Debra Anne Haaland
(born December 2, 1960)
She is an American attorney and politician serving the U.S. Representative for New Mexico’s 1st congressional district. On November 6, 2018, she and Sharice Davids became the first two Native American women elected to the U.S. Congress. Haaland is a former chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico.
Haaland was born in Winslow, Arizona. She is an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo people. Her mother, Mary Toya, a Native American, served in the United States Navy. Her father, J. D. “Dutch” Haaland, a Norwegian American, was a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and recipient of the Silver Star for his actions in Vietnam; he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in 2005. She has three sisters and a brother.
Haaland earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of New Mexico in 1994. She earned her Juris Doctor in Indian law from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 2006. She served as the tribal administrator for the San Felipe Pueblo from January 2013 to November 2015.
In 2012, Haaland served as the state’s vote director for Native Americans in Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential reelection campaign. She ran for Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico in 2014. Her ticket, headed by then Attorney General of New Mexico Gary King, the party’s nominee for Governor of New Mexico, lost to the Republican ticket of incumbent Governor Susana Martinez and Lieutenant Governor John Sanchez.
She was elected to a two-year term as the Chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico in April 2015 During her tenure, New Mexico Democrats regained control of the New Mexico House of Representatives.
Sharice Lynnette Davids (born May 22, 1980) is an American attorney, former mixed martial artist, and Democratic politician from the state of Kansas. She is the U.S. Representative for Kansas’s 3rd congressional district. The district includes most of the Kansas side of the Kansas City metropolitan area.
A lawyer educated at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and Cornell Law School, Davids also was a professional mixed martial artist in the 2010s.
Davids is an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) nation. Her maternal grandfather, Fredrick J. Davids, a United States Army veteran, was born into the Mohican Nation Stockbridge-Munsee Band, in Oneida, Wisconsin. Sharice was raised by Fredrick’s daughter, her mother Crystal Herriage, a single mother who served in the U.S. Army.
Davids began her legal career at SNR Denton in 2010. She later directed community and economic development for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and opened her own business, Hoka Coffee.
In 2016, she worked as a White House Fellow in the Department of Transportation during the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations.
Davids attended Leavenworth High School, Haskell Indian Nations University, the University of Kansas, Johnson County Community College, and the University of Missouri–Kansas City, graduating from the last with a Bachelor’s Degree in business administration in 2007. She earned her Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School in 2010.
Davids is also the first openly LGBT member of Congress from Kansas.
Native Americans have long faced significant barriers to voting. Seventy years ago, Native Americans right here in New Mexico couldn’t vote,” were only granted the right to vote in New Mexico in 1962, making it the last state to enfranchise Native Americans almost 40 years after they were granted U.S. citizenship. And in several states, including North Dakota and Utah, voting rights advocates have voiced concerns about rules that have disproportionately affected access for Native Americans this year.