal Bill of Rights protection in Indian Country, and the federal Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968—the so-called Indian Bill of Rights—was gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978.
Secretary Haaland has used her historic platform to bring justice to the families of murdered and missing Indigenous people and to the survivors of Indian boarding schools. But she has stopped short of using her platform to help stem the human rights abuse presently suffered by Indigenous people on Tribal lands.
Federal officials are loath to confront human rights violations on Tribal lands for fear of being criticized as “anti-Tribal,” or losing political support from wealthy gaming Tribes. Certain prominent Tribal gaming politicians with direct access to Secretary Haaland, have committed human rights abuses themselves.
With aspirations of next serving as New Mexico’s Governor, amid a bitter game of thrones with U.S. Senator Mark Heinrich, Secretary Haaland is certainly playing it safe. “Auntie Deb,” as her political handlers and allies affectionately call her, appears afraid of doing anything that would be perceived as an affront to Tribal nationalism. This has caused Indigenous cultural people to increasingly question her courage.
Quoting federal statutes, the Nooksack families reminded Secretary Haaland how she is uniquely empowered to help protect Indigenous human rights:
You are the highest ranking federal Indian affairs Official in the United States. You are “charged with the supervision of public business relating to . . . Indians.” You “shall . . . have the management of all Indian affairs and of all matters arising out of Indian relations.”… As the first Indigenous cabinet Secretary in United States history, you also have moral authority and responsibility to defend and protect [Indigenous] human rights.
As the Biden administration actively works to promote and protect her legacy, it is not too late for Secretary Haaland to bravely confront the injustices Indigenous people are suffering here and now.
Will she or won’t she?
Gabe Galanda is an Indigenous rights attorney and the managing lawyer at Galanda Broadman. He has been named to Best Lawyers in America in the fields of Native American Law and Gaming Law from 2007 to 2024, and dubbed a Super Lawyer by his peers from 2013 to 2024.
