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Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I have come to the floor this evening to speak in honor and recognition of a woman by the name of Elizabeth Peratrovich.

Elizabeth Peratrovich is recognized in my State of Alaska as a champion, a relentless champion, for civil rights for all Alaskans.

It is on this day, the 16th of February, that the State of Alaska observes Elizabeth Peratrovich Day. In communities across the State, in schools, cultural centers, you are going to be seeing activities to honor this really remarkable Alaska Native leader.

PBS has an award-winning show for children called ``Molly of Denali.'' It is a great TV show, and they recently had an episode highlighting the story of Elizabeth Peratrovich.

It was just 2 years ago, now, that her image was placed on a dollar coin issued by the U.S. Mint. So that recognition has gone beyond the State of Alaska, clearly, to the national and the Federal level.

So as we are celebrating Elizabeth Peratrovich Day back home, I am going to share a little bit of her story with the Senate because it is a legacy of seeking and realizing a more inclusive society and certainly a more representative democracy.

Elizabeth was a Tlingit, a member of the Raven/Sockeye or Lukaax-Adi clan. She was actually born on Independence Day, born in Petersburg, AK, in 1911.

And it was just a year after that, 1912, a group of Native people from across the southeastern part of the State mobilized to form an organization called the Alaska Native Brotherhood, ANB. Then, 2 years later, they formed the Alaska Native Sisterhood. ANB, ANS these are considered the oldest indigenous civil rights organizations in the world, started right there in southeastern Alaska.

ANB and ANS sought to advance equal opportunities for education, for employment, for housing, and they fought to secure Native civil rights.

Elizabeth married Roy Peratrovich, and the two of them became very active in ANB and ANS activities in the 1940s.

In 1941, they had moved to Juneau, and they encountered a level of discrimination in that community against Alaska Native peoples that, as we look at the accounts of the time, paralleled the Jim Crow practices in the South, but it strengthened their resolve. It strengthened their commitment to fight back against the discrimination that they saw.

Through their work with ANB and ANS, Elizabeth and Roy began advocating for an antidiscrimination bill in the Territorial legislature. If you will recall, we didn't become a State until 1959. This is the early forties, and they are talking about an antidiscrimination bill in our legislature. They pointed out to all who would listen that Alaska Natives were paying taxes for a public school system that excluded their children. They weren't part of that school system. They pointed out that Alaska Native men were fighting in World War II, but then on their return, they were denied rights that other veterans enjoyed.

Those fundamental discriminations and many more were what drove their pursuit for equal rights not just for Alaska Natives but for all people in Alaska.

So they had gone to Juneau in 1941. That antidiscrimination bill didn't pass immediately. It was reintroduced in 1945. And there is a lot of discussion about the pivotal moment in time when eyes were opened and, really, minds were also opened in awareness.

This was the time of debate where this antidiscrimination bill had passed the house, had moved over to the senate, and there was a Territorial senator who denounced these efforts to desegregate, and he stood up on the senate floor, and he said:

Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?

Pretty inflammatory if you are sitting there in those Senate chambers listening to that, certainly--certainly--to an Alaska Native person.

At the end of the debate, the public was offered a chance to express their views in front of the legislature. That is not something that you have happen in most legislatures. We don't have it in our legislature now, but in our Territorial legislature, the public was offered a chance to weigh in here.

And Elizabeth Peratrovich stood in the back of this senate gallery, and in her remarks, she said:

I would not have expected that I, who am ``barely out of savagery,'' would have to remind the gentleman with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights.

And when asked if she thought that the bill would eliminate discrimination, she replied:

Do your laws against larceny and even murder prevent those crimes? No law will eliminate crimes, but at least you as legislators can assert to the world that you recognize the evil of the present situation and speak your intent to help us overcome discrimination.

Imagine this scene. You are part of this legislative body, and from the back of the gallery, a Native woman stands to speak to address this elected body.

Following her comments, there was a long period of silence, and then there was applause through the gallery and through the senate floor, including from some who had previously opposed the bill.

Alaska's Governor at the time, Ernest Gruening, went on to sign the antidiscrimination act, the Nation's first antidiscrimination act, signed into law on February 16, 1945. This was almost two decades before the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

So it is something that when we in Alaska think about the history of discrimination that we have had, that certainly Alaska Native people have endured--endured far too long--to have led the country in terms of putting into law the first antidiscrimination act in this country a couple decades before the Civil Rights Act advanced through this Congress.

During an Indian Affairs Committee hearing on Native voting access last October, the president of the Alaska Federation Natives, Julie Kitka, reminded us that these events are not very old, and sometimes we think of Elizabeth Peratrovich as part of our history, but she, Elizabeth, and her husband Roy, and the impact that they had on Alaska and the way that they strengthened our democracy is our current history as well.

So we honor Elizabeth Peratrovich's legacy of standing up for what is right. She is an inspiration because she set the example that when you see something wrong, you speak out and you do something about it.

And she also provided a great example for why we need to listen--why we need to listen to all perspectives and voices, especially those who have been left out or left behind, oftentimes intentionally.

I think of Stella Martin of Kake, AK, a champion of equal rights herself. She described Elizabeth Peratrovich as ``a fighter with velvet gloves.'' And she was truly a fighter. Elizabeth Peratrovich Day is also a timely reminder for those of us here in the U.S. Senate. We all have an obligation to respond to the calls from our constituents who are seeking protection, including through electoral reforms and improvements for voter access.

We all know that we went through a very partisan exercise on voting rights legislation here on the floor earlier this year. Some may say it is hard to see how that advanced the debate on this issue; but it didn't change the underlying fact that we do need to come together to advance good solid policy in this area. I am working with a group of Senators. There are around 16 of us, I think, total. But we are continuing to focus on these issues of election reform. We want to try to determine a bipartisan path forward so that we can actually move important safeguards and clarifications into the law. And it may not be easy to take on some of these complicated issues, particularly when you get the pulls from both sides to not engage to try to come to the middle. But like we did with the infrastructure bill, like we are doing with the Violence Against Women Act, we need to follow a path that allows us to get some things done as opposed to simply sending messages.

As Alaska celebrates Elizabeth Peratrovich, I hope the Senate will look to her legacy for inspiration as we seek unity and follow her example of treating our fellow citizens with respect. We have got too much at stake to operate in any other lesser manner.

I thank the Presiding Officer for his attention.

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