[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 50 (Thursday, April 27, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3024-S3025]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. AKAKA (for himself and Mr. Graham):
  S. 2478. To require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a theme 
study on the peopling of America, and for other purposes; to the 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.


                THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA THEME STUDY ACT

  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, America is truly unique in that we are all 
immigrants to the United States, coming from different regions--whether 
from Asia, across the Bering Sea, or from islands in the Pacific Ocean, 
or Mexico, Europe or many other regions of the world. The prehistory 
and the history of this Nation are inextricably linked to the mosaic of 
migrations, immigrations and cultures that has resulted in the peopling 
of America. Americans are all travelers from other regions, continents 
and islands.
  We need a better understanding of this coherent and unifying theme in 
America. With this in mind, I am introducing, along with my colleague 
Senator Graham, a bill authorizing the National Park Service to conduct 
a theme study on the peopling of America.
  The purpose of the study is to provide a basis for identifying, 
interpreting and preserving sites related to

[[Page S3025]]

the migration, immigration and settling of America. The peopling of 
America is the story of our Nation's population and how we came to be 
the diverse set of people that are today. The peopling of America will 
acknowledge the diverse set of people that we are today. The peopling 
of America will acknowledge the first migrants who settled the North 
American continent, the Pacific Islands, and the lands that later 
became the United States of America. The original peoples came across 
the Bering Sea from Asia, or they arrived at our Pacific Islands across 
thousands of miles of ocean from the South Pacific and Micronesia. The 
peopling of America continued as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and 
English laid claim to lands and opened the floodgates of European 
migration and the involuntary migration of slaves from Africa.
  This was just the beginning. America has been growing and changing 
ever since. The growth and change can be characterized as the movement 
of groups of people across external and internal boundaries, the 
strength within their cultures, and the diffusion of cultural ways 
through the United States. The strength of American culture is in our 
diversity and rests on a comprehensive understanding of the peopling of 
America.
  The theme study I am proposing will authorize the Secretary of the 
Interior to identify regions, areas, districts, structures and cultures 
that illustrate and commemorate key events or decisions in the peopling 
of America, and which can provide a basis for the preservation and 
interpretation of the peopling of America. It includes preservation and 
education strategies to capture elements of our national culture and 
history such as immigration, migration, ethnicity, family, gender, 
health, neighborhood, and community. In addition, the study will make 
recommendations regarding National Historic Landmark designations and 
National Register of Historic Places nominations, as appropriate. The 
study will also facilitate the development of cooperative programs with 
educational institutions, public history organizations, State and local 
governments, and groups knowledgeable about the peopling of America.
  Mr. President, as we enter a new century of hope and opportunity, it 
is incumbent on us to reflect on the degree to which the development of 
the United States owes to our population diversity. Looking back, we 
understand that our history, and our very national character, is 
defined by the grand, entangled progress of people to, and across the 
American landscape--through exploration, colonization, the slave trade, 
traditional immigration, or internal migration--that gave rise to the 
rich interactions that make the American experience unique.

  We embody the culture and traditions that our forebears brought from 
other places and shores, as well as the new traditions and cultures 
that we adopted or created anew upon arrival. Whether we settled in the 
rangelands and agrarian West, the industrialized Northeast, the small 
towns of the Midwest, or the genteel cities of the South, our forebears 
inevitably formed relationships with peoples of other backgrounds and 
cultures. Our rich heritage as Americans is comprehensible only through 
the stories of our various contituent cultures, carried with us from 
other lands and transformed by encounters with other cultures.
  All Americans were originally travelers from other lands. Whether we 
came to this country as native peoples, English colonists or African 
slaves, or as Mexican ranchers, or Chinese merchants, the process by 
which our nation was peopled transformed us from strangers from 
different shores into neighbors unified in our inimitable diversity--
Americans all. It is essential for us to understand this process, not 
only to understand who and where we are, but also to help us understand 
who we wish to be and where we should be headed as a nation. As the 
caretaker of some of our most important cultural and historical 
resources, from Ellis Island to San Juan Island, from Chaco Canyon to 
Kennesaw Mountain, the National Park Service is in a unique position to 
conduct a study that can offer guidance on this fundamental subject.
  Currently we have only one focal point in the National Park system 
that celebrates the peopling of America with any significance. Ellis 
Island is part of the Statute of Liberty National Monument. Ellis 
Island welcomed over 12 million immigrants between 1892 and 1954, an 
overwhelming majority of whom crossed the Atlantic from Europe. Ellis 
Island celebrates these immigrant experiences through their museum, 
historic buildings, and memorial wall. Immensely popular as it is, 
Ellis Island is focused on Atlantic immigration and thus reflects the 
experience only of those groups--primarily Eastern and Southern 
European--who were processed at the island during its active period, 
1892 to 1954.
  Not all immigrants and their descendants can identify with Ellis 
Island. Tens of millions of other immigrants traveled to our great 
country through other ports of entry and in different periods of our 
Nation's history and prehistory. Ellis Island only tells part of the 
American story. There are other chapters, just as compelling, that must 
be told.
  On the west coast, Angel Island Immigration Station, tucked in San 
Francisco Bay, was open from 1910 to 1940 and processed hundreds of 
thousands of Pacific Rim immigrants through its portals. An estimated 
175,000 Chinese immigrants and more than 20,000 Japanese made the Long 
Pacific passage to the United States. Their experience are a west coast 
mirror of the Ellis Island experience. But the migration story on the 
west coast is much longer and broader than Angel Island. Many earlier 
migrants to the west coast contributed to the rich history of 
California, including the original resident Native Americans, Spanish 
explorers, Mexican ranchers, Russian colonists, American migrants from 
the Eastern states who came overland or around the Horn, German and 
Irish military recruits, Chinese railroad laborers, Portuguese and 
Italian farmers, and many other groups. The diversity and experience of 
these groups reflects the diversity and experience of all immigrants 
who entered the United States via the Western States, including Alaska, 
Washington, Oregon, and California.
  The study we propose is consistent with the agency's latest official 
thematic framework which establishes the subject of human population 
movement and change--or ``peopling places''--as a primary thematic 
category for study and interpretation. The framework, which serves as a 
general guideline for interpretation, was revised in 1996 in response 
to a Congressional mandate (Civil War Sites Study Act of 1990, Public 
Law 101-628, Sec. 1209) that the full diversity of American history and 
prehistory be expressed in the National Park Service's identification 
and interpretation of historic and prehistoric properties.
  In conclusion, we believe that this bill will shed light on the 
unique blend of pluralism and unity that characterizes our national 
polity. With its responsibility for cultural and historical parks, the 
Park Service plays a unique role in enhancing our understanding of the 
peopling of America and thus of a fuller comprehension of our 
relationships with each other--past, present, and future.
  I urge my colleagues to support this initiative.
                                 ______