Featured photo from left: Rep. Debra Haaland, of New Mexico’s First Congressional District, and Rep. Pete Stauber, of Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District.
Northeast Minnesota tribes are criticizing Minnesota’s Eighth District Representative Pete Stauber for a letter he wrote urging his colleagues to block Representative Debra Haaland’s nomination as the incoming Interior secretary.
The Department of the Interior encompasses the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Haaland is the first American Indian nominated to any Cabinet position.
Stauber wrote that Haaland “is a direct threat to working men and women and rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources,” citing Haaland’s support for the Green New Deal and opposition oil and gas drilling on public lands.
The chairs of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and four other tribes within Stauber’s district, in a letter reviewed by NBC News, wrote that Stauber’s “opposition to the first and only American Indian ever nominated to a Cabinet position is likely to reverberate across Indian country.”
