WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fresh off her historic primary win in her bid to become the first Native woman governor of New Mexico, Deb Haaland returned to the nation’s capital this week to celebrate her latest achievement.

Published on Tuesday, “A Voice Like Mine: A Memoir” is Haaland’s personal account of her life as a trailblazer. From raising a child while going to college to becoming the first Native person in a presidential cabinet, the former Secretary of the Interior shares the ups — and the downs — of her storied career.

“As I talk about my road to recovery in the book, I needed to learn every single thing about my dysfunction in order to completely understand it and feel, you know, feel fine with myself,” Haaland said on Wednesday evening at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

For Haaland, a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna, the journey of discovery continued even after she became the first Native person to lead the Department of the Interior, the cabinet-level government agency with the most trust and treaty responsibilities in tribes and their communities. One of her major initiatives was a comprehensive investigation of Indian boarding schools, a genocidal era of federal policy that affected her own family in New Mexico.

“Once we started working on the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative as Secretary of the Interior — when I’m already, you know, way into my adulthood and professional life — I realized that generational trauma played such a huge role in all my relationships,” Haaland said to the large crowd gathered at the bookstore.

“It was just this presence that swirled around us consistently, it seemed,” Haaland continued. “And generational trauma, it’s real, it’s terrible.”

Throughout the 240 pages of her memoir, Haaland doesn’t shy from the revealing the kinds of hardships that often affect Native people and their communities. She freely recounts the drunken driving incidents and financial instabilities that she experienced as she worked to advance her career while raising her child as a single mother.

“I went to lots of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings,” Haaland said. “Just, you know, just moving forward on a path to sobriety, it’s so revealing in every sense of the word.”

But what readers won’t find are the snipes, gripes and swipes that frequently characterize political tell-alls. Instead, as she campaigns to be governor of New Mexico, Haaland is focused on staying true to her mission of uplifting those around her.

“How can I say this?” Haaland said after a long pause. “The purpose that I wanted for my book is maybe to inspire people. If I say I representation matters, I don’t want to be the last Native American cabinet secretary.”

“If representation matters,” Haaland added, “Sharice Davids is still serving in the U.S. Congress. Her and I were both the first Native American women to serve in Congress — and there she is right there.”

And perfectly on cue, Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas), a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation who is serving her fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, took her reserved seat in the front row of the bookstore. She had been waiting discreetly in the back, not wanting to disturb the crowd that was paying close attention to Haaland.

“I don’t have any scores to settle,” Haaland asserted. “I just want people to care about their communities and get involved, and if they have leadership qualities, to seek opportunities to lead.”

Haaland and Davids made history when they became the first two Native women to join the House of Representatives in January 2019. The achievement was one that Haaland was more than happy to share with her fellow Native trailblazer.

“That’s how we do things in Indian Country,” Haaland told the audience. “We share all the time. And so we both won, and we were both the first.”

“And then I left her holding the bag in Congress by herself,” Haaland added — a reference to her joining the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden to serve as Secretary of the Interior, where she oversaw the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Education, the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration and other agencies and programs affecting tribes. She held the cabinet-level position from March 2021 to January 2025.

“This is our ancestral homeland and this is a department that manages all of those public lands where Native Americans are committed to, heart and soul,” Haaland said as she explained why she accepted Biden’s invite to join his presidential team.

Following her historic tenure in Washington, Haaland returned home to New Mexico. She previously served as chair of the state’s Democratic Party, where she led a turnaround that has kept her fellow Democrats in nearly every key office for the past decade.

“I hustled for years and years just trying to increase voter registration for Democrats in New Mexico in all of our Native communities,” Haaland said of the 23 federally recognized tribes with homelands in the state.

New Mexico, thank you for believing in what we can build together. I’m honored to officially accept the Democratic nomination for Governor of New Mexico. pic.twitter.com/BWKsLvU9LE

— Deb Haaland (@DebHaalandNM) June 3, 2026

Haaland’s groundwork in all corners of the state has paid off in her campaign for governor. She easily won the Democratic primary last Tuesday with 72 percent of the vote, earning sizable majorities in every single county.

“I take people in political office personally, and if somebody doesn’t align with the values that I care about and the people that I care about, then I’m working to make sure that other person gets into office,” Haaland said.

“And that’s what we all should be doing,” the Democratic candidate added.

Haaland will face Gregg Hull, the Republican nominee for governor, in the general election this November. The race leans Democratic, as voters have not elected a Republican to the state’s highest executive office since 2014.

About 11.4 percent of the population in New Mexico identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Despite the high percentage, no tribal citizen has ever won statewide office since 1912, when the state joined the Union.

Currently, all of the state’s executive officials are Democrats. The U.S. Congressional delegation — three members of the House of Representatives and two in the U.S. Senate — is all Democratic.