No Native American Women Had Ever Been Elected to Congress—Until Last Year

No Native American Women Had Ever Been Elected to Congress—Until Last Year

Meet Deb Haaland, the representative from New Mexico who is putting Native issues front and center in our nation’s capital.

John Nichols
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Congresswoman Deb Haaland has some ideas about what it means when President Trump tells newly-elected congresswomen to go back where they came from.

Haaland is, herself, a newly elected member of Congress from New Mexico, where her long history of activism includes stints as chair of the New Mexico Democratic Party and a bid for statewide office. A lawyer with great organizing skills, she has hit the ground running in the House, as a key member of the Armed Services and Natural Resources committees. She’s the co-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus, and on March 7, 2019, during a debate on voting rights, she became the first Native American woman to preside over the United States House of Representatives.

That’s right. It took 230 years before a pair of Native American women—Haaland and Sharice Davids of Kansas—were elected to the people’s house. For Haaland’s part, she’s an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo people. Archeologists tell us that the Laguna Pueblo people have lived in western New Mexico since around 6500 BC. So when right-wingers talk about sending congresswomen who disagree with the president back, Haaland reminds them that her roots run a lot deeper than theirs do.

Congresswoman Deb Haaland is our guest this week on Next Left.

Subscribe to Next Left on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

* * *

Meet Deb Haaland, Democrat for Congress, The Nation, Joshua Holland

‘They’re Gonna Rock It’: The First Day Native Woman Served on Capitol Hill, The Nation, Julian Brave NoiseCat

Go back where? Trump’s racist tweets hits panel that included Deb Haaland, Indian Country Today

How to Indigenize the Green New Deal and environmental justice, High Country News, Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Trump Wants Immigrants to ‘Go Back.’ Native Americans Don’t. New York Times, Deb Haaland

It’s Been 70 years since court ruled Native Americans could vote in New Mexico, Santa Fe New Mexican, Andrew Oxford

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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

John Nichols John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.


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