Imagine as a child, you’re forced to leave the house you’ve grown up in to go live somewhere smaller, with worse conditions. When you occasionally return to your childhood home, you can only watch through the window as another family enjoys the house, celebrating and living their life without ever inviting you inside. Then, toward the end of your life, you’re allowed to go back — and you’re welcomed inside.
That’s how it will feel, Tom Rodgers said, for the Native people of the United States should New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland be confirmed as Secretary of the Interior.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee votes on Haaland’s confirmation Thursday morning. If she passes there, a general vote in the Senate is the last step to her becoming the first Indigenous member of a presidential cabinet.
“We are finally, finally, in the room where decisions are made about our lives, our land, our water, our children, our elders,” said Rodgers, president of the Global Indigenous Council. “We can be part of that decision-making.”
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Following Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso’s questioning of Haaland at last week’s confirmation hearing, Rodgers decided to bring a public show of support for the congresswoman to Barrasso’s state. Four digital billboards across Casper now display Haaland’s image alongside words that read: “The first people of this land, the last to receive the vote, our first Secretary of the Interior.”
“It was also for the citizenry of Wyoming,” Rodgers said. “We have such an incredibly short attention span in this country; there’s no sense of history, or acknowledgement of who we are. It’s a public debate, and people need to be made aware of that.”
The Wyoming billboards went up after several others were placed in South Dakota, West Virginia (home state of Sen. Joe Manchin, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee) and Montana (home to Sen. Steve Daines, who also sits on that committee). In Casper, drivers may spot the image on digital billboards on Interstate 25, CY Avenue and Second Street.
Barrasso, who said he could not “in good conscience vote to approve” Haaland, has been critical of her past comments on energy development. He questioned Haaland aggressively during her confirmation hearing, at one point interrupting her response to a question about imperiled species to shout, “I’m talking about the law!”
“My constituents deserve straight answers from the potential secretary about the law,” Barrasso said in a statement in regard to his questioning. “They got very few of those.”
Global Indigenous Council Executive Director Rain Bear Stands Last said the billboards were a public way to show support, rather than just sending a letter to the senators tasked with considering Haaland’s nomination. He hopes that they inspire people in Wyoming to seek the facts about the congresswoman and form their own opinions about her fit for the role.
Rodgers, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, said the billboards, and print and digital advertisements placed along with them, came in response to a representative from the White House reaching out to the council asking for their help in raising support for Haaland’s confirmation.
When he heard Rodger’s idea for the boards, Bear Stands Last said he knew just the image to use. He called the Taos photographer Joseph Kayne, asking to use one of his images of Haaland for the billboard — a wet-plate large format portrait of her, reminiscent of Edward Curtis’ distinctive photographs of native people from the beginning of the 20th century. With Kayne’s and Haaland’s blessing to use the image, the billboard was finalized just days after the idea was born.
The billboards were funded by the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council and the Global Indigenous Council, which advocates for native people around the world. Bear Stands Last said he’s worked with Haaland on other council projects, including a recent campaign to raise awareness about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in the U.S.
“This is somebody who fully understands what the federal Indian trust responsibility is, and the Department of Interior is required to fulfill and uphold that,” Bear Stands Last said. “You are actually going to have somebody who has lived the life and who intimately understands the land and the balance that is required for healthy ecosystems.”
Bear Stands Last said having an Indigenous woman leading the protection of public lands will lend a more complete, holistic understanding of how best to preserve them. He said her ties are to the land itself, not to extractive industry lobbyists or other outside powers. In her hearing, Haaland spoke about her reliance on hunting on public lands as a Pueblo woman in response to a question from Daines about her plans to protect shooting and hunting on those lands.
Rodgers and Bear Stands Last said they’ve gotten positive feedback on the billboards from Indigenous people and other members of the public. The campaign even earned a shoutout from the band Pearl Jam on Twitter. They haven’t heard anything from the senators they were targeted toward, but Bear Stands Last said they didn’t expect to.
“The goal was to have her successful confirmation,” Rodgers said. “And also to engender a certain level of pride in our Native American community. And I think we’ve done that.”