After earning her Bachelor’s degree, Haaland started a small business producing and canning Pueblo Salsa. Haaland was a single mother, and money was tight. She volunteered at her child’s preschool to afford her child’s early childhood education. Similar to many single parents, Haaland occasionally relied on food stamps and often lived paycheck-to-paycheck. Haaland was a tribal administrator at San Felipe Pueblo and later was elected as the first woman to the Laguna Development Corporation Board of Directors. In this role, she oversaw the business operations for New Mexico’s second-largest tribal gaming enterprise. Haaland advocated for the Laguna Development Corporation to integrate environmentally conscious business methods.

Secretary Haaland continually opens new doors and opportunities. In 2012, Haaland contributed to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. She was New Mexico’s vote director for Native Americans. From 2012 to 2013, Haaland was the Democratic Party of New Mexico Native American Caucus chair. In 2014, Haaland unsuccessfully ran for Lieutenant Governor. In 2015, she was elected Chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico. Winning that election made her the first Native American woman to be elected to lead a State Party.

Haaland successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. She is one of the first two Native American women to serve in U.S. Congress. Her focuses in Congress included environmental justice, climate change, missing and murdered Indigenous women, and hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation policies. In November 2020, Haaland won re-election for a second term in Congress.

Then-incumbent President Joe Biden announced on December 17, 2020, his intention to nominate Haaland as Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary of the Interior manages four offices: the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Senate confirmed Haaland’s appointment on March 15, 2021. Four Republicans voted in her favor. Secretary Haaland was sworn in on March 18, 2021, becoming the first Native American U.S. cabinet secretary. At the swearing-in ceremony, she wore traditional Laguna Pueblo regalia and a custom-made colorful ribbon skirt by Agnes Woodward.

Secretary Haaland started many new initiatives  at the Department of the Interior during her tenure. First, she announced a new unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs to address the decades-long crisis of missing and murdered Native Americans. Then, in June 2021, she created the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. The initiative investigates long-standing abuse in the residential boarding schools that, under the 1819 Civilization Fund Act, housed Native American children. Haaland’s maternal grandparents were removed from their families and forced into these boarding schools. Haaland explained in a Sierra Club interview, “I come from ancestors who endured the horrors of Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead, the same agency that tried to eradicate our culture, our language, our spiritual practices, and our people. We must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be” (Monet 2021).

In November 2021, Haaland banned a derogatory term for Native American women from use on federally-owned lands and created a task force to establish new names for 650 places.

Haaland (2022) wrote, “Though science is not a passion I pursued, I come from people who were among the first Earth observers, biologists, and agriculturalists. Through generations of studying the cycles of the seasons and the flow of the waters and observing their environments, Indigenous peoples built complex communities to manage Earth’s natural resources. They mapped the stars and watched the moon to understand when to plant and harvest, and they practiced conservation as the first stewards of our lands and waters”. She urges it is time to move away from short-term gain toward long-term investment and sustainability and always have the next generations in mind through every decision.