Rick Barnes

Her grandmother was taken from her family at eight. Today, her granddaughter is the first Native American woman elected governor in US history. In the early 20th century, an eight-year-old Native American girl named Helen was taken from her village in New Mexico by a Catholic priest. She was put on a train and sent to St. Catherine's Indian School in Santa Fe, more than 100 miles from home. For five years, she lived away from her family. Her father once travelled three days by horse and wagon to visit her. Helen's granddaughter is Deb Haaland. On November 3, 2026, Haaland was elected governor of New Mexico, becoming the first Native American woman ever elected governor of a US state. But her journey to this moment was anything but straightforward. A member of the Laguna Pueblo, Haaland raised her daughter as a single mother. She experienced homelessness, relied on food stamps and made money selling homemade salsa. She earned her law degree at 45. In 2018, she became one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress. In 2021, she became the first Native American to serve as a US Cabinet secretary, taking charge of the Department of the Interior. The historical irony was extraordinary. She now headed the very department responsible for overseeing much of the federal government's disastrous policies toward Indigenous peoples. Rather than sweeping that history under the carpet, Haaland ordered an investigation into America's Indian boarding schools. The investigation identified 417 schools and documented the deaths of at least 973 Indigenous children. The real number was almost certainly higher. She also travelled to Indigenous communities to listen to survivors describe what had happened to them. And now, at 65, she has won another election and broken another barrier. The institutions that once tried to destroy Indigenous cultures had failed to destroy them. At her election victory celebration, Haaland spoke about the road near her grandmother's childhood home. "And just off this road, my grandmother was taken away to boarding school. Yet we are still here."