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Now that Rep. Deb Haaland appears to be on track for confirmation as the first Native American Interior Secretary, reporters and writers are taking a deeper look at what motivates the senators who staunchly oppose her nomination.
The most dramatic moment during Haaland’s confirmation hearing came when Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming asked for an assurance that Haaland would follow the Endangered Species Act. Before Haaland could finish answering, Barrasso cut her off, shouting, “I'm talking about the law!”
That moment, along with the repeated claims that Haaland is a “radical,” sent a clear message to Haaland’s supporters, especially in the Indigenous community. Rebecca Ortega, of Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, told the Associated Press that Barrasso’s shouting was “horrible.”
“It was disrespectful,” Ortega said. “I just feel like if it would have been a white man or a white woman, he would never have yelled like that.”
In addition to the accusations of racial bias, The Guardian notes that senators most critical of Haaland also have extensive ties to fossil fuels. Barrasso, who has consistently denied climate science, has received more than $1.2 million from oil and gas companies, PACs, and employees over the course of his federal career.
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Republicans’ depiction of the first Native American ever nominated to the Cabinet as a ‘radical’ threat to a Western ‘way of life’ revealed something about the conservative id: a deep-seated fear that when the dispossessed finally attain a small measure of power, we will turn around and do to them what their governments and ancestors did to us.”
