THE NO-BRAINER NOMINATION

WELCOME AGAIN TO ATTAN AKAMIK (Our Fertile Country)

Continue to Walk in Beauty!

Figure 1: Representative Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) welcoming DC's local indigenous Auld family to the US Capitol where Kiros' ancestral relative, Wahunsenachaw (Powhatan II) caucused during his 16th century lifetime.

L: Kiros Auld (Pamunkey/Tauxenent) represented the Indigenous Washingtonian presence of a Powhatan Paramountcy descendant to his ancestral Attan Akamik,(Our Fertile Country) and its city of Washington, DC, the Land Acknowledged “Place of the Caucus.” This was the location next to the Tiber Creek on Capitol Hill which was liked on caucus visits with surrounding aboriginal nations by the 16th to 17th century Wahunsenachaw (or Powhatan II), the Pamunkey Algonquian leader on whose Paramountcy's territory the US Capital was built. Kiros maternal descent is from the tribe of Wahunsenachaw and his daughter, Pocahontas whose portrait adorns the Capitol Rotunda. Kiros who was born in and attended schooling through to Howard University's School of Law in the Nation's Capital, hails from the only two surviving of the three original District of Columbia and its Metro Area's Algonquian tribes, the Pamunkey and Tauxenent/Dogue. These local nations and its many living descendants are historically documented as living within the original Capital City’s boundary stones which came from ancient ancestral quarries which his 19th century DC Area relatives later mined. The third tribe of Naoctchtank who had a beaver pelt trading town next to the Anacostia River in Southeast DC became extinct after around 1668 when its last remnant was recorded as moving North to Ohio from a temporary stay on the Tauxenent's Roosevelt Island. The gap left by Southeast DC's extinct, distinctly named Algonquian Naoctchtank tribe is recently being questionably claimed by three new state recognized Iroquoian identified Maryland tribes whose names were never located within the Capital City.

Since the Presidential elections, much has been written in our leading national media outlets about Senator Kamala Harris. She has been introduced as a groundbreaking biracial woman of color’s ascendancy to the role of Vice President of the United States. On the other hand, our nation institutionalzed amnesia towards Indigenous Americans is about to change. Not surprisingly, almost nothing is yet popularly known about this country’s other first, a female descendant of indigenous custodians of Turtle Island (or the North American continent).

Debra Anne Haaland is that Native which our city’s indigenous Powhatan Museum will here honor. She is a lawyer, Congresswoman from the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico with vast life experiences and an inherited ancient legacy concerning the role which she is about to play as the Secretary of the Interior.

(Her live video congratulating President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris https://twitter.com/i/status/1351992670219087874)

However, not surprisingly, as is ever true about national exclusion of Indigenous people from our history, there has been less press coverage about this other American first. The no-brainer elevation to the Presidental Cabinet is of a Native American descended from custodians of our Mother Earth, America’s indigenous Amerindians.

Figure 2: Politically and socially astute Secretary nominated Debra Anne Haaland, Esq. (Laguna Pueblo) with the seal of the US Department of the Interior whose design, for the first time reflects the aspirations of that Federal agency.

Honoring an Esteemed Native Leader

Optics is important and for the first time in our history there is no more appropriate form of American symbolism as the distinctly Native American images above.

This Presidential season has probably provided American history with the most ground-breaking firsts in inclusively. It is right up there with the first female Vice President who is the also a uniquely tri-racial person of Asian Indian and Afro-Euro Jamaican ancestry in that leadership office. Added to the Presidential Cabinet makeup is Representative Debra Anne Haaland, Esq (Laguna Pueblo) a Native American woman. Also included in the lineup is young Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member. But, in our opinion the most groundbreaking decision is the inclusion of a Native American woman as the Secretary of the Interior. She is an indigenous New Mexican who is tribally enrolled in the historic Laguna Pueblo Nation, a people whose ancient legacy includes the second indigenous North American contact by the arriving 15th century Spanish. To them, her homeland was a second mystical set of Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. The other was the "Fountain of Eternal Youth" in Bimini or La Florida.

Deb Haaland has known homelessness and poverty while struggling to attain her life's goals. Her life’s experiences have been one of overcoming the struggle of being a single mom while balancing the raising of an extremely talented daughter, and starting her first degree from the University of New Mexico, culminating with a law degree while balancing motherhood. Learning about her life’s expiries is inspirational since she has had a passion for helping people from a place of her own understanding of society’s historic neglect of its Native Americans whose people are ironically keepers of the land. This history places her in the right position as a caretaker of our planet since, as in Native traditions, how we treat our mother, the Earth is linked to our own survival as a specie. With this time where sensitivity to Mother Earth’s health is at a crucial juncture of a planetary climate change, Deb Halland’s role in America’s environmental path is no less prophetic as it is fitting of her heritage.

We in Washington, DC know too well of the dismissive agenda of not honoring the city’s surviving indigenous Pamunkey and Tauxenent people of the historic Powhatan Paramountcy and the current attempts by outsiders to resurrect a dead tribe in threir own name. So, it is therefore easy for us at the Powhatan Museum of Washington, DC to welcome the Honorable Deb Haaland to our ancestral homeland of Attan Akamik, to share in the founding history of Our Fertile Country as an honored guest from the sacred West. Although she came as a Congresswoman we tribute her in her new caretaker role as our city’s highest ranking Native American. Her placement will directly impact on the lives and fortunes of living American Indians. As with America’s significant world position of planetary influence, she too, as it is with the Vice President Harris, provide a role model for all women and girls worldwide, whether Native or non-Native. Too often the Eurocentric tradition is to only honor European men and dead Indians. President Biden has broken yet again another racist mold.

Rising From a Rich History

What makes Representative Haaland a perfect fit for her cabinet role as Secretary of the Interior is her unique history. Her's is not much different from Kamala Harris’ legacy who was born from the other ancient Asiatic civilization of the Hindus. Deb Haaland hails from another of the planet’s noteworthy ancient cultures with thousands of years honed in uniquely accomplished Amerindian hemisphere replete with multi-storied stone and adobe apartnents, large uniquely organized pyramid cities and temple topped mound builders, accomplished agronomists, mathematicians, scientists and sky-mapping astronomers. Both people are the confident beneficiaries of ancient Asiatic cultures, one the daughter of a “true” Indian immigrant and the other an Indigenous descendant of this soil. These Eurocentric termed “prehistoric” legacies are especially pertinent to the American Experiment. As Secretary Haaland, her role will be seen as a Native American “keeper of the land” with a connection to thousands of years in this hemisphere’s human development. Here, the optics of her role of land husbandry is more profound when one scratches her cultural surface.

We are the sum total of our history on this planet. And as we see, Deb Haaland is the byproduct of a uniquely rich Amerindian legacy, the things that often shapes one’s world view. Yes, she is a contemporary Native woman steeped in the legacy of early Spanish survival and the imported laws of this land. So, let’s examine her Native roots.

Her ancestral legacy predates her people’s encounter with the gold-seeking Spanish Empire’s newly acquired Aztec Empire of Central Mexico in the 16th century. This was the time of the Zuni of Hawikuh, and her pueblo neighbor’s 1539 encounter with Mustafa Azemmouri. Called Estavanico (Little Stephen) he was a 1600 born multilingual enslaved Black (Moorish) adventurer/ambassador cooperatively seeking the mythological Las Siete Ciudades de Cibola (the seductive Seven Cities of Gold). This Mexican territory was later acquired in 1853 by equally encroaching English-American expansion.

Deb Haaland’s mother was an ethnic Laguna Pueblo. Her Norwegian American father was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who is appropriately buried with full honors across the Potomac River’s in our land acknowledged Powhatan Paramountcy Territory located Arlington National Cemetery. However, the original name of Deb Haaland’s Pueblo people is Kawaik in their language. “Pueblo” means “Town or vilage” and “Laguna” (”Lake”) in the imported Spanish tongue, still used along with their indigenous Kres language group which has continued to be spoken. Their ethnic designation, “Pueblo” was derived from the multi-story type of indigenous structural town-like style of architectural settlements made of sandstone and adobe from which their villages were built. Their buildings, gleaming in the sunlight, were initially mistakenly believed by Estavanico as evidence of the existence of the mythical gold rich shining City of Cibola, and conveyed this information back to Mexico. This myth which spurred the Spanish adventurer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, originated from an escaping Catholic monastery’s gold vestments and a raiding Islamic encounter event in Europe. Then, the Americas and Deb Haaland’s ancestral area were considered the location of some European tales. The 1540 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado scouting encounter ahead of that infamous Spanish expedition undiplomatically spearheaded by Estavanico, ended tragically as the scout was killed for insisting on extracting Zuni women from his hosts.

Unfortunately, Americans are rarely taught the histories of past and living Native Americans and their leaders. From an area known for its uranium, undisputed ceramic beauty, turquoise and silver jewelry, and the fabled land of the Seven Cities of Gold to DC’s Shining City on the Hill, let us hope that Secretary Haaland’s welcomed role model presence encourages us all to discover more about our rich Amerindian hemisphere.

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Related

Duties of the Secretary of the Interior include management and conservation of most federal landand natural resources, leading such agencies as the Bureau of Land Managementand natural resources, leading agencies as Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Geological Survey, and the National Park Service.
Tribal Seal

Laguna Pueblo is a Spanish name from the first European contact, was established by the Ka-waik or "lake people" a traditionally self-governing agriculturalists community. It is the largest pueblo of the Keresan people, located off the famous Route 66, forty-five miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico along the San Jose River. It's people have resided in that area of the US since 3000 BCE. This pueblo is one of 100 which are still inhabited.

Cibola is both the recent name of one of thirty-three counties of New Mexico and an early mythological Seven Golden Cities of a fabled location from early Spanish tales.The story was believed by the arriving Spanish in Mexico as the location be found in today's New Mexico. See:Seven Cities of Gold - Wikipedia .