Native American Child Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GALLEGO. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 1688, the Native American Child Protection Act.

I first want to thank my friend and the dean of the House, Congressman Don Young, for working with me on this bill to ensure Native American and Alaska Native Tribes have the resources they need to keep Native children safe from abuse and neglect.

Last week, I joined my colleagues in recognizing the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

When I was chairman of the Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States last Congress, I held the first-ever House committee hearing on MMIW, which paved the way for critical bills like the Not Invisible Act and Savanna's Act.

At that hearing, we learned that, in addition to experiencing incredibly high murder rates, one in three Native women experience domestic violence in their lives. That statistic is even more horrifying when we recognize that, in 49 to 70 percent of cases, men who abuse their partners also abuse their children.

Despite this fact, Tribes have never received the resources they need to address child abuse and neglect in their communities. My bill changes that.

My bill will improve the prevention, treatment, investigation, and prosecution of child abuse and neglect in Indian Country by ensuring Tribes have the resources they need to take care of Native children in culturally competent ways. It does so by modernizing and reauthorizing three programs originally passed as part of the Indian Child Protection and Family Violence Prevention Act.

The Indian Child Protection and Family Violence Prevention Act became law in 1990, after being authored by the late Arizona Senator John McCain in response to widespread reports that Native children were being physically and sexually abused in BIA-run boarding schools in the 1980s.

The original purpose of the law was to identify the scope of the underreported child abuse in Indian Country, fill gaps in Tribal child welfare services, improve coordination between child welfare and domestic violence programs, and provide funds for treatment in Indian Country.

But the horrible truth is that the grant programs created by this law in 1990 were never funded, never enacted, and were allowed to expire in 1997. My bill revives the three grant programs from the original act that are still sorely needed in Indian Country because the problems identified by Congress in 1990 still exist today.

Specifically, my bill does: one, provides Tribes with more funding for culturally competent child abuse treatment; two, allows Tribes to choose to partner with urban Indian organizations or Tribal consortiums to identify and treat victims of abuse; three, creates a national child resource and family services center to provide technical assistance and support to Tribes in maintaining child welfare programs; four, authorizes enough funds for every Tribe to hire at least one child welfare case manager to help investigate and prosecute instances of abuse; and, five, authorizes the only Tribal-specific grant program aimed at preventing child abuse in Indian Country.

A core part of the Federal Government's trust responsibility is protecting the most vulnerable members of indigenous communities, Native children. Right now, we are failing in that responsibility.

Passing this bill today allows us to take an important step forward in protecting Native children and upholding our trust responsibility to Tribes.

I am proud of the strong bipartisan support this legislation received in the Natural Resources Committee last year when it passed and when it passed by a voice vote in the House. I urge all of my colleagues in the House to join me once again in supporting this important piece of legislation.

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