In the morning , before sunrise, I pray with corn pollen in my right hand. The corn was harvested from red clay soil in the fields of the Zuni Mountains, where my Pueblo relatives live and pray in the same way. At an early age, I was taught that a corn-pollen prayer centers the belief that a person is exactly where they’re supposed to be at any given time and place, creating a presence with all existence that is determined by the prayer itself. Land-based belief systems exist across the world, and this one, which is practiced in my Southwestern home, respects the notion that life is a constant path forward, and therefore you must set your path. Facing east toward the Sandia Mountains, I speak my gratitude for the morning and offer peaceful intentions for my day. I thank my grandparents and acknowledge their ancestors and the younger ancestors I knew and loved who are no longer in this moment to breathe the morning air with me. I toss the corn pollen at my feet, just as my relatives have done before me and like everyone who comes after me will do. We have done this since, well, forever.

This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here with permission.

Along the corn pollen trail, I met Deb Haaland, a Laguna and Jemez Pueblo relative who starts her days in a similar way. “I wake up every morning, and I recommit myself to the things that I was taught by my grandparents,” Haaland told me in April outside an energy summit in Santa Fe. Her grandparents were contemporaries of my great-grandparents, all of them Pueblo people who shared the knowledge and lifeways that have led us to this moment today. Haaland, who made history during the Biden administration as the first Indigenous secretary of the Interior, has been on the road since 2025, zigzagging between rural New Mexican towns like Gallup and Shiprock and then back to politicking in Santa Fe before returning home to Albuquerque for the night. She credits her ancestors’ resilience for where she is now: frontrunner in the gubernatorial race and leading the path for the United States through post-Trump reconstruction.

If Haaland wins, she will be New Mexico’s third consecutive female governor and the first Native American to hold the office there. Many saw the Democratic primary as her biggest hurdle, but she won by 45 percentage points. She has championed a platform that expands public health care , strengthens state environmental regulations, increases the state minimum wage , leverages energy profits for progressive policies and advances tribal sovereignty.

In many ways, a Native American governor is a contradiction: The position owes its power to a tribal self-determination movement that is against racist state violence, and yet an Indigenous person in that role becomes a part of the very system that perfected that state violence. If she’s elected, it will be Haaland’s responsibility to manage relationships with the 23 tribal nations in the state, using tools like the New Mexico State-Tribal Collaboration Act of 2009 to work with state and tribal leaders on government policy.

The legislation requires state agencies to form working partnerships to negotiate their practices and policies with tribes in New Mexico. It’s a bit like a state version of the trust and treaty obligations the federal government has with tribes, something Haaland knows intimately, first as a Pueblo woman and then as Interior secretary, where she demonstrated how someone with land-based beliefs could lead on federal land management.

This has put her exactly where she needs to be to advance tribal sovereignty within the United States. As the first Native American woman to be elected governor, Haaland would be continuing Pueblo leadership that pre-dates multiple colonial governments.

Along the trail, we met up several times to discuss her vision and plans for New Mexico. Our conversations below have been edited for length and clarity.

High Country News: You’ve been on the campaign trail for more than a year now and have talked with voters about how pivotal this election is given what’s going on nationally. What’s it like to be here at this moment?

Deb Haaland: It’s always exciting. … Donald Trump took 3% of our voters in the last election, and I’m going to get those back. Donald Trump promised to lower costs for people. He’s not focused on that at all. He’s making things more expensive, and at the same time, he’s focused on terrorizing our neighborhoods and creating …