The Tamesis
The gymnasium at Eva B. Stockley Elementary School in Shiprock, N.M., where today’s meeting of the Northern Navajo Agency Board of Trustees will be held, has compass points marked on all four walls. That makes it easy to spot Deb Haaland arriving from the east on this clear, blue-sky morning. She was accompanied by three gubernatorial campaign staffers and plates of pastries — gifts that added to a long table of food. Attendees strolling around the gym recognized President Biden’s former interior secretary, though she tended not to make any assumptions. “Hi,” she said brightly and forcefully. “I’m Deb Haaland.”
She chatted, posed for photos, and spoke to health workers at a uranium testing stand—about a quarter of Navajo women in a federally funded study had high levels of uranium in their bodies, the result of hundreds of abandoned Cold War-era uranium mines on their land. In 2019, Haaland pushed to expand radiation compensation as a New Mexico congresswoman. Now, at 65, she is seeking a bigger office — governor — where her opponent in the Democratic primary, Sam Bregman, expressed his opposition, causing tension in the gym. He was a tall man with a beard, a blazer, a cowboy hat and boots. Haaland wore jeans and a paisley shirt, a tan blazer and silver earrings decorated with cloud and rain symbols. She started the meeting by grabbing a banana, sitting down with an old friend whose relatives lived nearby, and insisting on sticking to the allotted five minutes. “They take their time very seriously,” she said.
It’s day two of a long four-day campaign in which, all told, Haaland will drive about 1,000 miles on this swing, through the Northeastern mountains of Georgia O’Keeffe’s geological dreamscape; past Santa Fe, where the Sangre de Cristo foothills are dotted with thermal baths; along 25 South on the Interstate, along the Salt Flats, where the first atomic weapons were detonated and where new military devices continue to be tested today. She’ll hear from farmers worried about water and energy companies preparing to drill, and she’ll visit the border with Mexico — which in 2026 will be our most contentious location.
New Mexico is a particularly American state, in the midst of struggles over housing and public safety, beset by questions about wealth and taxes and the extent to which fossil fuels will push us forward or overheat our future. This is also the place to reflect on America’s 250th anniversary. The American Revolution of 1776 was not the first successful rebellion on the continent. This was the Pueblo Rebellion, which broke out here in 1680 when Spanish settlers were driven out by Haaland’s ancestors. Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo, will become the first Native American woman elected governor in the country, becoming chief executive of a territory that generations before her have managed and maintained.
Haaland told me she started noticing this when she was elected to Congress in 2018. “I ran in a six-person primary,” she recalled, “and some of my opponents would say, ‘I’m a 13th generation New Mexican,’ or ‘I’m a 17th generation New Mexican.'” I thought, I wonder what generation I am? So I googled “generation” and I bred because my ancestors came to the Rio Grande Valley in the late 1200s. In my next speech, I said, “I’m Deb Haaland, I’m a 35th generation New Mexican.” Everyone started laughing. “
