Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visits Sleeping Bear Dunes

From staff reports

United States Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for approximately two hours on Thursday, Aug. 11, before she traveled north to Pellston to meet on Aug. 13 with survivors of Federal Indian Boarding Schools and their descendants who shared their stories at a local high school gymnasium.

The Pellston event was the second stop on Haaland’s “Road to Healing” tour—a federal initiative to document the history of boarding schools across the country. It was hosted by the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, which invited 35 tribes from the Upper Midwest to attend.

Haaland, a member of the Pueblo tribe and former Congresswoman from New Mexico, is the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet Secretary.

At Sleeping Bear Dunes, she toured Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive and met with National Lakeshore staff at overlook # 11, visited the Dune Climb, and sites at Glen Haven including the Sleeping Bear Inn, the cannery and Lake Michigan, said Superintendent Scott Tucker.

Haaland visited together with assistant secretary of the Interior for Indian affairs, Bryan Newland, former tribal chair of the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Newland was familiar with the Sleeping Bear region; his wife had previously participated in the M22 Challenge race.

“I had a wonderful visit with the National Park Service staff at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore last week,” Haaland wrote yesterday on Twitter. “While we toured the park, families were enjoying the beautiful lake shore and the paths were easy to travel on thanks to investments in accessibility over the years,” added the Interior Secretary, who wore a boot on her left leg after breaking it last month while hiking in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park.

Maggie Kato, executive director of the nonprofit Balancing Environment and Rehabilitation (BEAR), met Haaland and told her about the organization’s plans to rehab the Sleeping Bear Inn, which was built in 1866 and will be the oldest operating inn in the National Park system.

Haaland asked Kato about their plans for the neighboring garage. Kato answered that BEAR is renovating the space on the second story of the garage into two 500-square-foot apartments where they will live while they serve as innkeepers after renovation.

“I told her it is about the size of a typical D.C. apartment,” added Kato. “She laughed and said she recently upgraded into an 800-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in D.C.”

Haaland’s visit to Sleeping Bear Dunes was the second by a U.S. Secretary of the Interior. In June 1998, Secretary Stewart Udall spent a weekend in northern Michigan, appeared at a fund raiser for the Michigan Land Use Institute, and spoke at an emotional standing-room-only public gathering at the Sleeping Bear Dunes—the Park he helped establish.