Heartfelt congratulations to Representative Haaland on her historic selection as Secretary of the Interior by President-Elect Biden –the first Native American Cabinet secretary and head of the Interior Department! Her nomination presents an opportunity to care for our Federal lands from an environmental justice perspective and to address our country’s disgraceful treatment of Indigenous Peoples.
In October 2020, the NM Healthy Soil Working Group was honored to host Congresswoman Deb Haaland on SOIL STORIES. Our guest speaks to the importance of soil health and regenerative agriculture as anchored in her own childhood and in Pueblo culture.
You can take the farmer out of the Pueblo, but it’s hard to take the Pueblo out of the farmer!
DEB HAALAND: “I was actually born in Winslow, Arizona, where my grandparents lived because of the assimilation policy of the United States: Pueblo Indians were encouraged to move off of their lands because the US sorely wanted Native Americans to just melt into mainstream America. However, you can take the farmer out of the Pueblo, but it’s hard to take the Pueblo out of the farmer! On weekends and some weeks during the summer my grandparents would go back to Laguna Pueblo and my grandfather, who had farmed since he was a young boy continued farming [there].”
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