Outgoing (DOI) Interior Secretary Deb Haaland
(EXCERPT)
‘These policies don’t take care of people’
April Wazhaxi-Jones’ planning for the Trump administration centers around maintaining her personal safety and the well-being of other Indigenous people. She lives in Oklahoma and is a member of the Osage Nation, but the area where she resides is mostly White. Throughout this year’s presidential campaign season, she saw Trump signs and flags sprinkled throughout neighborhood yards.
She recalled times when she and her husband greeted neighbors passing by and were met with silence or stares. Just a few days before speaking with The 19th, Wazhaxi-Jones said she was at Home Depot and a man wearing a Trump hat and shirt stared at her as he blocked her way down the aisle.
“You’re excused,” she remembered the man saying sarcastically as Wazhaxi-Jones stepped around him to walk by.
As an Indigenous woman in the United States, she knows well that threats of violence and the erasure of history are nothing new for the country. But this moment feels different for her.
“I feel as though we as Indigenous people were finally having a voice, finally being heard,” she said. “We had Deb Haaland as secretary of interior and now that’s gone. And not only is that gone, but my rights as a woman, the right to love who you want are under attack. We Native Americans take care of each other — and these policies don’t take care of people.”
In the past, Wazhaxi-Jones said she did what she could to educate people who expressed political opinions that conflicted with her own. She won’t be doing that moving forward. Her focus now is self-care and making sure her Indigenous and two-spirit friends and family have resources they need.
She knows someone who had breast reduction surgery while it was still covered by their insurance. She knows people who are trying to get alternative forms of gender-affirming care lined up and others who are stocking up on plan B. For her own peace of mind, Wazhaxi-Jones is in counseling, deleted social media and is limiting her consumption of news about Trump and his administration. She also does not go out as much as she used to.
“Everything I believed in is being torn down. I’m exhausted and it’s all just too much. I am one voice and it has been stomped out,” she said.
VANITY FAIR: WHAT IS COMING in Trump's Second Term?
"...We’re talking about how the television world vowed to change after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the protests that followed. Entertainment conglomerates promised to slay systemic racism and knit diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into the fabric of the industry.
"We are now closing in on the fifth anniversary of those vows. So how’s that going?
“It not only didn’t change, but in some ways it kind of got worse,” says Simien, who created Dear White People and directed Haunted Mansion and the recent doc series Hollywood Black.
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