The history-making U.S. interior secretary shares how she is building stronger relationships with Native communities—one co-stewardship agreement at a time.
Sitting for a portrait, Secretary Haaland is the first Native American cabinet secretary and one of the first Native American women in Congress.of a chilly May afternoon in 2022, I stood with members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, part of the tribes’ ancestral homelands. Tall blades of prairie grasses rustled in the breeze.
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.
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.
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.
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