“We don’t know if we have one more year left–or five years left-of this moment we are having in Indian Country because of this administration,” Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana Chairman Marshall Pierite said to me in a telephone call just before Christmas as we discussed the upcoming new year. Being in tribal leadership, Chairman Pierite knows first-hand how the Biden-Harris administration has been one of the most favorable presidential administrations for Indian Country in history. A good starting place is the appointment of Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) as secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the first Native American to ever to serve in a secretarial role in a presidential cabinet.
In the summer of 2021, a month after the world was awakened by the discovery of 215 remains of innocent school children at the Kamloops Industrial Residential School in British Columbia, I attended a community event in my hometown, Grand Rapids, Michigan.