Murkowski Speaks at Alaska Federation of Natives Convention
Anchorage, AK — Today, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) addressed the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) at their annual convention in Anchorage, Alaska. The AFN Convention “serves as the principal forum and voice for the Alaska Native community in addressing critical issues of public policy and government.” This year’s theme was “Standing Strong, Standing United.”
Click here to watch Senator Murkowski’s remarks, shared with permission from AFN
Senator Murkowski – Remarks As Delivered
Gunalchéesh. Thank you, Ana. Thank you for the introduction, but better than the introduction, just thank you for the friendship over the years. Thank you for your 12 years of leadership here at AFN as co-chair. They have been remarkable, and I am so grateful for that.
We have had strong leaders. We will continue to have strong leaders. I want to congratulate Gayla Hoseth on her election to that very important role. To Joe, to Ben, to the full AFN board, thank you again for the opportunity to be back with you.
I'm just really full right now. Full like a good Thanksgiving, where there has been comfort. And that comfort and that feeling of Thanksgiving comes from the morning that I've just spent downstairs. So many hugs, so many selfies, lots of pictures, but just the warmth that I receive here that is like no other place, maybe the Ted Stevens International Airport when I'm moving in between flights and I see many of you, and we have those same hugs.
I share this because I am truly grateful for the support and the encouragement that I received from so many of you.
I stood right here, I think, right exactly in this spot just five days ago. It was the beginning of Elders and Youth, and now I am here. At Elders and Youth, I think I was one of the first speakers, and now I'm your wrap up, so I feel like I'm bookending an incredible week here in Anchorage.
At Elders and Youth, I was looking out at this extraordinarily beautiful medley of young people and elders, it was this blend of energy and optimism that the youth presents, sitting alongside the wisdom and the guidance that is earned over so many years.
They say it was the largest gathering of Elders and Youth. But I tell you, it was not just the size, it was the hope that I felt as I looked across that room. And there was a table of young people from Kwigillingok, and I went over to speak to them, because, of course, Kwig has been impacted so horribly as a result of this storm. We were talking, and I was asking how everyone was doing, and I said to this one young man, he's 16 years old, I said, “What is your source of power?”
And he didn't answer, “my cell phone here.”
He said, “Native dance.”
Native dance. And he says this as he's learning in real time about the devastation to his village from Typhoon Halong. He and his classmates were safe in Anchorage. But it gave me hope to think here is this young man who knows that his source of strength is not from some technology, it's from knowing who he is, where he's from, and his culture.
So yesterday, I missed AFN. I was not here. I try to be here as many days as I can. Instead, I flew to Bethel. I took the jet in the morning, and I was seated next to Herman and Lynn Hootch, they're from Emmonak. And Herman was telling me that they had seen the impact from this storm as well in Emmonak. Many, many, many of the boats were swamped or flipped. And he was talking about the impact to his community and told me about the storm there, and I said, “I'm going to be in Bethel. I'm hoping to get out to see some of the impact in some of the other communities. But what should I expect?”
And Herman said, “Look. Look and listen, and then you can talk.”
And I thought those were some pretty powerful suggestions. Pretty powerful to observe first. To hear carefully what the needs are before, before we swoop in from Washington or from afar, to tell you what to do in your communities. And so, it was a pretty tough day yesterday, but it was inspirational as well.
We went to the National Guard Armory, and I have to tell you, our scouts that were out there, the Alaska Defense Force, our Alaska National Guard, were doing exceptional things as they were managing movements of people. But to be in that armory, and to welcome, and I think it was welcome, but it felt awkward to say even welcome. But to receive people who were coming in off of a Black Hawk helicopter, at the time they were coming in from Tuntutuliak.
And they were elders in wheelchairs and young people carrying younger babies and bags on their back. And I asked them, “are you okay?” knowing that they didn't know the answer to that.
So, it was more, instead of talking, it was a time to give hugs and to say, “You're safe. You're safe here now.”
But to see the uncertainty, to see the uncertainty in people's eyes. That doesn't leave you. You don't forget that.
We had an opportunity to fly over to Kipnuk with our Alaska Guard team. And you've seen the pictures. You know how hard it is, but to be walking through a village where you realize that not even a week ago, there were children running up and down the boardwalks and dogs and four wheelers zipping in and out and people moving.
But to see, to see the devastation in person, to hear the quiet. It was so quiet. And that was not right. And flying over, you realize there is no retreat to higher ground, because there is no higher ground out in many parts of the Delta.
And as I walked by one house that was devastated, I looked in the window, and here's two Christmas cactuses. For those of you that don't know, Christmas cactuses bloom once a year, and they're very lovely. But here, in the midst of all this devastation and just darkness, was the life of a plant, two plants. Two plants.
So, sometimes in hard situations, you don't really know what to do, how you can help. We were in the school, we met with the teachers. One takeaway that I'm receiving, one thing that I heard to my heart was the more that we can keep these children and these families together in these communities while they are displaced, while they are out of their home, that is what we can do to help them. We can give them their traditional foods. We can come together in ways where they can celebrate through dance, but to be together, particularly in a big city like this.
So how do we do this going forward? These are the hard things going forward. But when you want to try to help and bring a little bit of humanity back to those who have been displaced, I will confess to you, I brought two dogs back. One was a puppy we named Kipnuk, and we're hoping that Kipnuk gets reunited. The other one was a German Shepherd mix that we named Chinook because we were flying in a Chinook helicopter.
To Nellie from Kipnuk, know that I have your Christmas cactuses, and I want to return them to you, because I want you to see them bloom as they will.
We have to come together in times of tragedy and disasters. We know that, and it is that strength of our unity and our culture and our faith that sees us through the trauma. It's going to take years. Don't let anyone fool you. It's going to take years to recover from the disaster of what we have seen with this storm. And that reality, that it is a long road, has only reinforced what is happening here at AFN. The importance of AFN’s theme, “Standing Strong, Standing United.”
So, we must be so grateful to those who have assisted in so many ways, those who were there to rescue those stranded in their homes, surrounded by the rising waters in the dark. We're so grateful for our Coast Guard, I mentioned our Guard, all of our federal and state and our Tribal partners who assisted at that time.
I want to share with you though that what I witnessed yesterday in that armory was a compassion and a respect as those from the village were being greeted in that armory. Respect in every way, and true compassion. And I'm so appreciative of those who are there today, who are there tomorrow.
We thank the Governor for moving quickly with the disaster declaration, and the full delegation has advanced that on to the President.
As I mentioned, we know full well that when disaster hits, whether it's Merbok or whether it's now what we see with Halong, after the flood waters recede, after the damage to the homes and the fish camps is calculated, there's so much work that remains and so much healing that is needed.
And it's not just the homes and the buildings that are lost. It's those who have been displaced. It's the subsistence foods that have been so carefully gathered throughout the entire season that are now lost. But how the people of this region, how the people from Kipnuk, how the people from Kwigillingok, how the people from Napakiak, and so many other impacted communities, how they move forward will define them for generations.
And so, this is a time to remember that again, when we come together, we are stronger.
Think about the beautiful baskets that so many of our treasured elders have shared with us over the years, those individual blades of grass that move in the wind or that are blown away when they are woven together, they make a basket that is tight. We need to be that tight basket.
So, know that my prayers are with those that we have lost and all who have been impacted by this storm. I am here. My team and I are here, we're downstairs literally. But know that we're not just here today and not just for this weekend, not just for this week, but for every day of every week, for as long as it takes for this effort, as you rebuild, as you relocate, or whatever you decide is best.
And I want to underscore “what you decide is best.”
Because I will not accept that there are those who are from Washington, DC, from other parts of the country, who have never been to your region, who have never heard your stories. That they feel that somehow, they can determine your future.
I am offended.
I am outright mad that some have suggested that it is a waste of taxpayer dollars to protect Alaskan communities. We are Americans. Every single person that has been impacted is an American that deserves to be treated with that level of respect.
There are so many issues that you face. And we need to take a lesson from you and your communities that when we come together, we can move forward, and we can do that in Congress, too. We can do that in Congress when we come together. That's how we negotiated, and we passed this bipartisan infrastructure bill. It's now in its fifth year, but we're still seeing funding for broadband, for clean water, for new energy for communities throughout our regions.
It's how we passed Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act to begin to address the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, and to improve coordination on these important cases.
It's how we convinced the EPA to make a historic investment of $100 million for upgrades to bulk fuel storage across our state.
Earlier this year, we passed legislation to ensure that our Native elders can receive their dividends without losing federal assistance, and to return control of more village lands to village corporations.
It's how we addressed Tribal adoption, subsistence whaling, community development, quota activities, and resource development on the North Slope.
We did this because we were working together. And I'm telling you we're not going to be able to address the issues of our government unless we can come together. It's what we need. Unity is what we need to end a government shutdown, which is now in its 18th day.
There is nothing good that comes from a government shutdown. No money is saved. Nobody wins. Nobody wins.
So, when things aren't happening, what do you do? You put an idea out there on the table. I put what I thought was a constructive solution out there: to avoid harmful increases in health care premiums, that would advance our appropriations bill, that would provide funding for public broadcasting, and that would halt the administration's effort to claw back funding that we had already approved in Congress.
So, I offered that. I offered that, but we're still at an impasse.
And I tell you, it is vitally important—I'm glad that our military and our Coast Guard are being paid during this shutdown—but they only got it for the first pay period.
And it's just wrong that our other federal employees, those who work for our federal government, including those who adjudicate the probate backlog at BIA and those who are trying to facilitate the Native allotment applications, it is wrong to have their work halted and to know that they're not certain whether or not they're going to get paid. That is wrong.
So, we have to do our work. Congress' failure to do our work is inexcusable.
What's happening, you've seen it, you've seen it. You have both sides that are blaming the other side for the situation. Instead of blaming the other side, let's solve the issue.
It's like your two boys. My boys were 21 months apart, and when they were sitting in the back seat, they were doing what boys are doing. They're poking at one another. It's like, “knock it off, you guys.”
And they're like, “well, he started it!”
“No, he started it!”
And you say, “I don't care who started it, knock it off, or I'm going to stop the car and we're going to have a conversation.”
Well, I feel like we need to stop the car and get Congress working again, so, I'm going to try that.
So, on Monday, Elders and Youth started with language instruction, and it translated to the theme of “Perseverance and Fortitude.” And I was really going to try to pronounce again those words, but I know my speech has gone on longer than Ben wants me to. So, I'm not going to try it, Ben.
But it was so important for me to learn how words are translated. How words are translated is so important, and I appreciate that. And as I was thinking about that at Elders and Youth, I was thinking how much of my work in Washington, DC requires me to translate Alaska to Washington, DC. Because they don't necessarily get us. They just don't.
So, one example is how I navigated this reconciliation bill this summer. This bill, this bill was going to pass one way or another. And so, what I did was I directed my team, “look, we have to make sure that we help Alaska as best we can.”
And so, I did my best to protect the vulnerable and ensure our obligations to Native people would be upheld across the nation, and especially here in Alaska, and I conveyed the significance that Medicaid plays in filling the gap in funding that the Indian Health Service has long, long faced. I explained that “look, we have rural villages. They are rich in subsistence opportunities, but they simply do not have the same cash economies that fit federal work requirements. So, it doesn't work here.”
I made sure that Tribal members would be exempted, fully exempted from these new work requirements for those on Medicaid and on SNAP.
I've worked hard to really, to educate, again, to help translate, to the Trump administration from the first days. And I particularly worked hard to make sure that they understood the relationship between Indian Tribes and the federal government. This is a legal obligation based on political status. Indigenous peoples are not a DEI initiative.
So, when your priorities were unfairly frozen or terminated, we worked together. I worked with you, the delegation, Dan and Nick and I worked to help free up the funding to build hydro at Thayer Creek, a long, long-sought project to help. Yes, there's Jody! Jody's been at the helm ever since.
But doing more for the relocation for Newtok, to stabilize the cemetery there at St. Paul, so much more.
And we're still, we're still fighting for the funding that we secured, including the resilience grants for Kipnuk that were canceled earlier this year. And while that funding may not have come in time to prevent the disaster that we saw this past week, they may prevent future disasters, and that's the point. That's the point of this.
So, it's not it's not just what happens today. It's the ability to look forward, out into the future, to make it better into the future.
So, know that the delegation is not going to rest on this one. We have to keep pushing the administration.
But simply recovering from this storm isn't enough. We have to be ready for the next one and the next one to follow, in Kipnuk and in every village, because these once-in-a-century storms are now arriving seemingly every year, and we have to prepare. We have to prepare for that.
One issue, one issue that I have not been as successful in translating to DC, is how imperative public broadcasting is across rural Alaska. The administration, you know this full well, sought to rescind all funding for public radio and TV, even though Congress had already recognized the need, we'd already said, “this is important.” And we provided the funding for it.
So, I stood up, I fought to have it reinstated, but we lost that vote. Even though at the very time that we took the vote, it was like two o'clock in the morning. And what was happening in real time, they had just had this earthquake over in Russia and the people in Unalaska and the people in Kodiak and the people in False Pass were listening to KUCB, and they were listening to the public radio in Kodiak. And they were waiting to hear whether they needed to move to safety.
And I shared that on the floor of the United States Senate. And I tried to explain to them, I tried to explain to people who live in nice, safe homes what it means. What it means to have warnings of ice conditions upriver on the Kuskokwim during breakup. How important it is for the people of Selawik to know we're still on boiled water notice. What it means to be listening to the radio and hear a birthday greeting from your grandchild who lives in another community, and you haven't seen them in a while, because our communities are not connected by road.
And now, now I'm explaining what it means for communities like Kotzebue and Kwigillingok to have the latest storm updates from KOTZ and KYUK. And I'm so grateful for the extraordinary support, the extraordinary support that has come from so many who have reached into their pockets, philanthropic groups that have come together across the country to provide for donations to help public broadcasting here in Alaska and beyond.
It does help that Senator Sullivan and I were able to get funding for fourteen of the stations here in the state, not all of them, but fourteen.
But that’s one-time money. That's this year.
What about next year?
What about those who are in fear of that next tsunami warning, that next storm? We need to make sure that people understand the value of what it means to our communities to have this communications infrastructure that helps us all.
A couple months ago, in August, I was in Napakiak. I went out there with the Secretary of Housing. It's great to be there, to see the resilience of this community. They've got a Tri-Party Coalition is formed by the city, the Tribe, and the Native Corporation, and really working very well together. They're planning, they're planning for their own retreat from the threats.
The new school there at Napakiak is built on higher ground. I think we were perhaps maybe the first non-contractor people to go in. And I kind of like, knocked down the door and said, “Can I come in and look?”
And they said, “No.”
I'm like, “if I take off my boots, can I?”
“Yeah.”
It was beautiful. But now we know that it served as the higher ground as the evacuation point during the typhoon, sheltering more than 100 community members. Walter Nelson is the managed retreat coordinator there, and he has said that this storm was the worst-case scenario that they had imagined.
I think about, had they not begun preparation, would it have been worse in Napakiak. But I highlight Napakiak because recovery efforts are in just so many of our villages are just beginning, and it really does take all of us. And I've focused a lot in my comments today on the Y-K area, because this is where we have seen the most devastating impact.
But all of our communities face challenges. I mean, my heart has just been broken, broken down in communities where we have seen landslides, whether in Wrangell, in Ketchikan, in Haines, in Sitka. Salmon disasters across our communities in so many parts, but particularly in the Yukon and the Kuskokwim.
And then we have disasters that impact our ability, again, to connect with one another, like when you have ice scouring that cuts broadband and connectivity on the North Slope.
There was so much that I wanted to share with you today. So much I wanted to speak with you about: subsistence, food security. There's just so much there.
What I will say is, is that no matter where you are, what you're facing right now, standing together moves things forward and makes things better.
We were able to work together to secure advanced appropriations for the IHS, and now the government shutdown that we are experiencing does not have nearly the same effect on Tribal members. So, that was very important.
We're now focused on storm recovery, building resilience for future storms, where you have the commitment from so many to move forward and to help you with that.
But as we look to the future, we know where our priority should be. Our priority is with our children.
We need to prioritize Native children, youth, and families. So, 12 years ago, we created the Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children. And now, now it's time to fulfill their recommendations through legislation.
So, I've released a draft, it addresses a whole litany of issues. It's Tribal child welfare programs, it’s education, it's maternal and mental health, it's substance abuse, it's child nutrition, it's homelessness, it's juvenile justice, it's victim services.
And I am so, I'm really very grateful we got such good input. On Monday, we held a workshop, and we solicited ideas from young and old. Because we said, “this is how you should direct your future: it’s you, your voices.”
There were some hard, hard subjects. But we don't run from the hard subjects, we have to have the hard conversations and do the hard work to find the solutions.
So, as we navigate challenging times, I think it just feels right to focus on the children. It's a reminder of what our priorities should be, on our communities and the good that we do for one another. On how we can help one another, how we can lift one another up. I think that feels like the least that we can do right now. So, I'm glad to be with people who live that same approach.
You know how honored I am with my Tlingit name, Aan Shaawátk’i, Lady of the Land. But I am equally, equally honored by the name gifted to me by the Aleut people of King Cove, Sixsadag^ulux, which means “never breaks in two.”
There's a lot in this land that could break us in two, but we are resilient.
We will overcome storms, we will overcome shutdowns, and everything that comes in our way, because when we stand strong, we stand united.
So, thank you for the immense honor of knowing you, of sharing with you and your communities, and being present with you today.
Gunalchéesh.
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