Tag: Debra Haaland

MacKenzie Scott Donates $50M to Nonprofit Boosting Native Student Scholarships

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Angelique Albert has headed the Native Forward Scholars Fund since 2017. Courtesy Native Forward Scholars Fund

When Angelique Albert, CEO of the Native Forward Scholars Fund, received a call from a representative of MacKenzie Scott, she initially thought her organization was about to receive a $15 million donation. In reality, the gift was $50 million for America’s largest provider of scholarships to Native students. “What do you do but cry?” Albert told Observer.

Scott’s contribution, one of the largest-ever gifts to a Native nonprofit, marks the second time the philanthropist has supported the Native Forward Scholars Fund with an unrestricted donation. In 2020, she gave $20 million to the group, enabling it to launch an endowment fund, create six programs and strengthen its internal operations.

This time, Albert is determined to channel the money directly to students. Native Forward has already earmarked part of the donation to award scholarships to an additional 400 students, while also considering the creation of a pooled endowment to ensure long-term support.

“I don’t know that people really understand how transformative it is when you take a $5,000 scholarship and put it into the hands of someone who is brilliant and talented,” said Albert, who has led Native Forward since 2017.

Alumni supported by the Albuquerque, N.M.-based nonprofit include Debra Haaland, the first Native person to serve as a U.S. cabinet secretary; Pulitzer finalist Tommy Orange; and Cynthia Chavez Lamar, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Founded in 1969, Native Forward offers scholarships, programming, funding and mentorship to Native students pursuing undergraduate, graduate and professional opportunities. Its impact, which includes contributing to 1,700 law degrees and 2,200 Ph.D. degrees, has aided some 22,000 scholars from more than 500 Tribes across all 50 states.

Still, demand far outpaces supply. “We can only fund about 22 percent of the students who apply—and that’s on a typical year,” said Albert, who noted that scholarship applications have surged 35 percent in 2025. Of roughly 7,000 applicants this year, only about 1,000 have received aid.

Albert attributed the increased need in part to a rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and recent changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). “It’s critically important that we are intentional with this funding so that it can continue to give to students in the future in the most impactful way,” she said.

The size and flexibility of Scott’s gift align with her broader trust-based approach to philanthropy, which relies on quiet research and major, unrestricted donations. With an estimated net worth of $33.1 billion—much of it tied to her Amazon shares—Scott has given away nearly $20 billion since pledging in 2019 to donate most of her fortune.

Her giving has increasingly emphasized education. In September, she donated $70 million to UNCF, a nonprofit that supports historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), boosting endowments at more than three dozen schools across the U.S.

“She is changing the landscape of Native higher education, not to mention all of the other fields that she’s impacting,” Albert said of the philanthropist. Given the transformative results of the 2020 gift, she is eager to see what this new one will accomplish. “It’s a much different world than it was five years ago, and I look forward to seeing what this looks like in another five years.”

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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October 3, 2025
Oil and gas withdrawal around US park stirs debate over economic costs for Native American tribe

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Some Republican members of Congress on Thursday denounced the Biden administration’s recent move to withdraw hundreds of square miles of federal land in New Mexico from oil and gas development, offering their support instead to legislation that would unravel the ban.

U.S. Rep. Eli Crane was among those to speak out during a congressional subcommittee hearing on the legislation that he and fellow Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar recently introduced to nullify what they consider overreach by the federal government.

Crane’s district includes part of the vast Navajo Nation, which spans portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The eastern side of the reservation is part of a jurisdictional checkerboard that includes federal, state and private lands along with Chaco Cultural National Historical Park.

Prosecutors say two women in eastern New Mexico have been sentenced to prison in a case in which they were accused of beating children in their care and chaining them to their beds.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver has spoken with federal prosecutors as part of the special counsel’s probe into the 2020 election.

Virgin Galactic is aiming for early August for its next flight to the edge of space. The company announced Thursday that the window for the commercial flight from Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert will open Aug. 10.

The New Mexico Supreme Court has affirmed a decision by utility regulators who rejected a proposal by the state’s largest electric provider to transfer shares in a coal-fired power plant to a Navajo energy company.

He acknowledged that the park holds cultural significance for tribes throughout the Southwestern U.S. but that development surrounding Chaco should be determined by the Navajo Nation and the thousands of individual Navajo landowners who are affected.

“The Biden administration did not properly seek out tribal input and have effectively implemented a destructive chokehold on tribal revenue and economic prosperity,” Crane said.

Although the Navajo Nation has been among the tribes to seek protections for sacred areas within the Chaco region over the decades, Navajo leaders had proposed a smaller buffer around the park to limit the economic consequences of a federal ban land locking individual Navajo parcels.

Navajo President Buu Nygren contends that the administration gave no weight to the tribe’s concerns before imposing the ban.

“The withdrawal was done without meaningful consultation and fails to honor the Navajo Nation’s sovereignty,” he testified. “Respect for tribal sovereignty must be consistent even when it is not convenient.”

Gosar suggested that the administration’s decision was predetermined and that the U.S. Interior Department should have waited to make a determination until New Mexico pueblos completed their ethnographic study, which is due later this year.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet member in the U.S., has said previously that her agency consulted with Navajo leadership, and numerous public meetings and comment periods were held over the last two years as part of the process. Her home pueblo of Laguna was among those tribes seeking permanent protections for lands beyond the park.

U.S. Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández and Melanie Stansbury, both New Mexico Democrats, submitted dozens of letters from other Navajos and members of other tribes who support prohibiting drilling in northwestern New Mexico.

Leger Fernández said difficult choices come from balancing competing interests such as cultural preservation and the poverty faced by Navajos.

“What I believe is important is honoring that which is invaluable, that which can never be replaced, that which is spiritual and sacred to those who tell us where the most important places are,” she said.

Even though no new leasing has occurred within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of Chaco park over the last decade, Nygren said the Biden administration hasn’t offered a solution or an alternative for replacing the revenue and jobs that might not be realized with the withdrawal in place.

He said Navajo leadership struggles to figure out how to help people make ends meet, as many tell him about not having enough money for groceries or to wash their clothes at the laundry.

“Before we make harsh decisions, we’ve got to make sure there’s a plan in place,” Nygren said, mentioning farming, solar development and other alternatives that have been suggested for transitioning from fossil fuels. “My hope was that we were actually going to put something on paper so that we can use that as a guiding principle before this order was issued. We’ve got to come back to the table.”

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the economic harm and injustice associated with the fight over Chaco can’t be ignored. The New York Democrat said Native American communities have been abused and disrespected over generations and that if Navajo families are being affected, they deserve economic restitution.

“In stripping everything away, we now are in an economic hostage situation where people feel like the only opportunity and that the only source is to acquiesce to oil and gas,” she said. “And the answer to that is, in my view, not to revert back to that but to invest and reinvest in these communities.”

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July 14, 2023
Haaland criticized over ‘difficult’ choice on Willow project

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In early March, President Joe Biden met with members of Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation as they implored him to approve a contentious oil drilling project in their state. Around the same time, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland held a very different meeting on the same topic.

Gathering at Interior headquarters a half-mile (0.8 kilometers) from the White House, leaders of major environmental organizations and Indigenous groups pleaded with Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet member, to use her authority to block the Willow oil project. Environmental groups call the project a “carbon bomb” that would betray pledges made by Biden — and Haaland — to fight climate change and have mounted a social media #StopWillow campaign that has been seen hundreds of millions of times.

The closed-door meeting, which was described by two participants who insisted on not being identified because of its confidential nature, grew emotional as participants urged Haaland to oppose a project many believed Biden appeared likely to approve even as it contradicted his agenda to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

Haaland, who opposed Willow when she served in Congress, choked up as she explained that the Interior Department had to make difficult choices, according to the participants. Many Native groups in Alaska support Willow as a job creator and economic lifeline.

Less than two weeks later, the Biden administration announced it was approving Willow, an $8 billion drilling plan by ConocoPhillips on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope.

Haaland, who had not publicly commented on Willow in two years as head of the U.S. agency overseeing the project, was not involved in the announcement and did not sign the approval order, leaving that to her deputy, Tommy Beaudreau.

In an online video released Monday night, 10 hours after the decision was made public, Haaland said she and Biden, both Democrats, believe the climate crisis “is the most urgent issue of our lifetime.″

She called Willow “a difficult and complex issue that was inherited″ from previous administrations and noted that ConocoPhillips has long held leases to drill for oil on the site, in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

“As a result, we have limited decision space,″ she said, adding that officials focused on reducing the project’s footprint and minimizing impacts to people and wildlife. The final approval reflects a substantially smaller project than ConocoPhillips originally proposed and includes a pledge by the Houston-based oil company to relinquish nearly 70,000 acres (28,000 hectares) of leased land that will no longer be developed, she said.

The video had received more than 100,000 views by Friday.

Haaland declined to be interviewed for this story. But in a statement, the department said Haaland had been “actively involved” in the Willow decision from the start and met with Alaska Natives on both sides of the issue, conservation and other groups and members of Congress.

Dallas Goldtooth, a senior strategist for the Indigenous Environmental Network, called it ”problematic” that Haaland’s video was the Biden administration’s primary voice on Willow. Biden himself has not spoken publicly on the project.

“They use people of color for cover on these decisions,″ said Goldtooth, a member of Mdewakanton Dakota tribe.

The White House pushed back on the idea, saying in a statement Friday that as interior secretary, “of course the video came from her.″

But Haaland’s body language — at times looking away from the camera — made her appear “very uncomfortable” in the two-minute video, Goldtooth said.

Haaland’s statement “did not seem to be a wholehearted defense of the decision,″ said Brett Hartl, government affairs director of the Center for Biological Diversity, another environmental group. “It was almost an apology.″

Allowing Haaland to be the administration’s public face on Willow strengthens Biden’s expected reelection run by allowing him to avoid public scrutiny on an issue on which some of his most ardent supporters disagree with him, environmentalists said.

“It’s clear-cut D.C. politics,″ Goldtooth said. “I’ve seen this play run before,″ including when former Biden environmental justice adviser Cecilia Martinez was put forward to address tribal concerns about two other energy projects, the Dakota Access and Line 3 oil pipelines in the upper Midwest.

Asked about Willow on Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that the oil company “has a legal right to those leases,” adding: “The department’s options are limited when there are legal contracts in place.”

Goldtooth and others involved in the Willow fight say the project was largely advanced by Beaudreau, Haaland’s deputy, who grew up in Alaska and has a close relationship with the state’s two Republican senators. Beaudreau is especially close to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a former Senate Energy chair who has cooperated with Biden on a range of issues. Murkowski played a key role in Haaland’s confirmation, and she and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia teamed up to get Beaudreau installed as deputy after they objected to Haaland’s first choice, Elizabeth Klein.

Murkowski told reporters this week that she and other Alaska officials had long realized that the decision on Willow was likely to be made by the White House, despite repeated comments from Jean-Pierre that the decision was up to Interior.

The senator, who personally lobbied Biden on Willow for nearly two years, said she reminded him, “Cooperation goes both ways.″

Despite the White House involvement, Haaland has been faulted for the decision to approve Willow. New Mexico’s senior Democratic senator, Martin Heinrich, singled her out for criticism in a rare rebuke of a fellow New Mexico Democrat. Haaland represented the state in Congress before becoming Interior secretary.

“The Western Arctic is one of the last great wild landscapes on the planet and as public land it belongs to every American,” Heinrich said in a statement. ”Industrial development in this unspoiled landscape will not age well.″

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., who holds Haaland’s former seat in Congress, said she joined millions of people, “including Indigenous leaders, scientists and lawmakers, in opposing the Willow Project.″ She urged the Biden administration to reconsider the project and its consequences for global climate change.

Native American tribes in the Southwestern U.S. have been watching Willow closely, concerned about any implications it could have for development in culturally significant areas, including the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Interior Department failed to consider the cumulative effects of greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the approval of nearly 200 drilling permits near the Chaco site.

Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, visited Chaco in 2021 and told tribal leaders that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management would work toward withdrawing hundreds of square miles from development. She also committed to taking a broader look at how federal land across the region can be better managed while taking into account environmental effects and cultural preservation.

Mario Atencio, of Diné CARE, a Navajo environmental group, said he understands that the Interior Department faces pressure from GOP lawmakers to increase drilling, as well as conflicting court rulings on a pause ordered by Biden on oil leasing on public land.

“We’re very aware that it’s a game of inches sometimes, and there’s a little discretion in some places, and we are just trying to have just as much visibility as the oil and gas industry has,” said Atencio, who is Navajo.

The Willow project has divided Alaska Native groups. Supporters call the project balanced and say communities would benefit from taxes generated by Willow. But City of Nuiqsut Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, whose community of about 525 people is closest to the proposed development, opposes the project and worries about impacts on caribou and her residents’ subsistence lifestyles.

Hartl, of the biological diversity group, said Willow was approved by the White House for clear political reasons. “They cared more about Lisa Murkowski’s vote than frankly they did the climate,″ he said.

___

Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this story.

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March 17, 2023
Environmentalists want jaguars reintroduced to US Southwest

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PHOENIX — An environmental group on Monday petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help reintroduce the jaguar to the Southwest, where it roamed for hundreds of thousands of years before being whittled down to just one of the big cats known to survive in the region.

The male jaguar, named Sombra — shadow in Spanish — has been seen in southern Arizona several times since first captured on a wildlife camera in the Dos Cabezas Mountains in 2016, including a 2017 video by the Center for Biological Diversity. There are a handful of jaguars known to be living across the border in the Mexican state of Sonora.

The center wants the federal agency to help expand critical habitat for jaguars in remote areas and launch an experimental population in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest along the border with Arizona.

“Over 50 years since the jaguar was placed on the endangered species list, we should not be facing the realistic prospect that this sole jaguar in Arizona will be the last,” Michael J. Robinson, senior conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote to Martha Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

“This could be an amazing opportunity for us to restore a native species that was here for hundreds of thousands of years and deserves to come back,” Robinson said in an interview.

Jaguars ranged throughout North America before they were killed to the point of extinction for their stunning spotted pelts and to protect livestock.

Robinson said failure to do something could also affect efforts to save the dwindling jaguar population in Mexico that needs the kind of genetic diversity possible through mating with a new group of big cats to the north.

Jaguar populations in many places from Mexico to South America are shrinking as well. They are being reintroduced to their historic range in Argentina through a program in which they are bred in captivity and released.

The center was among environmental groups involved in successful efforts to launch the recovery of the gray wolf population that dropped to near extinction a half century ago.

Like jaguars, gray wolves once ranged most of the U.S. but were wiped out in most places by the 1930s under government-sponsored poisoning and trapping campaigns.

A remnant population in the western Great Lakes region has since expanded to some 4,400 wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. And more than 2,000 wolves occupy six states in the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest.

The rarest subspecies of gray wolf in North America, the Mexican wolf, was listed as endangered in the 1970s and a U.S.-Mexico captive breeding program was started with the seven wolves then in existence.

The results of the latest annual survey of the Mexican gray wolves released in March showed at least 196 in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona — the sixth straight year that the wolf population has increased.

Robinson said efforts to protect the jaguar never enjoyed the momentum of the gray wolf campaign.

“People forget or don’t know that the jaguar actually evolved in North America, ranging from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and then spread to the south,” he said.

Concerns about the jaguar’s future were mentioned in a letter the center sent Oct. 19 to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, giving his administration a 60-day notice of its intent to file a lawsuit to halt the ongoing placement of shipping containers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The letter says the San Rafael Valley in southeastern Arizona is among the last established corridors for jaguars and ocelots between the two countries.

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December 12, 2022