‘Something very historical': Push for diverse Biden Cabinet

WASHINGTON — Native Americans are urging President-elect Joe Biden to make history by selecting one of their own to lead the powerful agency that oversees the nation’s tribes, setting up one of several looming tests of Biden’s pledge to have a Cabinet representative of Americans. “It’s nice to know that a Native American is under consideration,” said Haaland, who says she is concentrating on her congressional work. “It’s one thing to grow food, but another to dispense it, and nobody would be better at that than Marcia Fudge.″ Biden has promised to pick a diverse leadership team. In January, Biden assured a Native American candidate forum that he would “nominate and appoint people who look like the country they serve, including Native Americans.” Native Americans say they helped deliver a win in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Arizona and elsewhere, voting for Biden by margins that sometimes hit the high 80th percentiles and above. She told the AP that regardless of what job she had, she’d be working to “promote clean energy and protect our public lands.” The push for her appointment makes for what historian Katrina Phillips of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, says is “one of the first times we’re seeing in public spheres such a broad push on Indigenous issues.” “We have finally reached the point where there’s a broader American consensus.