Rewriting History

Floor Speech

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight during Black History Month to raise the alarm on the rewriting of American history that is happening at our national parks, our museums, our monuments, and our public spaces as the Trump administration is attempting to erase the histories, the stories, and the lives of our Black, Native, Chicano, AAPI, and LGBT+ communities.

I rise tonight to talk about what this means for the past, the present, and the future of this country because, as they say, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, and this country has come too far to forget.

Mr. Speaker, how we as a nation remember matters, what we remember matters, and who we remember matters because this collective memory is the map on which we build our future. Our Nation's national parks, our monuments, our memorials, our museums, and our public spaces are the places in which those memories are inscribed.

Now, I begin tonight with a simple premise: that the act of remembering is a deeply political and a deeply powerful act. So, too, is the act of erasure, of erasing and removing history. These are not merely acts of omission, but acts of power, acts of dominance, and, yes, even acts of violence.

Erasing is about telling people that their histories and their people do not matter. That your history, your ancestors, and your collective memories of pride, joy, struggle, resilience, and generations that came before do not matter.

This is exactly what this administration is doing. They are trying to take us back to a time where only the stories and lives of the few mattered. It began a year ago, on day one, when the President signed an executive order renaming Denali, the tallest mountain in Alaska and most sacred site to multiple indigenous communities, renamed after a President from Ohio without any consultation to the indigenous people of Alaska.

That same day, the President signed an executive order mandating the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices across the Federal Government, leading to the illegal firing and loss of leadership across Federal and military service.

In March, he signed another executive order called the ``Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History'' order, directing the Smithsonian and the Secretary of the Interior to remove what they called improper partisan ideology from exhibits and materials across the country.

It targeted mentions of slavery, Native American history, Chicano history, AAPI history, LGBTQ+ history, climate change, and other topics which they claimed were divisive, anti-American, and created ``national shame,'' thereby erasing the history of tens of millions of Americans.

Secretarial orders, including those at the Department of the Interior, that have led to the censorship of government websites and the tearing down of signs at multiple monuments, references to the histories of famous leaders removed from websites, national holidays erased, rewriting history and removing us from the American story.

What is this all in service of? It is promoting some singular narrative to undermine the recognition of this Nation's true history and its long history of struggles that have shaped it, from overcoming the loss of land, the killing and displacement of indigenous people, slavery, Jim Crow, internment, and the continued struggle for justice across our communities.

This is our true history as a nation, not something we should be ashamed of, but what has shaped who we are. These actions erase the story of what makes this great Nation beautiful: it is multicultural, multiracial, indigenous, Black, Brown, White, and diversity that makes us who we are.

This erasure delegitimizes the movements and wins we have secured generation after generation, from the struggle for civil rights at Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, slavery at Gettysburg, and westward expansion into Tribal lands that secured Tribal sovereignty.

References to transgender were erased from the signs at Stonewall, where the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ movement began. References to indigenous history were removed in places where people came from, including the battleground at Little Big Horn in Montana. Memories of Black and Native history were erased from Independence Park, Cape Hatteras, and The National Mall.

Remembrance of internment of Japanese Americans was removed from Jamaica Bay in New York City. References to climate change were removed at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and Acadia National Park in Maine. Public institutions and gift shops were banned from carrying books. In America, they were banned.

In addition, the Department of Education is seeking to defund schools, universities, and institutions for teaching the history of the people and students and children who are there.

Mr. Speaker, these are not isolated incidents. This is a wholesale attack on American history, on American democracy, on American progress, and the stories of our people. It is, at its core, about power. As George Orwell noted: ``Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.''

This is not, as this administration claims, about patriotism or telling the American story. It is about controlling knowledge and history itself. Those whose histories, whose stories, and whose people are lifted up, especially as this country is celebrating its 250th birthday.

We are here tonight to say: Not on our watch. We will not let this country slide into an Orwellian or authoritarian state where we cannot even tell our own histories.

We are here to tell the truth, just as history does.

Matsui).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman for her extraordinary words and for sharing her story with us tonight.

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Ms. STANSBURY. Scanlon).
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Ms. STANSBURY. Tokuda).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.
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Ms. STANSBURY.

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