Udall best for Interior, Bullock for Agriculture

It’s been 40 years since attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations.

The Editorial Board of Native Sun News Today and its Publisher Tim Giago sent the Bill Bradley Bill and the history of the illegal taking of the Black Hills to Deb Haaland, (D-NM) Congresswoman from New Mexico, a Native American woman, and we are encouraging her to study them and perhaps meet with some of the leaders of the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation, in order to discuss the idea of putting together another Bill in the fashion of the Bradley Bill, in an effort to get some of the stolen lands of the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. [Native Sun News Today]

Representative Deb Haaland is a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo but few Democrats in New Mexico want to gamble with a special election even as she is being vetted for Secretary of the Interior.

Sen. Tom Udall, although he is about to step down from his Senate seat, has expressed interest in becoming Interior secretary. Among other things, Sen. Udall is the son of highly regarded Interior Secretary Stewart Udall who served in the position from 1961 to 1969. Why are so many New Mexicans under consideration? I suspect it has something to do with Kevin Washburn who is leading President-elect Biden’s transition team for the Department of the Interior. Washburn grew up in Oklahoma and is a member of the Chickasaw Nation, a federally recognized tribe. He eventually graduated from Yale Law School and served as dean of the University of New Mexico Law School from 2009-2012. He left that job to serve as assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior from 2012 to 2016. [Grand Junction (Colorado) Daily Sentinel] 

Sen. Udall called out the Trump Organization for genocidal attacks on Native America.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has been named Chair of the Democratic Governors Association after turning down a post as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden Administration — an office former US Senator Tom Daschle from South Dakota turned down in the Obama Administration.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who lost his Senate bid after leaving the White House race, is part of discussions for a Biden administration role, perhaps as secretary of agriculture. [Helena Independent Record] 

Hey, President Biden, settle the Black Hills Claim. Move the US Forest Service into the Department of the Interior, dissolve the Black Hills National Forest and make it a national monument co-managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the tribal nations signatory to the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move. 

Rewild it and rename it Paha Sapa National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana along the Missouri River to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

Photo: the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background from Cañon Blanco, a tributary of the Pecos in Nuevo Mexico del Norte.