President Biden, with Secretary of the Interior’s Deb Haaland at his side, has been, in the words of Levi Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation), the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online, the “best American President” for Native America and Native Americans.
With the recent election, we will lose two strong Native voices in national government: Deb Haaland at Interior; and U.S. Treasurer, Chief Marilynn “Lynn” Malerba. She is the first Native American to hold the position, and the lifetime chief of The Mohegan Tribe in Connecticut. In her two-year tenure, Malerba created Treasury’s first Office of Tribal and Native Affairs. “Under her leadership, the office helped administer $30 billion in economic recovery funds, including $20 billion for tribes through the American Rescue Plan — the largest single investment in tribal nations in U.S. history.” (Native News Online)
We will likely also lose Haaland’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Bryan Newland, and our close neighbors and friends, Chuck Sams, from the Umatilla Reservation, Chief of National Parks, and Jaime Pinkham, of the Nez Perce Reservation at Lapwai, who has overseen the Army Corps of Engineers at the Defense Department under Biden. All of the above positions are Presidential appointments, and Donald Trump has every right to put his own picks in these positions.
We can expect Trump appointees to be more conservative, more in line with oil, gas, nuclear, and high tech interests than with Indians advocating for clean water, salmon, and the sustainable management of natural resources. Nevertheless, my hope is that the sprinkling of Natives across government departments, and especially in Interior, will not go away, and the work started by these important leaders will not end.
***
I’m reminded of my first days in Wallowa County over 50 years ago. I worked at the Extension Service, and my boss, Chuck Gavin, was a crusty old cattle and sheep ranch-raised son of Wyoming. Chuck was raised in Mormon country, and considered himself a Jack Mormon. On my first day on the job, his good friend, the local Forest Service Ranger and a member of the Ladder Day Saints, picked us up in the Forest Service pickup and toured us around the county. We visited farms, ranches, logging shows and old CCC-built water troughs and ranger cabins—it was a fine introduction to what is still my home country.
Sometime later Chuck told me that his friend was being transferred to Utah. He said the man’s son was getting a bit rambunctious, on the edge of trouble, so he put out the word and the higher ups in the Forest Service had arranged a position swap with a ranger from Utah. They were going to take that errant son back to the “holy land” and set him straight.
Chuck, who always had stories and answers, then told me that Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture all through the 1950s had been Ezra Taft Benson. And that Benson was a farmer who was knowledgeable about agriculture, and also happened to be the 13th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Chuck told the story matter of fact, and said that there had been some good Mormon Extension Agents and Forest Service workers and some not so good in his 25 or 30 years in Oregon. And sure enough, in my days in the Extension Service—and in Wallowa County—this sprinkling of Mormon employees in the government was part of the landscape.
So, I don’t think that Trump and his ideas and idea men—and women—will cleanse the government of Native Americans. There are young Natives brought into the government by the opportunities and programs created by Biden, Haaland, Malerba, Sams, Pinkham and others. And there will be Native Americans with special skills—a Navajo astrophysicist works on the Mars program at NASA—working in diverse departments.
I have an old high school buddy who is a Mormon elder, and at 82 they keep bringing him back into the Defense Department to monitor construction at missile bases. I think the Indians, who were here long before the rest of us, will be working in government, watching over water and land, long after Biden and Trump and the rest of us now walking here are gone.
# # #
photo: U.S. Treasurer, Chief Marilynn “Lynn” Malerba (Mohegan)