Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. It has been a travesty and it has been a crime that we have seen many of these objects that have been taken as art collections, that have been taken with no appreciation of the heritage, of the richness, of the tradition, and the respect to the Native people to whom they belong.

And so the STOP Act, or the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2021, is significant. I am proud to be the lead Republican cosponsor, along with Senator Heinrich, on this. It is an issue that many in my State have been urging action on.

So I do not rise this evening to object to passage of the STOP Act, but at the same time I am acknowledging the significance of this, I also want to raise another bill that is also very important to my State, H.R. 441. We call it the Don Young Alaska Native Health Care Land Transfers Act.

This is something that I have been working on for several Congresses now, with my friend the late Congressman Young. We took three land transfer bills. We consolidated them into one. We thought it was a pretty simple effort. All we are asking to do is to convey IHS land to two of our Alaska Native Tribal health consortia, as well as the Tanana Tribe in the interior part of the State.

We passed stand-alone legislation on these three IHS bills earlier this Congress, but instead of passing that legislation, the House did what the House often does. They amended it with technical amendments. They sent it back here as one consolidated bill. That is H.R. 441.

But, again, it is about public health, delivery of healthcare to Alaska Native people in rural and underserved villages, many of which are off the road system. But these simple land transfers would enable construction projects to move forward, to reconstruct and to construct, in some cases, new healthcare facilities to provide care to Alaska Native people, and to also ramp up the delivery of clean, safe drinking water and sanitation facilities in rural villages, which are so key to improving public health.

I think we all would agree that basic services such as water sanitation are pretty important--so everything we can do to help facilitate that. I have pushed the urgent button on these land conveyance issues because time is running out. Construction seasons are very, very limited in Alaska, and so I have been trying to help facilitate that.

I have good commitments from my colleagues who are here on the floor this evening to help us move through this process on our side, or certainly on the House side as well, so that we can see final resolution on the Don Young Alaska Native Health Care Land Transfers Act, and I look forward to working with them on that. And so having said this, I will not object to unanimous consent to advance the STOP Act this evening.

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