Chronic. For Amerindians, hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, the year 2020 ends with two encouraging news. On December 18, the Navajo Nation got rid of the coal-fired power plant that was disfiguring the Colorado highlands, on the border between Utah and Arizona.
The Navajo Generating Station was one of the largest in the West. It had been closed for a year but Donald Trump had tried to revive it. Insulting the tribe, it powered air conditioners in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, while thousands of Navajo homes lack electricity. At 8:30 am, the three chimneys, 236 m high, collapsed under the cheers – and some heartache among the former employees.
Responsibility for federal lands
The other historic event is the appointment of New Mexico representative Deb Haaland to Joe Biden’s cabinet. A first: never had an Amerindian, let alone a woman, acceded to a ministerial function in Washinhton. And not just any portfolio: that of the interior, the equivalent of land use planning and management of natural resources.
If she is dubbed by the Senate – which is not in doubt despite the probable lobbying of the fossil industries – Deb Haaland will be responsible for federal lands (almost a fifth of the country’s surface area), national parks, relations with Indian reservations, and the issuance of the coveted permits to mine the subsoil: minerals, oil and natural gas. A strategic position for the American West.
Joe Biden was under heavy pressure on social media. The Amerindians had never participated so much in the elections: they expected a gesture (60,000 Navajo voted in 2020, against 42,500 in 2016. The Democrat won by less than 11,000 votes in Arizona).
Deb Haaland, 60, is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe of New Mexico, “The 35e generation ” in the Rio Grande valley, she likes to say. A determined woman, single mother, who beat alcoholism and ran the marathon. In 2018, she was one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress. She organized hearings there on the disappearance of indigenous women abducted or killed in general indifference, and in particular of the FBI, the federal police.
Progressive – she sided with Elizabeth Warren during the Democratic primaries – she took a stand for the “green new deal”. She will be responsible for implementing the program of Joe Biden, who has promised to suspend new drilling on federal lands.
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