Deb Haaland: A new era for tribal nations and the U.S. government

Under the sun of a chilly May afternoon in 2022, I stood with members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, part of the tribes’ ancestral homelands. Tall blades of prairie grasses rustled in the breeze. A nearby sign, inscribed with greetings in Seliš—X̣est Sx̣lx̣alt—and Ksanka—Ki’su’k kyukyit—welcomed visitors to the Bison Range. That day was a day for celebration.

Several tribal members lifted their heads in unison and sang, their voices filling the air in full-throated swells and falls. Standing next to me, then CSKT chairman Tom McDonald listened. Traditionally, he’d explained, his ancestors summoned the bison in song before a hunt—a gesture of respect. I imagined their gratitude for Creator’s gift, the living beings that for millennia provided much of what the people needed: food, clothing, shelter, tools, religious items, and a sense of belonging to their land.

Of all the losses this continent has suffered, the destruction of the Great Plains is among the starkest. When the federal government began its conquest of Indigenous peoples, it surmised that the “Indian problem”—wherein Native communities lived and thrived on lands sought by colonial settlers and the federal government—could be solved by destroying Native food sources and livelihoods. And so, men with guns killed tens of millions of bison. This set off a chain reaction of ecosystem degradation that, now intertwined with the present-day climate crisis, spelled catastrophe for ancestral homelands and the ecosystems we all depend on. For the CSKT, this loss was amplified by the federal government’s unilateral withdrawal of nearly 19,000 acres at the very heart of the Flathead Reservation in 1908.

Thankfully, our story doesn’t end there, because bison are resilient, Indigenous peoples are still here, and Indigenous innovation is enduring. 

(What does the future look like in Indigenous hands?)

The CSKT can rightfully take credit for helping save the bison from extinction: The herd that grazed those hills on the day of my visit descended from the Pablo-Allard herd, one that tribal members began in response to the near-total destruction of the species during the 19th century. Over the decades following the 1908 land withdrawal, the CSKT persisted with a simple request to the federal government: Return the land, and bring the bison home. After an act of Congress in 2020 cleared a path to reverse this injustice, the Department of the Interior, the federal agency I now lead, announced the transfer of the land into the tribes’ ownership in June 2021.

The return of the Bison Range to the CSKT is one of more than 200 co-stewardship agreements with tribes that the Biden-Harris administration has entered into since President Joe Biden stepped into office. Collaborative land management agreements between tribes and the federal government have emerged in recent decades to varying degrees of success. But the Biden-Harris administration is leveraging co-stewardship—shared management and decision-making over certain lands and waters—as a uniquely intentional strategy to preserve ancestral homelands and fulfill our trust and treaty responsibilities to tribes.

I am grateful to serve in an administration that understands our country’s history and seeks to remedy our past mistakes by elevating the role of tribes in the management of our public lands, waters, and wildlife. With two billion dollars from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are advancing landscape-level conservation in partnership with the communities who care for and depend on these places every day. 

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Successful co-stewardship ensures that Indigenous knowledge—a deep understanding of the land and wildlife gained over millennia—is put to use as one of the most essential strategies to tackle the climate crisis. Implementing this knowledge can take many forms, from using traditional practices for wildfire management and ecosystem restoration to directing habitat and wildlife conservation. Above all else, this work must keep tribal voices and the expertise they bring front and center.

Last October, some 2,600 miles northwest of the Bison Range, I saw this administration’s commitment to co-stewardship in action yet again while visiting Alaska Native communities. On the gravel banks of the Kenai River, I watched with tears in my eyes as adult salmon, having laid their eggs, washed ashore in decay, their journeys to the sea and back again complete. That day, the smell of death gripped the air, but so too did the feeling of rebirth. What I had witnessed was an increasingly rare act of nature: Across Alaska, fewer and fewer salmon ever make it upriver to spawn.

Each time I’ve had the honor to visit with Alaska Native communities as secretary, I have felt a sense of urgency as the people have described historic salmon crashes, which threaten both lifeways and the animal relatives that are foundational to their cultures. Climate change, among other human-made threats like habitat loss and deteriorating infrastructure, jeopardizes the salmon and Alaska Native peoples’ very existence.  

After many meetings with department staff and Alaska Native community members, we developed the Gravel to Gravel Keystone Initiative—one of several grounded by our Restoration and Resilience Framework, launched last year. The initiative will advance projects co-designed and implemented alongside tribes, including the restoration of degraded streams, expansion of habitat assessments, and replenishment of native vegetation throughout Alaska’s Yukon, Kuskokwim, and Norton Sound region—nearly 420,000 square miles. 

To progress as a nation, we must heal our wounds with the love and guidance of those who were wounded. Touring the Bison Range that day, I observed these powerful animals up close, their winter coats sloughing off thick patches of knotted fur and giving way to smooth, mottled dark skin. As the bison claimed their rightful place on the landscape, I prayed and thanked the ancestors who had protected them when times were the hardest. 

At the turn of the 20th century, settlers, pioneers, and the federal government failed to recognize what Indigenous peoples have always known: that our understanding of and devotion to the land remains constant. Indigenous knowledge is Indigenous innovation, and the ancestors were the first innovators. If we are to save ourselves, we must empower this knowledge with everything we have.