Deb Haaland, 35th Generation American, Named Secretary of the Interior Department

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter for March 15, 2021.

It's a good brief explanation of the (shameful) history of the Department of the Interior, from its formation in 1849, when it took under its umbrella Indian Affairs.

As settlers pushed into Indigenous territory, the government took control of the land through treaties that promised the tribes food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, and usually the tools and seeds to become farmers. As well, tribal members usually received a yearly payment of cash. These distributions of goods and money were not payment for the land. They replaced the livelihood the tribes lost when they gave up their lands.

Either willingly or by force, tribes moved onto reservations, large tracts overseen by an agent who, once Indian Affairs was in the Department of the Interior, was a political appointee chosen by the U.S. senators of the state in which the reservation was located. While some of the agents actually tried to do their job, most were put into office to advance the interests of the political party in power. So, they took the money Congress appropriated for the tribe they oversaw, then gave the contracts for the beef, flour, clothing, blankets, and so on, to cronies, who would fulfill the contracts with moldy food and rags, if they bothered to fulfill them at all. The agents would pocket the rest of the money, using it to help keep their political party in power and themselves in office.

The mistreatment of native Americans was unbelievable, but there were other egregious abuses, such as Warren Harding's Teapot Dome scandal:

Soon after President Warren G. Harding took office in 1921, his Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, began to accept huge bribes from oil tycoon Edward Doheny. In 1922, Fall persuaded the Secretary of the Navy to transfer control of the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming, along with two other oil fields in California, to him. Harding signed off on the deal, and Fall promptly gave Doheny secret, no-bid leases for the fields.

The Teapot Dome scandal sent Fall to prison for a year, making him the first former cabinet official to serve time.

Although Doheny was convinced that socialism was destroying America, Teapot Dome marked the beginning of the power of the oil industry in the American government, power ultimately personified when Trump appointed a lawyer and lobbyist for the energy and oil industry, David Bernhardt, to head the department. Bernhardt—who was confirmed by a vote of 56 to 41—rolled back environmental regulations and opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration.

Let's hope the Biden administration, and Deb Haaland, can do better.