[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 173 (Thursday, October 31, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6358-S6361]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             SAVANNA'S ACT

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I want to speak to another matter this 
afternoon, a matter that as I think about my tenure in the Senate and 
those initiatives I have been engaged with that have really touched me 
in a way that make me want to work all that much harder because it is 
so challenging, it is so difficult, and in many, many ways, it is so 
dark that anything I can do to shine a light on it, I will do so.
  I came to the Senate floor 2 years ago, joined by my former colleague 
from North Dakota, Senator Heidi Heitkamp. Heidi was on the floor 
speaking about a bill she had introduced, Savanna's Act, but together 
we were really working to speak to the urgency of addressing this 
epidemic, if you will, this growing number of missing and murdered 
Native women across America.
  The awful truth in this country is that Native women are victims of 
violence in unprecedented proportions.

[[Page S6359]]

  When I say unprecedented, I will give you some of Alaska's numbers 
just to kind of put it into perspective.
  This month, October, is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and so in 
many of the communities in States across the country, we have been 
focused on these issues of domestic violence and what more we can do to 
address these issues of concern and safety.
  Well, on October 1, the first day of this month where we are raising 
this awareness, the headlines in the State's largest newspaper stated 
that the rate of rape in the State of Alaska was up 11 percent between 
2017 and 2018--an 11-percent increase in 1 year.
  We are a State where, unfortunately, Alaska Native women are 2\1/2\ 
times more likely to be a victim of domestic violence. In Tribal 
villages and Native communities, domestic violence rates are up to 10 
times higher than the rest of the Nation--10 times higher.
  So think about as bad as it is in areas that you are in, in our 
Tribal villages and some of the Native communities, these rates are 
staggering.
  In 2015, it was estimated that 40 percent of sex trafficking victims 
were Native Americans. Now, I know 2015 was a few years ago, but 40 
percent of the victims who have been sex trafficked were Native 
Americans.
  The rate of sexual violence victimization among Alaska Native women 
is at least seven times greater than non-Native females in the State. 
So think about that. There is an unprecedented level of victimization, 
of assault, of violence, of murder that is experienced by Alaska Native 
women.
  These are statistics that really should shock the conscience. I know 
they shock mine. I have been exposed to them for so many years, but it 
continues to shock.
  We all know these are not just statistics. These are mothers, these 
are sisters, these are aunts, these are cousins, these are friends, and 
these are women who are being violated at rates that are unacceptable 
anywhere in any State.
  Now, I mentioned that some of the statistics are old, and that is 
part of the problem, trying to understand what it is that we don't 
know, so we need to get updated data, but what isn't old--and, 
unfortunately, seemingly, every day we get new statistics that are 
added to what we have already known.
  It was just last week family and friends packed an Anchorage 
courtroom for the arraignment of a man who had been charged with 
murdering 52-year-old Veronica Abouchuk. She was a Native woman 
originally from the village of St. Michael. She had been in Anchorage 
for a period of time. She had been reported missing earlier this year, 
and then she was found dead near the Old Glenn Highway in April.
  It was just a few weeks ago now--maybe about 3 weeks ago--the Alaska 
community was just horrified as we learned through the news of a video 
cartridge that had been found on a street, and what was revealed was a 
tape of torture and abuse of a Native woman.
  That tape ultimately led to the arrest of this same man who is 
accused of killing Veronica. That video showed the torture and the 
murder of 30-year-old Kathleen Jo Henry. She was originally from a very 
small village, the village of Eek.
  These are stories of women. We read about what they have experienced, 
what they have endured, and we think about their families who no longer 
have these women in their lives. You just can't view them in the 
abstract as statistics. What are we doing to respond to them as women, 
women who are vulnerable and are being preyed upon? What are we doing 
to act, to help?
  I mentioned this is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In Alaska, we 
have started calling it Domestic Violence Action Month. Going from 
awareness to action is really the key because I am here to tell you, in 
Alaska, we are very aware of how severe the problem of violence against 
Native women is--whether it is domestic violence, an assault, to them 
being trafficked and murdered. We know the statistics.
  When I am talking with Alaskans about what we are seeing with missing 
and murdered indigenous women, the subject of trafficking keeps coming 
into every conversation because that is, seemingly, what is happening 
to so many who unfortunately go missing.
  There are far, far, far too many stories that we then hear they were 
trafficked and then ultimately murdered. This nexus is what is really 
frightening.
  I mentioned the data and understanding what it is that we know and 
what we don't know--how big is the problem, what is happening with our 
Native women that they are being victimized to the extent and to the 
level we see. We are beginning to make some progress. We are beginning 
to gather more data and understanding.
  There is a lot we know we have to learn, but one thing that has 
become clear is that these crimes are permeating cities across America. 
They are in the cities, but they are also in our small, remote, and 
rural communities.
  There is really no geographic boundary that we are talking about 
here. Initially, we had thought the problem of missing and murdered 
indigenous women and girls was primarily a problem on the remote Indian 
reservations, but we had some good, strong reporting from the Seattle-
based Urban Indian Health Institute. We learned a lot there about the 
gaps in the data. We learned that the number of Native women who go 
missing in urban centers is as significant as those who go missing on 
reservations or in rural areas.
  In fact, last year there were 507 cases of Native women killed in 
urban areas. Of those, 282 were confirmed murdered, 127 were confirmed 
missing, and 98 cases are still listed in an unknown status. These 
cases exist across 71 urban areas selected for the study--from 
Baltimore to Orlando in the east coast and all the way up to the North 
Slope in the community of Utqiagvik.
  According to the report, Anchorage was among the top 10 cities 
identified in this study, coming in at No. 3, with 21 cases of missing 
and murdered indigenous girls. Overall, Alaska was the fourth highest 
State in the Nation with 52 cases. Keep in mind that these are just the 
cases that have actually been reported.
  Making sure that we are understanding the extent of the problem and 
the issues we are dealing with, the spotlight we are shining on the 
issue of murdered indigenous women is growing, but we need to answer 
those questions so we can move from awareness to action.
  What are we doing? How are we doing? We are keenly focused--I am, 
certainly, keenly focused--on what we can do to improve public safety 
in Alaska. As shocking as many of these statistics are that I have 
shared with you, what we know is that in far too many communities in 
our State we lack law enforcement presence. These are remote 
communities. These are small communities, maybe 300 people. When you 
don't have law enforcement, when there is nobody there who can 
administer justice, who can be the law, it is a safe place for bad 
people to go and do bad things.
  What we do to address this is on all of us. So as we are looking at 
public safety in rural Alaska, I reminded Attorney General Barr when he 
participated in a video conference at the Alaska Federation of Natives 
convention a couple of weeks ago--he made the comment that we want to 
make sure we have public safety throughout Alaska and that a woman 
shouldn't have to move to the city to feel safe, and I had to remind 
him--that in the cities, unfortunately, we are not seeing the level of 
safety that we would seek.
  But we are making some headway, and I want to share with colleagues 
what we have just done in this Interior appropriations bill that we 
moved through in the full Senate just this afternoon, and I thank 
colleagues for that support.
  For the first time, we are directing real dollars to prioritize the 
crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women. We have included a 
specific focus there within the Interior approps bill for FY 2020. We 
provide funding to address the crisis with support for cold case 
investigations, equipment, training, and background checks. This will 
be an effort where we will work with the Department of Justice, with 
the BIA, with the administration, with the State, and with the Tribes.
  We also encourage the Indian Health Service to look at programs that 
can help educate community health aides

[[Page S6360]]

on trauma informed care, which also includes collecting medical 
evidence. Through the CJS approps bill that we passed, we build upon 
efforts to address the high rates of violence that are experienced in 
far too many Alaskan communities.
  We have been advocating for the largest possible Victims of Crime Act 
fund set aside for Native communities that disproportionately face 
violence and have oftentimes extremely limited access to service.
  We also secured significant funding for the Violence Against Women 
Prevention and Prosecution Programs, and for State and local law 
enforcement and Tribal assistance, we provide additional resources, as 
well as resourcing for the COPS, or the Community Oriented Policing 
Services Program, which is an initiative to increase the number of 
police officers and ensure they are properly trained.
  So I think we are making some headway on the appropriations side, but 
I think we know there is more that we can do. We know there is more 
that we must do.
  I thank Attorney General Barr, who came up to the State of Alaska in 
May at the invitation of Senator Sullivan and myself and many of our 
leaders around the State, including our Tribal leaders, and he was able 
to sit down at roundtables in Anchorage and was able to get up to Fort 
Yukon, on the Yukon River, and come down to Bethel and to go out to the 
small village of Napakiak, a community of about 350 people.
  Following his visit, he was so struck by what he had heard and what 
he had seen, and truly what he felt in his heart, that he moved forward 
with a designation of a public safety emergency in the State of Alaska. 
He has been working with us to help specifically address how we can 
make these rural communities safer and what we can be doing with 
everything from training to basic infrastructure. It is something we 
are working collaboratively on.

  We are also seeing so many individuals, organizations, and 
communities really speaking up about this issue. Again, it is like the 
data. If you don't know it, you can't respond to it. If the stories 
aren't shared, as hard and awful as they are, it is difficult to know 
how we respond. There are so many who are speaking up in different ways 
to bring light to the fact that so many Native women have not received 
justice.
  There is a woman by the name of Amber Webb that I met when I was in 
Fairbanks for the AFN conference. She has created this really powerful 
visual symbol to honor missing and murdered women. She sketched the 
faces of more than 200 missing and murdered indigenous women from 
across North America. She sketched them on a giant white qaspeq. Qaspeq 
is the traditional garb of a woman. She chose the qaspeq because it 
symbolizes the adaptability and the strength of Native women. It is 
pretty impressive. It is about 15 feet high. But, again, it is a white 
qaspeq, with the portraits, the sketches, of these women.
  In the center is the face of not a woman but a young girl, Ashley 
Johnson Barr. She was a 10-year-old girl who was kidnapped and killed 
in Kotzebue last year.
  Being at Ashley's memorial services with the entire community of 
Kotzebue--it probably felt like the whole region--grieving the loss of 
that child in that brutal and awful murder in her home was something 
that never leaves you.
  On one sleeve of the qaspeq is sketched the face of Sophie Sergei. 
Sophie was killed in 1993. She was at the University of Alaska 
Fairbanks in one of the dorms. Her case was cold for 25 years. For 25 
years, her family had no idea who brutally killed her and left her in a 
bathtub of blood in a campus dorm room. That case broke loose with some 
DNA testing not too many months ago. Her family is hoping that one day 
there will be justice for their daughter, but the faces on that qaspeq 
represent way too many lives lost.
  Some of what we are facing in Alaska, when it comes to public safety, 
is the lack of public safety in rural areas and an inability to ensure 
that people are safe in their homes. When you look at the statistics 
that we have, when you look at the issues you face, sometimes you have 
to say: Maybe the way we have been doing things for this long just 
isn't working out in these areas. Maybe there needs to be a different 
dynamic.
  I recently introduced what we are calling the Alaska Tribal Public 
Safety Empowerment Act. It builds on a legislative provision that 
Congressman Young has introduced. It is a pilot for Alaska Tribes to 
address violence against Native women. In that bill, we empower Tribes 
to exercise domestic violence criminal jurisdiction on a pilot basis, 
similar to what we did in VAWA 2013 for those in Indian Country. We 
allow Tribes to assume local control over local public safety matters. 
We cannot deny safety or justice to an individual based on 
jurisdictional issues. This addresses one critical piece, and that is 
the Tribal empowerment.
  There is another very important element, and that is coordination 
among law enforcement agencies. I hear way too often from Alaskans who 
tell me that they don't actually count a missing Native woman as 
missing because the last time anybody saw her, she met somebody, she 
left a village, she went to Anchorage, and nobody really heard of her 
again. But what we know is that one of the most vulnerable times for 
these young women is the transition from a village to a hub community 
or to a city. We have heard from law enforcement that Native people, 
especially these young Native girls, are targeted by traffickers when 
they first arrive in Anchorage or Fairbanks or a hub community. It is 
important that we both understand the scope of the problem and address 
coordination between our State, our Federal, and our Tribal 
governments. That is what Savanna's Act and this counterpart 
legislation, the Not Invisible Act, do together.
  I reintroduced Savanna's Act with Senator Cortez Masto earlier this 
year. This was an effort where I was proud to carry the torch for 
Senator Heitkamp, who has truly been a leader on this issue. Our bill 
combats the epidemic of murdered and missing Native women and girls by 
improving the Federal Government's response to addressing the crisis. 
Savanna's Act increases coordination among all levels of law 
enforcement, increases data collection in information sharing, and 
empowers Tribal governments with the resources they need in cases 
involving missing and murdered indigenous women and girls wherever they 
occurred.
  This second bill that I mentioned, with Senator Cortez Masto, is the 
Not Invisible Act. What we have seen for far too long is that Native 
families and communities mourn the loss of family members, sometimes 
with the resolution of their cases of a murdered sister or a missing 
loved one, but often the cases remain unsolved.
  As I mentioned earlier, we were shocked in Alaska by the case of 
Kathleen Jo Henry and the related case of Veronica Abouchuk. But what 
is just as shocking is that the Abouchuk family has already--already--
experienced the loss of one of their sisters, Martha Toms, who was 
killed in 2005 and whose case is still unsolved. So they have had 
tragedy compounded upon tragedy.

  These bills, Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act, attempt to 
bring the issue of violence against Native women and the ongoing 
epidemic of missing and murdered Indians to the attention of the 
Nation. These families have faced unspeakable loss and, until recently, 
have felt almost invisible, frustrated, and really just let down by 
this system--the complex system that was supposed to protect them.
  But to truly honor the memory of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind and 
acknowledge her family's loss, we have to close the jurisdictional 
loopholes that criminals exploit. We have to improve the coordination 
among law enforcement at all levels of government, and we have to 
provide the necessary resources.
  The Not Invisible Act designates an official in BIA to coordinate 
violent crime prevention efforts across Federal agencies. It also 
establishes a commission of local, Tribal, and Federal stakeholders to 
make recommendations to the Department of the Interior and the 
Department of Justice on how to combat this epidemic of disappearances, 
homicides, violent crimes, and trafficking of Native Americans and 
Alaska Natives.
  We know we have a trust responsibility to our Native people, but also 
we

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have a duty of moral trust when we talk about keeping all Americans 
safe. We all have to be part of the solution. By passing these bills, 
we are saying that we are not going to accept what we have dealt with 
and what we have faced for far too long.
  I think we have to have a sense of urgency to keep Native women and 
girls safe. It shouldn't be anything that is partisan. There is nothing 
partisan about trying to protect women. There is nothing partisan about 
trying to protect Native women. There is nothing Republican or 
Democratic about the reality that we all deserve to have the same level 
of protection and justice as every other woman in this country.
  So I am back here on the Senate floor with the same message I had a 
couple of years ago with Senator Heitkamp, and that is to urge 
colleagues to move beyond awareness to action. Let's take up Savanna's 
Act. Let's take up the Not Invisible Act. Let's act. Let's provide for 
the safety that all these women should expect.
  With that, I yield the floor.

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