The US Senate confirmed the appointment of Deep Haaland as Secretary of the Interior on Monday local time. The 60-year-old from New Mexico is from the Laguna Pueblo Indian tribe and is the first Native American to hold a cabinet position. President Joe Biden’s nomination was approved by 51-40.
The historic designation has great symbolic value because the Department of the Interior is largely concerned with relations with Native American peoples: the policies surrounding the nearly 1.9 million Indigenous peoples of the United States fall within the department’s jurisdiction.
The original vote was instrumental in Biden’s election victory in the southwestern state of Arizona.
The U.S. Department of the Interior employs 70,000 people and is primarily responsible for managing federal government-owned land, including national parks. Among other things, it was decided whether some plots of land were designated as nature reserves. You must also be granted permits for energy extraction, such as the controversial fracking, in which gas is extracted from stone under high pressure and using chemicals and water.
In the United States, security is not the responsibility of the Secretary of the Interior, but of the Secretary of Homeland Security.
History
This was not the first time Haaland had written history. In 2018, she was elected to Congress as one of the first two female MPs of original descent.
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