How Deb Haaland Became the First Native American Cabinet Secretary

For countless generations my people, the Secwépemc and St’at’imc, narrated the creation of the world and the way things are through tales of our trickster ancestor, Coyote. Coyote was sent to Earth by Creator to set things in order. While he did much good — filling the rivers with salmon, populating the lands with descendants — he was a trickster and up to no good as well. Hence why things are the way they are and why we are the way we are: tricksters in a trickster land. The Coyote Stories were nearly wiped off the face of the Earth by colonization. And yet, they still get at the truth about our people, this land, and the world more broadly. (Just look at our trickster president.) In this excerpt from “We Survived the Night,” a story of contemporary Indigenous life told through the epic m