Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to speak to an issue in my State of Alaska, in the State of North Dakota--quite honestly, in so many of our home States. We have facts, we have statistics, and we have issues that face our indigenous peoples, most particularly our indigenous children that, truth be told, are not what we want to write home about. In fact, in many, many cases, these statistics are shameful. The effort and the initiative to make a difference in the lives of the children of our first peoples is an effort I want to speak to today, and I join with my colleague from North Dakota in addressing this issue. I want to help shine a light on the conditions facing indigenous children in our country to whom the United States has a legal commitment. This is a Federal trust responsibility that is owed to these children. I thank Senator Heitkamp for her commitment and for her compassion to address these issues facing our Nation's indigenous children by introducing legislation to establish the Commission on Native Children. I will defer to my colleague so we can have a conversation about this, but it is important to note that the very first time I had ever met Senator Heitkamp, we literally exchanged handshakes, introduced ourselves, and within 5 minutes we were talking about children's issues, Native children's issues in our respective States. That little 5-minute discussion led to much further discussion later on and a commitment to work to address these issues.…”