Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. S. 982, the Not Invisible Act of 2019, introduced by Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and passed by the Senate last March, addresses the crisis of violence and sexual violence committed against American Indian and Alaska Native men and women in two concrete ways, by directing the appointment within the Bureau of Indian Affairs of a coordinator of Federal efforts to combat violence against Native people and by establishing a commission on reducing violent crime against Indians. I commend my colleague, Representative Debra Haaland from New Mexico, for introducing the companion bill here in the House and for her efforts in advancing this important legislation. For decades, Native American and Alaska Native communities have struggled with high rates of assault, abduction, and murder of women. Community advocates describe the crisis as a legacy of generations of government policies promoting forced removal, land seizures, and violence inflicted on Native peoples. Advocates and victims' families also complain, and rightly so, that the investigation and monitoring of disappearances and killings of members of their communities have gotten lost in bureaucratic gaps generated by a system that lacks clarity on whether local or Federal agencies should investigate. The Federal Government must do something to address these problems. The statistics on violence in Native American communities are staggering.…”