Deb Haaland Reflects On Her Legacy — And Whether It Can Survive 4 Years Of Trump

WASHINGTON — Deb Haaland made history when she was confirmed as President Joe Biden’s interior secretary in 2021, becoming the country’s first-ever Native American Cabinet secretary.

As an enrolled member of the Pueblo Laguna tribe in New Mexico, she brought a unique perspective to leading the massive federal agency that oversees roughly one-fifth of all land in the country — an agency that once forcibly removed tens of thousands of Indigenous people from their ancestral homes.

Four years later, Haaland’s legacy is largely defined by her efforts to boost conservation of public lands and right past wrongs against Native Americans by the federal government.

In a Friday exit interview, the interior secretary reflected on some of her proudest accomplishments, including her early work with Biden to restore protections to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, both of which had had their boundaries changed under former President Donald Trump.

She also singled out her department’s new Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a sweeping official review of the U.S. government’s little-discussed legacy of stealing thousands of Indigenous children from their families and forcing them into nightmarish Indian boarding schools, to try to assimilate them into “civilized” white culture.

Haaland mulled the fate of her conservation legacy over the next four years under Trump, whose primary interests in public lands involve expanding fossil fuel drilling and dismantling environmental regulations.

“I feel confident about the work that we’ve done,” she said. “It’s durable.”

Days before Biden leaves office, Haaland is still holding out for him to do one last thing as president: grant clemency to long-imprisoned Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier. Before becoming interior secretary, Haaland was a member of Congress and a strong public advocate for Peltier’s freedom, but she’s been quieter on this front in her Cabinet role.

“I hope he can go home,” she said.

Here’s a transcript of Haaland’s interview with HuffPost. It has been lightly edited for brevity.

HuffPost:We spoke when you first took this job, so I wanted to circle back to reflect on how the last four years went. What are your proudest moments?

Deb Haaland: So many proud moments, right? One of the first things I participated in at the White House as secretary was when President Biden signed the Bears Ears proclamation. He reprotected Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante after the previous president had unprotected it. So I went there and all the tribal leaders were there, the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, and it was amazing. It was just really amazing.

I had such tremendous faith that we would be able to accomplish a lot of things in these four years, simply because that was something that was a really big deal. It kind of set the tone in a way, like, “Yes, we can get things done. So let’s just keep moving forward.” And I am so fortunate to have had an amazing team who felt the same way, who were really ready to work and work very very hard.

HP: So that was your proudest moment?

DH: One of my proudest moments. Other proud moments, I mean, we just signed Chuckwalla [National Monument into law] just the other day. That was the first time I got to walk in the room with the president. That was pretty awesome. And the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative that we finished, the two volumes, plus the recommendations, and now we’re working on the oral history project. And the president giving a national acknowledgement and apology. We also finished our 10-year Native language plan. We’re not here to see it through, but the plan itself is completed, and so it will be up to folks down the road to pick it up and make sure that they can do something with it.

HP: Were there any major surprises in this job?

DH: Surprises, I mean, I learned so much here. The Department of the Interior manages all of our public lands. I’ve had opportunities to go to some amazing wildlife refuges. I had no idea that people excavated sea turtles’ nests. And we got to see them do that. It’s essentially rescuing some baby sea turtles who kind of got stranded in these nests, because they didn’t hatch soon enough to emerge with all of their siblings. And so we got to share some baby sea turtles into the ocean one day.

HP: That is cute.

DH: The public servants who are taking care of all of these things, it’s very amazing, and I just feel immense gratitude.

HP: To what extent do you think your conservation legacy will survive the next four years? Trump has already signaled his interest in reviewing national monument designations and protections.

DH: Well, first of all, I feel confident that we did things right. I feel confident that we were on solid legal ground and had all the right sort of buy-in from communities, from delegations, from all the players that come together to say, “Yes, we want this.” I think it might be a bit difficult for them to come in and want to dismantle everything.

But I feel confident about the work that we’ve done, that it’s durable. That we’ve been able to ensure that the community is there to also protect the things that they have asked us to move forward in that way.

HP: OK. So you haven’t been laying awake at night thinking, ‘oh no, all these things I’ve worked to protect are toast’?

DH: I can’t. I can’t lay awake and fret over these things. However, what I can do is continue what I’ve been telling all of the career staff in the meetings that I’ve been to over the last several months, which is, I’m going to be cheering for you from the sidelines wherever I am. I’m going to keep an eye on your progress and I’m going to support you in any way I can.

I really feel like the work is never done. I mentioned the attorneys, but there’s also a whole body of scientific knowledge out there that helped us in the decisions that we made, as well. The science and the law, we relied on it heavily. If the science supports the things that we did, I think it will be harder to undo them.

HP: Do you know Trump’s interior secretary nominee at all, former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum?

DH: I’ve only met him a few times at the Western Governors’ Association meetings.

HP: OK. Do you have any sense of his commitment to doing anything good for the planet?

DH: [Laughs] I couldn’t tell you at the moment. But since you’re the journalist, perhaps you can ask him.

HP: I can. I was hoping maybe you knew something I didn’t. Any regrets from the last four years?

DH: I can’t think of any regrets. I mean, we gave it our all every single day. I think I traveled like 46% of the time. We were on the road visiting, and I tell you, I went to some places and the staff at the national park or the wildlife refuge, they would say, we’ve never had a visit from the secretary. … We did go to places off the beaten path. Everywhere I went, I spoke to career staff and thanked them for the work they’re doing.

Part of what I wanted to do with my term here is really try to boost morale. As you might imagine, morale was not at the highest level when I got here.

HP: Why?

DH: I really felt like I wanted to boost morale because if you are happy at work, you’re going to do a better job. I encourage everyone to lift each other up, to be kind. Say a kind word. These were all my mantras everywhere I went. I think that a lot of the career staff, even the political appointees, recognize that and we all try to really lift everybody up.

As I mentioned, the morale wasn’t the best the last time, before Biden [and when Trump was the president]. So right when I first got here, that was one of my goals, to boost morale across the department, and I feel like we did that.

Could I tell you a quick story? So my mom worked in the [Bureau of Indian Affairs] for 25 years. It was before the Bureau of Indian Education. She worked for the BIA in Albuquerque in the superintendent’s office, and every year she’d come to Washington, D.C., to do student counts. It’s when they count all the students and all the Indian schools across the country, and that number determines their funding.

So my mom would come to D.C. once a year and do that with a couple other folks. She worked down on the fourth floor, where BIA is. The elevator was open there, and it comes straight up to the sixth floor, where my office is. The elevator door was open and she told her friend, “Let’s get in and see if we can go up and say hello to the secretary.” She came up on the elevator, and she said the door opened and they wouldn’t even let off the elevator. “They told us we needed to go back down.” So she told me that story, and I said, well, If you can ever come to D.C., I will welcome you to my office and all of that, right?

But I told my staff that I wanted to have an open house for any of the staff in the building who had never had a chance to come up to the secretary’s office. So we had a long line of people on Wednesday. For hours. There were hundreds and hundreds of people who came up here, and we took photos together and then I just asked them, “If you want to look around, look around at the art. Take your time.” It was a really nice gathering.

HP: What’s next for you?

DH: I couldn’t say at the moment. But whatever it is, I have not changed. There are things that always need attention, right? I was an advocate and an activist long before I ever came to Washington D.C. I’ll likely continue to advocate for all of the things that I care about.

HP: Why do I have a feeling that you’re going to stay in public service?

DH: Because I’m young and vibrant? [Laughs]

HP: One last thing. How are you feeling about Leonard Peltier’s fate?

DH: I mean, at this moment I actually feel somewhat hopeful. I know that there is a plethora of people out there, thousands of people, chiming in, hundreds of tribal leaders, members of Congress. When we did the boarding school initiative, I was in the photo line with the president, and people would come through and ask the president directly if he would offer Leonard Peltier clemency. So I know that he is hearing it from a lot of people. I also know that people who are close to him are also hearing it.

I have supported his clemency for a very long time. I think he has paid his debt to society, since he’s served for almost 50 years. He’s an old man.

And quite frankly, what I think about, when I tell people that I stand on the shoulders of people who came before me, in [Peltier’s] era of Indian activism, people were flat-out forgotten in Indian communities across the country. The federal government did not care about Indian tribes. It was on the heels of them terminating hundreds of tribes in California, taking away people’s fishing rights, not upholding treaty obligations. It was that era of Native people who worked hard to remind the government that they had an obligation. And honestly, it was important for the federal government to be reminded of those obligations. So I’m here. I stand on all of their shoulders.

HP: Are you referring to Leonard Peltier’s shoulders?

DH: Well, I mean, all of their shoulders. He was an activist from way back when, and I’ll also say that he was a boarding school survivor. So honestly, I hope he can go home.