The late Bill Richardson left a lasting impact on Native people in the Southwest.
Richardson, a two-term Democratic governor of New Mexico and an American ambassador to the United Nations who dedicated his post-political career to working to secure the release of Americans detained by foreign adversaries, has died. He was 75.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said Richardson understood the challenges that the Navajo people face and visited local chapter houses.
“Gov. Richardson was definitely a man of the Navajo people, a champion for the Navajo people,” Nygren told ICT. “And one of the stories he shared with me back in December was how the Navajo people were very instrumental in believing him at the very get-go running for his first political congressional office. And the Navajo people supported him then. And the Navajo people continue to really think of him very highly throughout the years and the decades.”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, posted her comments with a photo of her and Richardson. Haaland, a 35th generation New Mexican, previously represented the state’s first congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I’m sad to hear of former NM Gov Bill Richardson’s passing,” Haaland wrote on social media. “He was a champion for Tribes, elevating Indian Affairs to a cabinet level. He helped me ensure Native students received in-state tuition. He was a true friend and one of our country’s valued diplomats.”
The Richardson Center for Global Engagement, which he founded and led, said in a statement Saturday that he died in his sleep Friday night at his home in Chatham, Massachusetts.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Richardson and former Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah created a fund to offer supplies and equipment to the Navajo Nation, providing personal protective equipment, food, water and hundreds of pairs of shoes to Navajo students in the state.
“I can probably attest to the other 23 tribes in New Mexico that they were probably just as helped just as he helped the Navajo people,” Nygren said.
Before becoming governor, Richardson represented New Mexico’s third congressional district for 14 years. He held around 2,000 community meetings, including at pueblos and tribes. The district included portions of the Navajo Nation, Jicarilla Apache and most of the pueblos.
“One of the things I learned about him was that he actually went out to the local communities, the local chapter houses,” Nygren said. “He understood the issues at the local level and he used that and he never forgot the people that got him there. So that’s one of the things I think about when it comes to a leader as high as a secretary, as high as a governor of the great state of New Mexico, that he truly understood the challenges that the Navajo people face.”
As a member of Congress, he served as chairman of the Native American Affairs subcommittee. Some of the legislation he sponsored included:
- Indian Tribal Justice Act
- American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments
- American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act
- American Indian Agricultural Resource Management Act
- Indian Dams Safety Act
- Tribal Self-Governance Act
- Indian Tribal Jurisdiction Bill (commonly known as the “Duro Fix”)
And most notably, the Jicarilla Apache Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act.
In 2003, Richardson signed the Navajo Nation’s first ever gaming compact, solidifying the largest land-based tribe into the multi-billion dollar Indian gaming industry.
Four years later, he made an unsuccessful bid for president running campaigns against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
During his campaign, he set a new standard for Indigenous involvement in a presidential race. He hired Laura Harris as his Midwestern States Political Director. She wasn’t just a voice on tribal affairs, she was a key campaign official and strategist.
In August 2007, there was “Prez on the Rez,” a forum for candidates on the Morongo Nation in California. The favorite candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, passed on the event.
But Richardson said: “When I was asked to participate, it took me 20 seconds to accept. Native Americans must be taken seriously. Native Americans are a part of the nation’s fabric.”
He campaigned on a major restructuring of the Indian Health Service because its level of care was a “failure of the federal government” and a “breach of the U.S. commitment to Native Americans.”
“You need to raise these issues to the highest levels to send a signal that other government agencies need to take Native American issues seriously,” Richardson said.
If elected, Richardson promised to create a Secretary of Native American Indian Affairs, a cabinet level post.
“Many candidates will have position papers on Native American issues. I’ve done it,” he said.
Richardson’s global work
“He lived his entire life in the service of others — including both his time in government and his subsequent career helping to free people held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” said Mickey Bergman, vice president of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement. “There was no person that Gov. Richardson would not speak with if it held the promise of returning a person to freedom. The world has lost a champion for those held unjustly abroad and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend.”
President Joe Biden said Richardson seized every chance he had to serve in government and lauded his efforts to free Americans being held elsewhere. “He’d meet with anyone, fly anywhere, do whatever it took. The multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations he received are a testament to his ceaseless pursuit of freedom for Americans,” the president said in a statement. “So is the profound gratitude that countless families feel today for the former governor who helped reunite them with their loved ones.”
Before his election in 2002 as governor, Richardson was U.S. envoy to the United Nations and energy secretary under President Bill Clinton. .
But he also forged an identity as an unofficial diplomatic troubleshooter. He traveled the globe negotiating the release of hostages and American servicemen from North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan and bargained with a who’s who of America’s adversaries, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It was a role Richardson relished, once describing himself as “the informal undersecretary for thugs.”
“I believe that we have to engage our adversaries no matter how different our philosophies are,” Richardson once said. “The way you deal with issues that divide nations is through humanitarian efforts before political differences. I think that is fundamental.”
He helped secure the 2021 release of American journalist Danny Fenster from a Myanmar prison and this year negotiated the freedom of Taylor Dudley, who crossed the border from Poland into Russia. He met with Russian government officials in the months before the release last year of Marine veteran Trevor Reed in a prisoner swap and also worked on the cases of Brittney Griner, the WNBA star freed by Moscow last year, and Michael White, a Navy veteran released by Iran in 2020.
Roger Carstens, the U.S. government’s chief hostage negotiator, described Richardson as “a friend and partner in bringing wrongfully detained Americans and hostages home.” and said in a statement Saturday that he would “miss his wise counsel and friendship.”
Richardson was the nation’s only Hispanic governor during his two terms, calling it “the best job I ever had.”
“It’s the most fun. You can get the most done. You set the agenda,” Richardson said.
As governor, Richardson signed legislation in 2009 that repealed the death penalty. He called it the “most difficult decision in my political life” because he previously had supported capital punishment. Other accomplishments included $50,000-a-year minimum salaries for the most qualified teachers in New Mexico and an increase in the state minimum wage.
Some of his most prominent global work began in December 1994, when he was visiting North Korean nuclear sites and word came that an American helicopter pilot had been downed and his co-pilot killed.
The Clinton White House enlisted Richardson’s help and, after days of tough negotiations, the then-congress member accompanied the remains of Chief Warrant Officer David Hilemon while paving the way for Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Hall to return home.
The following year, and after a personal appeal from Richardson, Saddam Hussein freed two Americans who had been imprisoned for four months, charged with illegally crossing into Iraq from Kuwait.
Richardson continued his freelance diplomacy even while serving as governor. He had barely started his first term as governor when he met with two North Korean envoys in Santa Fe. He traveled to North Korea in 2007 to recover remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War.
In 2006, he persuaded Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to free Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Paul Salopek.
Richardson transformed the political landscape in New Mexico. He raised and spent record amounts on his campaigns, bringing Washington-style politics to an easygoing western state with a part-time Legislature.
Lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, complained Richardson threatened retribution against opponents. Former Democratic state Sen. Tim Jennings of Roswell once said Richardson was “beating people over the head” in his dealings with lobbyists on a health care issue. Richardson dismissed criticisms of his administrative style.
Longtime friends and supporters attributed Richardson’s success partly to his relentlessness. Bob Gallagher, who headed the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said if Richardson wanted something done then “expect him to have a shotgun at the end of the hallway. Or a ramrod.”
After dropping out of the 2008 presidential race, Richardson endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton despite Richardson’s longstanding friendship with the Clintons.
Obama later nominated Richardson as secretary of commerce. Richardson withdrew in early 2009 because of a federal investigation into an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving his administration in New Mexico. The investigation ended without charges against Richardson and his former top aides.
In 1982, he won a new congressional seat from northern New Mexico that the state picked up in reapportionment. He resigned from Congress in 1997 to join the Clinton administration as U.N. ambassador and became secretary of energy in 1998, holding the post until the end of the Clinton presidency.
Richardson had a troubled tenure as energy secretary because of a scandal over missing computer equipment with nuclear weapons secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the government’s investigation and prosecution of former nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee.
Richardson approved Lee’s firing at Los Alamos in 1999. Lee spent nine months in solitary confinement, charged with 59 counts of mishandling sensitive information. He later pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling computer files and was released with the apology of a federal judge.
ICT’s Stewart Huntington and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
