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Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor today with my colleagues, both the Senator from Iowa behind me and the Senator from California, because I want to thank them publicly for their leadership as they work to address these issues of domestic violence. They have been leaders in this arena for years, and I appreciate that.

I am pleased to have worked with them on this framework that has been discussed by both Senators and to acknowledge the work of Senator Durbin as part of this initiative as well.

I think as both of them have spoken, it is recognized that this is a matter of urgency. This is a matter for all of us, on a bipartisan basis. Domestic violence, unfortunately, knows no political bounds, and our response to those who are truly among the most vulnerable of us-- that response--should also be bipartisan.

So I want to commend Senator Ernst, Senator Feinstein, Senator Durbin for their work in really coming to find common ground on this very important matter. It has been years----

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Please.

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Well, thank you.

Again, it takes a lot of people, and the years that Senator Ernst has been working this initiative on this side of the aisle is something that, again, we want to build on, and we need to build on it together.

It has been years in the making. The last time we had a VAWA reauthorization was VAWA 2013, and so we are high past time to be addressing this very significant matter.

No compromise is perfect. I think everyone recognizes that. But what has been developed through this framework is a proposal that will really help to prevent violence, to support our survivors, and to hold perpetrators to account.

The effort to be here where we are today on the floor, speaking to this, is one thing, but we all want to get to that next step, which is filing the legislation so we can get it moving through this process, and I look forward to doing that in the new year.

I can tell you, as a Senator from Alaska, this is an extraordinarily pressing issue in my State. As the vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, I can affirm that this is a very real need across Native lands, and it is the disproportionate victimization of Native people that I want to focus my comments on today.

By now, I would hope that every Senator understands the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We refer to this as MMIW. That is why we passed Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act.

I want to acknowledge my colleague, who has been working this issue with us for so long, Senator Cortez Masto.

I think we recognize that we have made good progress there, but to fully address the root causes of this crisis--the high rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking, the violent crime in Native communities--we have an awful lot more to do.

The rates of violence experienced by Alaska Natives are particularly horrific, and the statistics should shock us all. I repeat them a lot, and they still shock me. According to a report prepared by the Indian Law and Order Commission, Alaska Native women are overrepresented by nearly 250 percent among female domestic violence victims around our country.

Putting it in context here, a couple years ago, there was an investigation that was conducted by Anchorage Daily News that determined that one in three Native communities in rural Alaska has no local law enforcement that is physically present, leaving Native women and children at greater risk of violence. Think about what that means for just a minute, to live in a community where there is no one to turn to, no law enforcement presence to turn to. Maybe you are able to share your story with a local health aide there, but that is about as far as you can go.

Beyond that, you have many Alaskan Tribes that lack the tools they need to address violence in their communities.

A couple years ago, the Attorney General at the time, William Barr, was invited to the State and came up, and we said: We need to get you out to one of these remote villages.

He saw firsthand, and he was so dramatically impacted after his just multiple hours on the ground there, he declared a law enforcement emergency--a law enforcement emergency--after hearing directly from those who had suffered due to lack of public safety. He said at the time that it was harder for him to imagine a more vulnerable population than the women and children he saw in rural Alaska. He took that back to DC with him and acted on it. His declaration was based on the fact that Alaska has the highest per capita crime rate in this country, and, of course, we face very unique geographic and jurisdictional landscapes.

Then comes COVID-19, and you have a pandemic where you have to be in your social bubbles, you have to be inside, and you have to be where it is safe to be away from the virus, but that safe place was not a safe place for far too many people.

Last summer, rural Alaska saw five domestic violence homicides in 10 days. Again, these are small, rural communities--five homicides in a matter of 10 days; domestic violence. In the 5 weeks after the State of Alaska declared a public health disaster due to the coronavirus pandemic, calls to our domestic violence shelter increased by 52 percent.

You cannot let this go unaddressed. We have an opportunity here in this Congress to build on our previous work with VAWA 2013, where we have taken steps to resolve jurisdictional complexity when it imperils the safety of people. The jurisdiction issues should not deny justice. It just should not.

In the 2013 reauthorization of VAWA, Congress recognized the inherent authority of Tribes to prosecute and punish certain domestic violence crimes committed by non-Indians against Indian people.

At the time, that was described as unprecedented, and some Members of Congress and the media as well pushed a narrative that Tribal governments somehow were not going to be fair, that they would not safeguard the rights of non-Indian defendants. We knew that was going to be far from the truth, and nearly 8 years later, despite all of the horror stories that were predicted, the record shows that non-Indian defendants experienced a Tribal justice system that treats them fairly and in some ways with more attention than State or Federal systems.

So I think now what we need to focus on, folks, we need to focus on the real horror story, and that horror story is the acts of violence being perpetrated against Native women and children. So I have set out to do that through the Tribal title that will be included in this larger VAWA reauthorization once it is introduced.

Chairman Schatz, on the Indian Affairs Committee, and I have worked on this together. We posted our text to the committee website last week. Our title closes loopholes and builds upon the success of the 2013 reauthorization, and we include specific solutions to protect Alaska Native people.

The Tribal title will further restore and improve the implementation of the special Tribal criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit violent crimes in Native communities, and it will do so by allowing Tribes that exercise this special jurisdiction to charge defendants with crimes that are adjacent to domestic violence, such as violence against children or assault on law enforcement.

I think it is important to know that children were involved in 58 percent of all incidents of domestic violence in these VAWA 2013 cases. This is according to a report by the Federal Government a couple years ago, in 2019. By empowering Tribal courts this way, we can help combat this major public safety issue.

American Indians and Alaska Natives are the victims of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence in numbers far out of proportion to the level these crimes are committed outside of Native communities. This is a moral imperative. It is a wrong that we must make right, and we also need to do it in a way that recognizes the unique situation we have in the State of Alaska.

You are going to hear later discussion about ANCSA. Two days from now is the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. ANCSA created a new approach to Tribal land tenure that is very, very different from the lower 48 reservation system. While Alaska is home to almost 40 percent of the Tribes in the country, we have only one Indian reservation in the State.

After the Supreme Court decision in the Venetie case in which the Court held that ANCSA lands are not ``Indian Country,'' it became the State's duty, largely alone, to provide for public safety and justice for Alaska Natives.

The Tribal title that we have developed includes an Alaska solution to a complex jurisdictional situation. It includes an Alaska pilot program which builds on previous legislation that I have introduced and will empower a limited number of Alaskan Tribes to exercise special criminal jurisdiction over certain crimes that occur in villages in Alaska.

Similar to how the pilot rolled out for the lower 48 Tribes, Alaskan Tribes will have to meet certain criteria, including having a Tribal justice system that can adequately and appropriately safeguard the rights of defendants.

In addition to the provisions essential to bringing justice and safety to Alaska Native people, our critical legislation will ensure that VAWA's tools and resources will better serve the needs of survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

I am proud to have authored text that will help to address this ongoing epidemic that Alaska faces with violence, which has left long- lasting trauma for too many of our women, our children, and our families. Congressman Young on the House side has introduced similar language to help in this. We simply cannot allow survivors and the needs of the most vulnerable to go unmet.

Very quickly, I want to just outline a couple different provisions that are contained in this bipartisan framework that recognize some of the matters we have been working on in Alaska.

There is a provision named in memory of an Alaskan, Breanna Moore. Bree's Law is what we call it. In 2014, Cindy and Butch Moore experienced a tragedy that no parents should ever have to experience. They received a call that their 20-year-old daughter had been shot by her boyfriend in Anchorage. In the wake of that devastation, they turned their energy to and they put their hearts and their passion into working around the State and now at the Federal level to ensure that education is provided to teens to prevent future tragedies. So Bree's Law drives education initiatives to enable youth, parents, and advocates to recognize, prevent, and mitigate teen dating violence.

Another provision addresses support services for victims. We know it is difficult to access the necessary medical forensic services in Alaska. These allow for evidence collection and aid in a survivor's journey to justice.

While we have very troubling statistics on sexual assault and domestic violence, Alaskans have also been on the frontlines of innovation, offering solutions. The Alaska Comprehensive Training Forensic Academy, which is a pilot program run through the University of Alaska Anchorage, is making a difference in the lives of Alaskans who have experienced interpersonal violence.

Built on the belief that all victims of violence deserve evaluation and care from forensically trained healthcare providers, I have been able to secure some provisions in our VAWA proposal that will allow other universities and States to model the successful program and expand access to trauma-informed care.

There is clearly a public safety crisis that we are dealing with in rural Alaska and across Indian Country, but we have an opportunity in this Congress to work together across the aisle to find solutions and to restore justice. I look forward to building strong, bipartisan support for VAWA reauthorization that will make a positive difference in the safety of Native communities and for victims of domestic violence and entire communities in Alaska and, of course, across the country.

We must let our women, children, and families who have been affected by devastating violence know that you are heard and that we stand with you.

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