Date: Monday, December 9, 2024
Contact: Interior_Press@ios.doi.gov

WASHINGTON — Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland today delivered opening remarks during the Biden-Harris administration’s fourth White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior. Secretary Haaland highlighted the enduring progress that has been accomplished on behalf of and in partnership with Indigenous Peoples, from transformational investments in Indian Country made possible by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to historic progress to empower Tribal sovereignty, self-determination and prosperity.   

The White House Tribal Nations Summit, re-initiated by President Biden in 2021, provides an opportunity for the Administration and Tribal leaders from the 574 federally recognized Tribes to discuss ways the federal government can invest in and strengthen nation-to-nation relationships as well as ensure that progress in Indian Country endures for years to come.   

Speeches and panel discussions will be ongoing throughout today. A livestream of the day’s events can be viewed at the Interior Department’s YouTube page. 

Remarks as prepared for delivery are below:    

Greetings Tribal leaders, elders, community members, friends, and colleagues – and happy White House Tribal Nations Summit! 

Thank you so much to the Native American Women Warriors Color Guard for the beautiful presentation of colors. Thank you to the Warpaint Drummers out of North Carolina for the songs and for guiding us through this day. And thank you for that opening prayer, David. I’m so honored to have each of you with us for today’s event.   

Early on in my tenure as secretary – when this building was unfamiliar and the road ahead packed full – I knew one thing for sure: that while my role as secretary was new, my intentions for Indian Country were not.   

I knew that it was my job – our job – to achieve enduring progress for our people with the time we were given. 

January marks the 50th anniversary of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act – a seminal law that gave Tribes the right to administer and oversee the implementation of their own federal programs.  

50 years of asserting that Tribes have the right to make decisions about the well-being of our own people. It gave us the power to chart much of our own course and to decide how our people could best thrive after generations of relocation, termination, boarding schools, underfunding, and neglect.   

That Act was written into our country’s lawbooks only after the federal government was swayed to action by gamechangers whose indisputable and unflinching activism spoke, clear and loud and unified: We are still here. 

Well, my friends and family – a half-century later, we are still here, charting our own course. And together, with the Biden-Harris administration, we have made extraordinary accomplishments for Indian Country – progress that would make our trailblazing ancestors proud.   

Transitions are disruptive, regardless of how we might feel about one leader or another. That’s true on Tribal councils, and it’s true in Washington. We don’t know what the future may hold, but what I want to focus on today is the enduring progress we have made – progress that, no matter what, cannot be taken away, as long as we continue to press our voice and our action forward.  

We’re going to talk a lot today about the damage caused by federal Indian boarding school policies, and – in spite of the trauma this brings up for so many of us in this room – I wouldn’t have it any other way.   

I launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in my first few months in office. I didn’t know then where it would lead us, but I knew that its purpose was long overdue.   

Over the past three years, this Initiative has shed light on this horrific era of our nation’s history, but it also led to our two-part investigative report, which found that the federal government took deliberate and strategic actions through boarding school policies to isolate children from their families and steal from them the languages, cultures, and traditions that are foundational to Native people.   

It created The Road to Healing, a 12-community journey for Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland, for our dedicated colleagues, and for me. Our visits to Indigenous communities gave survivors and descendants opportunities to share their boarding school experiences and the aftermath those schools left behind.  

It also led to the creation of our oral history project. So many of you spoke bravely and forthright during The Road to Healing about the horrors you endured, or the trauma that was passed down over generations. Those stories must continue to be told.  

That’s why, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Mellon Foundation, we engaged the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to help create an oral collection of first-person narratives from boarding school survivors.  

Today, I am so proud to announce new agreements between the Department, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and the U.S. Library of Congress that will preserve these survivor stories and experiences and share them through far-reaching resources, such as online, and both traveling and long-term exhibitions.  

That is enduring progress.  

And because of this work, and because of us, President Biden formally apologized for this brutality. He stood on Tribal land, he listened to our songs, and he honored us with his words.    

As we heal from our past, we have worked to change the way the federal government engages with Indian Tribes. That includes enhanced involvement in land management decisions.   

Over the past four years, our Administration has made co-stewardship of our lands and waters a top priority. While the concept is not new, the Biden-Harris administration is the first to make it a strategic priority for the health of our ecosystems and the durability of Tribal sovereignty.   

Today, our Department is publishing our third Tribal co-stewardship annual report, which outlines the details of 69 new agreements from this year alone.   

You’ll hear me talk more about this in our afternoon panel, but here’s the number I want to underscore. Between the Interior, Agriculture and Commerce Departments, our Administration has entered into 400 co-stewardship agreements with Tribes that span across our entire country.  

Since time immemorial, ancestral homelands have been central to the social, cultural, spiritual, mental and physical wellbeing of Indigenous peoples.   

Through this unprecedented number of co-stewardship agreements, the Biden-Harris administration demonstrates our commitment to acknowledge and empower Tribes as partners in the management of our nation’s lands and waters. These agreements have become foundational to our work.  

Add to that, the Tribally-led conservation efforts that we followed through on and that President Biden supported, like Avi Kwa Ame and Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monuments.  

That is enduring progress.  

We’ve also made quick work of delivering historic funding from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to projects that support Tribes and their access to critical resources. One area that I am deeply proud of is our effort to fulfill settlements of Indian water rights claims, long-promised water resources to Tribes that depend on them for resilience and long-term planning.  

For those of you who have engaged in these settlement negotiations, you know they are long overdue. But even after the arduous process of negotiation, many Tribes have waited several more years to find financial resolution.

Thanks to President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, our Department was tasked with implementing an historic 2.5 billion dollars through the Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund.  
This work has never been more important, and today I am excited to announce a nearly 65-million-dollar investment that will help fund nine different settlements. This marks our final Indian water rights settlement allocation – meaning our team has exhausted every last dollar provided to us from the Law.  

That is enduring progress.  

Our expansive investments in Indian Country – to the tune of 45 billion dollars – will undeniably build a better future that our kids and grandkids will inherit.  

But to build a better future for Indigenous peoples, we can’t only rely on the federal government doing its job. We need to expand access to capital for Tribes to invest in their people, and on their terms.  

We have talked in previous summits about access to capital. With tools like the Buy Indian Act, our Department has had an outsized impact on improving the funding that Tribes and Native business leaders receive. This past year alone, Interior awarded over 1.4 billion in contracts to Indian-owned and controlled businesses – up from just 317 million in Fiscal Year 2019.   

Now, it’s time to raise the bar even higher.  

In partnership with Native Americans in Philanthropy and our colleagues at the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, the Small Business Administration, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, today we applaud the launch of the Tribal Community Vision Partnership.   

Over the next seven years, the Vision Partnership will raise and deploy 1.2 billion dollars in impact for Tribal communities – a historic effort that will support priorities like community development, new clean energy opportunities, and support for Native small businesses. 

Now more than ever, these types of partnerships and allyship will be needed. By working together with partners in the philanthropic and private sector, I know we can support the advancements that have been made over the last four years to support Tribes' self-determination and their right to govern and grow on their own terms.   

That is enduring progress.  

If you take nothing else from my remarks today, let me say again: the Biden-Harris administration has ushered in a level of enduring progress that no one can take away.   

This is my last year to address this audience as Secretary of the Interior, and I want you to know that I leave here inspired. I leave empowered by all that we have accomplished together.   

When I was a young kid – moving from city to city and coast to coast with my family for my dad’s military career – our people were demanding something simple: a seat at the table; a voice in the decisions that affected us; our self-determination.  

And because our people spoke up, stayed engaged, and remained unwilling to accept the status quo, we are here and finishing up a monumental Administration where Indian Tribes had a true seat at the table.   

Everything that we accomplished was real and tangible. A transition was inevitable and even though some of the future seems uncertain at this point – one thing is certain: we’re not going anywhere!  

But it’s on each of us to stay here, to stay engaged, to refuse to let anyone threaten the enduring progress we have worked so hard to accomplish.  

Like our ancestors who made previously unimaginable feats possible, we must never back down.   

So – to my friends and family from far and wide here today and online – thank you for joining in what has been the most incredible journey of my life. Indian Country is better because of each of you.   

Dawaa’e – Thank you all so much for welcoming me here today. 

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