Teresa Leger Fernandez

H.R. 5444 will establish a much-needed Commission to formally investigate and document the stories of survivors and the human rights violations that occurred against these American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiians.

Today, we have listened with tears in our eyes and purpose in our heart to the tragic stories of the treatment of young Native American children who were torn from their parents, torn from their families, torn from their culture, torn from…

Congress can help to address the trauma that boarding schools inflicted on individuals by providing families and researchers access to records of the children who attended boarding schools.

How should we get churches to acknowledge their role in forming and implementing boarding schools for American Indian and Alaska Native children?

It is undeniable that these events have led to intergenerational trauma.

I want to thank you for sharing your story with us today and your willingness to be here.

Questions Submitted by Representative Leger Fernandez

I am certain there will be other organizations, perhaps some that are culpable for terrible things against other tribal nations, and it will require a mechanism to ensure that a complete sharing of information occurs.

The reason to do this is to create a better future for all of those grandchildren

We must dedicate ourselves to look at how do we address the wrong and move forward

Our own country allowed children to die in federally funded schools as we have heard today.

It is important to hear the stories. It is important to hear all of your testimony as difficult as it may be testifying here.

After decades of inaction, we are proud of the U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's efforts to jumpstart the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.

It will be important to have funding to develop curriculum to be included in all levels of education.

I believe this is very important so that families have the opportunity to get closure in the cases of children who never returned home.

Thank you, Mr. War Bonnet, for that moving testimony and sharing with us the songs that have helped you in your process.

I believe your subcommittee should be granted Subpoena Powers to seek truth and information from those churches.

I am very appreciative of your mega construction project program that will have contractors and subcontractors make sure they create those jobs and invite our underrepresented workers, and that we also protect those civil rights.

One of the things I love in those Federalist Papers is that they say that Congress should be a perfect mirror portrait of what America is.

We must keep working to protect and expand voting rights, because our democracy...depends on it.

I too support and believe that we must abolish the filibuster.

When you start to target people and it is this, you know, official target from the State or from the government, then it pushes people into the margins and it prevents people from participating in democracy, and that is why that protection…

We know that the last election was the most secure, had almost nil election fraud.

We do have Federal legislation to address that, and we will continue to work on it.

We saw voter intimidation and harassment tactics happening down in Las Cruces in Dona Ana County.