ANCHORAGE (AP) - A former attorney at the Native American Rights Fund in Alaska and member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma will become a top official in the U.S. Department of the Interior, the agency said in a statement Feb. 3.
Natalie Landreth will become deputy solicitor for land with the Interior Department after spending 17 years with the Native American Rights Fund, which represents tribes in treaty rights, public lands, aboriginal rights and environmental laws, the federal agency said.
Rep. Debra Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico, was nominated by President Joe Biden to lead the Interior Department in December. If confirmed, Haaland would become the first Native American person to lead the agency.
Landreth, while with the Native American Rights Fund, helped sue to reverse a policy that required a second person to sign all absentee ballots submitted in Alaska. The Alaska Supreme Court confirmed the policy reversal in October. Landreth had cited the hardships many Native Americans faced by voting through the mail, including the fact that many that live on remote lands and do not have specific addresses, but rather explanatory ones like “last house on the left.”
Landreth was also involved in lawsuits aimed at halting construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada into the United States.
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