Biden and Tribal Leaders Celebrate Four Years of Accomplishments on Behalf of Native Americans

At White House Tribal Nations Summit, the president and the first Native American cabinet secretary touted their successes for tribes while Indigenous leaders vowed to keep fighting for their peoples.

Tribal leaders and representatives visiting the nation’s capital heard Monday from President Joe Biden how his administration has worked with Indian Country to strengthen Native American communities and further relations between federal agencies and tribal nations.

“From day one, my administration, we worked to include Indigenous voices in everything we do,” Biden said on Monday during the final White House Tribal Nations Summit held at the Department of the Interior headquarters.

This summit first became a yearly event under President Barack Obama but stopped under President Donald Trump. It resumed under Biden with the same goal of bringing together federal officials and members from the 574 federally recognized tribes.

The majority of the remarks recapped the Biden administration’s work with Indian Country. However, tribal leaders also heard how they need to remain vocal and retain a seat at the table when Trump returns to the Oval Office in January.

“Our job as leaders is to pave the path for the next seven generations,” said Stephanie Bryan, chairwoman of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

Dianna Sue WhiteDove Uqualla, who is Havasupai, agreed that tribes should not stop advocating for themselves when Trump returns to the presidency.

“We have a seat at the table,” Uqualla said. “We shouldn’t vacate that position.”

She added that the Havasupai will continue to fight uranium mining close to Red Butte, an area sacred to them near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

Red Butte is part of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni—Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which Biden established in August 2022 under the Antiquities Act.

Uranium mining is allowed there because the claim existed before the monument’s creation.

Biden is not the first president whose use of the Antiquities Act to establish national monuments and courting of tribal input has led to controversy. Obama used the act in December 2016 to designate Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, drawing praise from area tribes that were involved in the monument’s creation and oversight, but angering many other state residents and leaders. Trump shrunk the size of Bears Ears in December 2017, but Biden restored the monument’s original boundaries with added acreage.

Uqualla did not want to speculate about the future of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni under the incoming Trump administration.

“For me, I just keep fighting,” she said.

Before Biden spoke to tribal leaders, he received a wool blanket from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland. Haaland noted that the blanket was produced by Eighth Generation, a brand owned by the Snoqualmie Tribe in Washington state.

Tribal members present blankets to individuals in recognition of the person’s accomplishments and deeds.

“I’m proud to have reestablished the White House Council on Native American Affairs, taking historic steps to improve tribal consultation,” Biden said inside the auditorium filled with leaders and representatives from federally recognized tribes.

Federal funding has helped tribes deal with health care, commerce, climate change and access to clean drinking water as well as preserving ancestral lands, Biden noted.

This year, the administration created the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, approximately 4,500 square miles off the central coast of California that make up the first protected ocean area proposed by Indigenous communities to safeguard diverse aquatic ecosystems and sacred sites.

Biden noted that these efforts fall under his commitment to conserve and restore 30 percent of U.S. land and waters by 2030.

“We’re doing all this with respect to the stewardship practices that tribes developed over the centuries, known as Indigenous knowledge,” the president said. “I believe tribes have a say in how these sacred lands are managed.”

Tribes are feeling the brunt of climate change with droughts, floods and heat waves that affect cultural resources tribes use to sustain traditional lifeways.

This is why it was important to include funding under the Inflation Reduction Act to assist tribes in addressing climate change, administration officials said repeatedly during the daylong gathering.

While at the summit, Biden announced the establishment of the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. About 7,800 children from more than 140 tribes were sent to the school, which violently forced them to abandon their cultures and languages.

Carlisle was one of 408 schools the federal government operated in 37 states to assimilate Native children—an effort that ran from 1819 to 1969. Biden apologized in October for the federal government’s implementation of the boarding school system.

The tribal nations summit could also be viewed as a sendoff to Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, a tribal community in New Mexico. As the outgoing Interior secretary, she opened the tribal nations summit by recapping the administration’s work with tribes.

“Over the past four years, our administration has made co-stewardship of our lands and waters a top priority,” Haaland said. “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.”

This includes 69 new co-stewardship agreements the administration made with tribes this year, adding to the 400 agreements that were implemented since Biden took office nearly four years ago.

“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,” Haaland said.

She also highlighted the administration’s support of tribal access to critical resources, including with the settlement of water rights claims.

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

Through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Interior Department created the Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund, a $2.5 billion pool of money to help tribes access and develop water resources.

The Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe are waiting to settle water rights claims through bills before Congress.

“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 on self-determination,” Haaland said. “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.”

Lee Juan Tyler, chairman of the Fort Hall Business Council, the governing body of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, shook hands with Biden.

“He seen my warbonnet, that’s how I got his attention,” Tyler said.

With a new administration starting next month, Tyler hopes the tribal nations summit persists.

“Like they said, it really helped us out in Indian Country,” he said. “There’s more that needs to be done for our people—Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.”

Among environmental issues, there are Superfund sites on the tribes’ lands and activities like phosphate mining, which is leaving massive and growing piles of waste rock that threaten cultural resources, he explained.

“We have so many battles going on,” Tyler said.

Cover photo: Indigenous federal employees perform a traditional dance before President Joe Biden's visit to the White House Tribal Nations Summit on Dec. 9 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Noel Lyn Smith/Inside Climate News