Person

Deb Haaland

Former Secretary of the Interior, Laguna Pueblo First Native American cabinet secretary, 2021-2025.

Coverage in The Weekly Brief

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Deb Haaland Debates for New Mexico Governor, Bringing Indian Country's Former Interior Secretary into State Politics

Native News Online hosted a watch party and live commentary as former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland faced Sam Bregman in a New Mexico gubernatorial debate this week. The moment is worth noting beyond the horse-race framing: Haaland's candidacy represents a direct translation of federal Indian policy experience into state executive politics, and New Mexico's tribal nations have significant stakes in who governs. ICT's Pauly Denetclaw was among the commentators, which is the kind of Native-press-first framing this brief tries to privilege.

Background · 2021 · history-com

The 1956 Indian Relocation Act Still Shapes Urban Native Wisconsin Seventy Years Later

Public Law 959, signed in August 1956, pushed thousands of reservation-rooted Native people to Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis, and other Midwestern cities under federal vocational training and job-placement programs. The relocation program ran through the 1970s and is the proximate cause of Milwaukee's urban Native population growth, the founding of the Indian Council of the Elderly, and ultimately the AIM takeover that birthed the Indian Community School. The federal Indian Boarding School Initiative under Secretary Deb Haaland (2021-) has named relocation as a kindred coercive policy in its forthcoming report; urban Indian families today carry both legacies in the same generations.