Deb Haaland

(Runtime 4:15) Editor's Note: This report is a collaboration between the Northwest News Network, Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Yakima…

The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced the launch of an oral history project that, for the first time, will document stories of generations of…

When Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a sweeping investigation into burial sites on current and former school sites that have historically served Native Americans, it was met with amazement, even among people who’ve been searching out Indigenous remains for years.

Deb Haaland, the former Democratic congresswoman, made history Monday by becoming the first indigenous interior secretary. She's promising to begin repairing a legacy of broken treaties and abuses committed by the federal government toward tribes. It's one pillar of a long and ambitious to-do list of reforms the administration is planning at the sprawling agency that is the federal government's most direct contact with the nation's 574 federally recognized — and sovereign — tribes.

The Senate voted 51-40 Monday to confirm the Democratic Congresswoman to lead the Interior Department, an agency that will play a crucial role in the Biden administration's ambitious efforts to combat climate change and conserve nature.

Congresswoman Deb Haaland would be not just the first Native American Interior Secretary, but also the first in a presidential cabinet. She faced tough — and, at times, misguided — questioning from Republican lawmakers worried about the president's climate goals.

If confirmed by the Senate, Rep. Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, would be the country's first Native American Cabinet secretary. Fittingly, she'd do so as head of the agency responsible for not only managing the nation's public lands but also honoring its treaties with the Indigenous people from whom those lands were taken.

Dozens of House Democrats have called on President-elect Joe Biden to make the New Mexico congresswoman the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history.