President Joe Biden signed an executive order targeting what the White House described as an “epidemic” of violence against Native Americas at this year’s Tribal Nations Summit, the first hosted by the White House since former President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
Biden announced five new initiatives Monday to mark Native American Heritage Month. The measures include actions aimed at protecting tribal treaty rights, increasing tribal participation in federal lands management, incorporating tribal ecological knowledge into the federal government’s scientific approach, and a 20-year oil and gas leasing ban near New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, as well as an executive order addressing violence against Native Americans.
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“We have to continue to stand up for the dignity and the sovereignty of tribal nations,” Biden said Monday as he signed the “long overdue” executive order. “We’re going to make some substantial changes in Indian country.”
There was a slight delay in signing the executive order as the president waited for first lady Jill Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to join him onstage in the White House’s purpose-built studio.
“Where is everybody?” the president asked.
The president also answered a shouted question regarding his sprawling, roughly $2 trillion climate and social welfare spending framework. He told reporters he had been “confident” it would eventually pass “since the day I stepped in office.”
Jill Biden followed her husband’s remarks at the two-day summit, touting federal efforts to promote Native American languages. She said her husband’s government had invested millions of dollars in education programs to make sure they are not “forgotten.”
“The ability to speak our own truth in our own words is power,” the first lady added. “We have an obligation to heal the wounds of our past and pave a new path for Native communities, and the president and his team are doing just that.”
Haaland spoke before the first couple. Haaland, the first Native American woman to lead the Interior Department, reminded the summit the White House had been constructed on Anacostan and the Piscataway homelands.
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“Our voices have been given a new platform, and I am just one of those who have taken this historic opportunity to move past the days of inaction and apathy to take Native issues to the forefront of policy discussions, and to ensure tribal consultation is the accepted way of doing business in Indian country,” she said.
