I'm very honored to be holding an official U.S. Senate hearing at AFN, and very honored to have so many friends and colleagues.

Our rural Alaska is the poster child for challenging economic environments. We need to support employment opportunities that support and sustain our traditional way of life and protects us from the social consequences of a weak economy.

While perhaps well-intentioned, these State bans have had the unintended consequences of limiting the ability to trade authentic articles of Natives handicraft.

I'm very worried about, if there is an ulterior motive to just ban ivory. And we have to really fight back against that; all of us.

It's actually a really--it's a really important question. We need to know this, right?

I want to take a moment and recognize an important issue for this country, for the world, and that is that elephant poaching and the resulting illegal ivory trade in poached species, is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

It sounds like the President Obama statement makes it sound like he might have a goal of banning all ivory or something along those lines, which I think would be very disappointing.

walruses are not listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act

We can't let this get to the point where the ulterior motive of some--and I'm sure it's out there--banning all ivory, which would actually hurt conservation, by the way.

Senator Sullivan, Senator Murkowski, as always, I sincerely appreciate your leadership on these issues.

States like California and now New Jersey... have gone well beyond the Federal standard

We must act to ensure that elephant ivory is not somehow considered to be synonymous with walrus ivory, and protect our hunters and artisans from being targeted for carrying on a sustainable and culturally and economically valuable…

this ban does not apply to walrus ivory, and recognize the importance that this is having on the Alaska Native community.

What more can the Federal Government--what more can Secretary Jewell--what more can Dan Ash--it's one thing to put out a notice in the code of Federal regulations and nobody reads it.

As a lead--as leaders in the Senate, both Chairman Sullivan and Senator Murkowski, I believe it is your responsibility to help us draw the distinction between banned elephant ivory and domestic lawfully harvested walrus ivory.

Thank you, again, for your testimony. Sorry this has run a little long, but it's very important.

These regulations have, in turn, unfortunately, and from our perspective, misguidedly spawned several State laws that broadly expand the types of banned ivories allowed in different states.

I would agree with that.

Let me followup on that.

I do know that you're committed to ensuring that the Alaska Native voice is heard at the national level.

I thank Senator Perdue for his leadership on this important colloquy. As some of us have seen down here, as Senator Rounds mentioned, there are a lot of Members of the Senate who are very concerned. But what we are seeing here are a lot of…

I believe that there is need for Congress to have Federal legislation in this area.

I believe that just in terms of pure fairness, taking care of our veterans, that this is a critical, critical provision that, hopefully, every member of this Committee and every member of Congress can agree on.

If the Service Chiefs are each saying we face high military risk, how can we not be supportive of additional military spending?

All this bill is trying to do is to give people who were serving their country... the opportunity to finally apply for the Native allotment that was rightfully theirs.