Don Young Alaska Native Health Care Land Transfers Act of 2022

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 441) to provide for the conveyance of certain property to the Tanana Tribal Council located in Tanana, Alaska, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the matter under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 441, the Don Young Alaska Native Health Care Land Transfers Act of 2022, serves as a testament to the legacy of advocacy that the late dean of the House and our friend, Don Young of Alaska, provided Alaska Natives.

This particular legislation was something that he was urging--as recently as right before his passing, before we all left--upon me to move as quickly as possible, and I am glad that we have been able to get it to this point.

This legislation directs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to convey certain parcels of land to the Tanana Tribal Council, the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium for the purpose of expanding social and healthcare services.

Together, these three nonprofit entities support the Alaska Native communities as Tribal health and social service providers in both urban and rural settings.

The Tanana Tribal Council, located in Tanana, Alaska, provides outpatient services to Alaska Natives. Since the council is rurally located, healthcare services are often underfunded and harder to come by.

This legislation's conveyance of approximately 11.25 acres of land to the council will allow it to build a new facility and expand existing services to its Indian Health Service beneficiaries, thereby increasing the quality of care available.

The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium delivers care to Alaska Natives as one of the oldest and largest Native-run healthcare organizations in the United States. The consortium operates the Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital, a 25-bed critical access facility located in Sitka, Alaska, which is in serious need of renovation due to its age and current condition.

This legislation's conveyance of roughly 10.87 acres of land to the consortium will facilitate the planned modernization of the hospital by granting the consortium title to the acreage.

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium serves the healthcare needs of thousands of Alaska Native and American Indian patients in south-central Alaska. The consortium provides medical services at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska, and provides wellness programs, disease research and prevention, rural provider trainings, as well as water and sanitation systems construction.

This legislation will grant the consortium ownership over two parcels of land totaling approximately 3.5 acres, thus allowing the consortium to streamline its operations and conduct building refurbishments without reliance on the Federal Government.

My late friend and colleague, Representative Don Young, championed these three land transfers, now combined into H.R. 441, to promote health equity among rural Alaska Natives. His work on behalf of Indian Country never ceased throughout his time in Congress.

I am grateful that we are here today to support this legislation and these three critical Tribal health entities in Alaska, a reminder of the support that Indian Country received from Don Young.

I urge my colleagues to support the bill and call for its swift passage, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Bentz for his work on these pieces of legislation today and acknowledge his work on Representative Meng's H.R. 3525, in particular. There were difficult things to navigate there, and we appreciate the effort on his part. Hopefully, we were as cooperative.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Reserving the right to object, I would like to begin my brief comments here this evening by acknowledging the Senator from New Mexico and agreeing so much with him on this very, very important issue as we seek to protect objects of patrimony, whether in New Mexico or in my State of Alaska or in the home State of the chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. 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.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 441, as amended, that will direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services, acting through the Indian Health Service, to convey by warranty deed and for health- related activities certain parcels of Federal land to the Tanana Tribal Council, the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

This amended text is a compilation of three separate Indian healthcare land transfer bills for the State of Alaska introduced by the late Congressman Don Young. All three of these bills were favorably reported out of the Committee on Natural Resources by unanimous consent during this Congress.

The first land transfer directed under this act includes 10.25 acres of land in Tanana, Alaska. In 1995, the Tanana Tribal Council assumed responsibility for healthcare services from the Indian Health Service. The parcel of land the Tribe is seeking title to encompasses a portion of a former Indian Health Service hospital site. The council intends to use the land to construct a new community wellness clinic, expand eldercare, and develop nursing services.

The second transfer includes 10.87 acres of land that is part of the Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital campus in Sitka, Alaska. The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is a Native-run nonprofit health organization that assumed responsibility for providing healthcare services from the Indian Health Service in 1976 and currently operates its Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital in Sitka. The consortium intends to use the parcel to support future hospital expansion and replacement.

The third land transfer under this act includes 3.5 acres of land that is part of the Alaska Native Medical Center campus in Anchorage. In 1999, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium assumed responsibility for healthcare services from the Indian Health Service, and the consortium provides comprehensive medical services at the Alaska Native Medical Center.

The ANTHC is the largest Native-run nonprofit health organization in the United States, serving more than 178,000 Native Alaskans. Gaining title to the parcels will enable the ANTHC to streamline its operations, update and refurbish, and expand the hospital's capacity to offer health services to patients outside of Anchorage.

Before I conclude, I will take a moment to again recognize all the hard work Congressman Young put into serving his constituents and, notably, his work for Native people in Alaska during his tenure in Congress. I think it is more than appropriate that we are renaming this legislation after the late dean of the House, further memorializing his efforts for Native Alaskans. Mr. Young will be deeply missed by all of us.

Madam Speaker, I urge adoption of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. President, I rise today to ask the Senate to send H.R. 2930, the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act, to the President's desk for his signature.

The need for this legislation is pretty straightforward.

In 2016, the Governor of the Pueblo of Acoma learned that a sacred ceremonial shield had been stolen and was about to be sold to the highest bidder in Paris. When Governor Riley informed me about this robbery of the Pueblo's cultural patrimony, I called on the State Department to take all possible action to halt the auction. Thankfully, intense public outcry and diplomatic pressure were enough to halt the illegal sale of a Tribe's cultural patrimony.

Finally, in November 2019, more than 3 years after the shield was put on the auction block, it was voluntarily returned to the Pueblo. However, this only happened because of intense public outcry and notoriety. In most cases like this, the item has been sold or simply disappears into a private collection.

Under current Federal law, it is a crime to sell certain protected Native American cultural objects, things like the Acoma shield, here in the United States. But there is still no Federal law prohibiting the export of stolen cultural items and requiring the cooperation of foreign governments in recovering them.

In many cases, Tribes in New Mexico and across our Nation have been forced to effectively pay a ransom to recover their sacred items or had to stand by and watch the sale of their priceless religious and cultural items in international markets.

The lack of an explicit ban on trafficking these items to foreign countries was actually cited by the French Government when they initially declined to stop the auction of the Acoma shield.

Grave robbing is illegal in every single State in the United States, and yet we allow Tribal religious objects, many of which were stolen literally from grave sites, to be exported and sold in foreign auction houses. We cannot let this loophole that allows foreign trade in Native religious heritage to go on for even one more day, and I would urge my colleagues to pass this bill today and end this awful practice.

Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2930, which was received from the House and is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, through the Chair, I just want to take a moment to articulate the same commitment publicly, and we look forward to working with my colleague from Alaska, who has been so helpful in putting the STOP Act to a successful resolution. I look forward to working with her to get the Don Young package moved as well.

With your permission, through the Chair, far be it from me to delay the passage of this law, which I know has been worked on by Native people and staffers for many, many years, but I just wanted to make my private commitment to the Senator from Alaska, the vice chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, public.

We are absolutely committed, one way or another, to passing the Don Young lands act, and I just wanted to make that clear on the Senate floor.