Political Quotes

“Madam President, standing here listening to my distinguished colleague from Alaska, it is hard not to be angry at what we as a country did, and we are here today to reckon with this disgraceful part of our past. The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act is the first attempt by the Federal Government to formally investigate and address this horrific period in U.S. history. This legislation and the truth that it will unearth is an essential step toward healing. Now, from the early 19th to the mid-20th century, the U.S. Government established 408 Federal boarding schools across the United States. Now, these schools were created for the purpose of stripping Native American children of their language, their religion, and their cultural identity. In the over 100 years that these schools were in operation, our government took an estimated 100,000 Native American children from their homes and from their families. An estimated 40,000 of these children died alone, without their family, at government-sanctioned schools. And this is the story of one of those schools. Now, in 2022, I visited Colorado's Fort Lewis College. It is a wonderful, remarkable college. It has one of the highest, if not the highest, proportion of Native American students of any college in the country.…”