[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 185 (Thursday, December 12, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6991-S6992]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



             Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Legislation

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, we are going to try to make some laws in 
the next week in the area of jurisdiction where I am chair--the Senate 
Committee on Indian Affairs. We have already had the most constructive 
and productive period for Native people in congressional history. We 
have invested more in water, in transportation, in broadband, in 
energy, in culture, and in economic development. We have passed an 
extraordinary number of bipartisan bills. But we are not done. We have 
about a week left, and we have a number of bipartisan bills that have 
to get across the finish line.
  So I am going to summarize four bills and try to pass them out of the 
Senate, and then we will do more work next week on a bipartisan basis 
to finish out this Congress strong, to make sure we do everything we 
can for Native people from Hawaii, to Florida, and everywhere in 
between.
  S. 2783, the Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendment Act, will amend 
existing law to add culturally important land to the Miccosukee Tribe's 
reservation, and it would also authorize up to $14 million to protect 
the land from flooding caused by Federal projects to restore the 
Everglades National Park ecosystem. This is a commonsense bill that 
passed the Indian Affairs Committee unanimously.
  S. 2908, the Indian Buffalo Management Act, introduced by Senators 
Heinrich and Mullin, would improve the capacity of Tribes and Tribal 
organizations to manage buffalo and buffalo habitat and clarify the 
applicability of State and Federal law. It would establish a $14 
million annual grant program for 7 years within the Department of the 
Interior to help Tribal nations play a pivotal role in this recovery 
effort, especially on their own lands.
  S. 4365, Veterinary Services to Improve Public Health in Rural 
Communities Act is the Vice Chair Lisa Murkowski's bill, and it would 
allow public health officers from the U.S. Public Health Service to 
offer some veterinary services at IHS facilities to control domestic 
animal populations and to prevent the spread of rabies and other 
diseases to humans.
  Finally, the Tribal Forest Protection Act Amendments Act, also 
introduced by Vice Chair Murkowski, and it will help to mitigate 
wildfire threats on Federal lands and Tribal or Alaska Native or 
corporation forest lands. It removes an existing requirement for 
mitigation work to take place on Federal lands next to Tribal lands. It 
also expands eligibility to include Federal lands with special 
geographic, historical, or cultural significance to a Tribe, and it 
authorizes up to $15 million annually through the fiscal year 2030.
  We have a couple of other bills that we are not quite done 
negotiating about, in particular, a bill introduced by Senator-elect 
Gallego--Representative Gallego--and Senator Lujan to protect children 
who are victims of abuse and to help Tribes, to help families to 
recover. We have to do some final clarifications with our counterparts 
on the Republican side, and I am hopeful that we will land that one as 
well.
  We also have a couple of bills from Senator Cortez Masto having to do 
with law enforcement.
  And, finally, a bill that is arguably the most important out of all 
of these in terms of its national impact, and that is to establish a 
commission to reckon with the shameful legacy of boarding schools, in 
which children were basically incarcerated, removed from their Tribal 
communities, and forced to speak a language they didn't speak. 
Sometimes, forcibly, their hair was cut. Many times they were punished 
for speaking in their native language or singing their native songs. 
This is a legacy of abuse at the hands of the Federal Government that 
we have to reckon with, and this would simply establish a commission to 
start to delve into this history and come through it to a place of 
healing, but we are not there yet on those bills.
  So here comes the lawmaking part.

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