MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We’re just a few weeks away from the presidential inauguration and an historic milestone. If confirmed, Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico will be the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. She’s been selected to lead the Department of the Interior. That’s the agency that oversees the country’s natural resources, national parks and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So in honor of this historic moment and to start the new year off right, we thought it would be a good chance to learn more about the native nations experience.

And for that, we’ve called Aaron Carapella. He’s the creator of Tribal Nations Maps. That’s a site dedicated to mapping the lands that Native Americans lived on prior to European settlement. And he’s recently launched a section of the site to highlight children’s books focused on characters and stories rooted in the Native American experience. And he’s with us now.