Tom Udall: “thank you for the recognition. It is good to see you today. I am going to be joined by a number of my Senate colleagues…”

“thank you for the recognition. It is good to see you today. I am going to be joined by a number of my Senate colleagues to talk about reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. We have many who are very concerned that we need to move this reauthorization, so they will be joining me here today. The first chart we are putting up here is of Hanna Harris, who is a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. Here she is with her son just months before she was brutally murdered on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Hanna was all of 21 years old, and her son was only 10 months old. We now honor Hanna and all murdered and indigenous women and girls each year on Hanna's birthday, May 5, as a national day of awareness. It is fitting to remember and honor these women and girls, and it is critical that we understand the magnitude of violence that Native women face. Eighty-four percent of Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime. That is four out of five. In some Tribal communities, Native women are murdered at rates more than 10 times the national average--10 times. One out of three Native women has been raped. Behind these statistics are thousands of faces, thousands of lives disrupted, shattered, and cut short--faces like that of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner. This is a photo of Ashley. Ashley was an outgoing 20- year-old Native college student during the summer of 2017 when she went missing on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.…”