Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski visited Wrangell last month and stopped by KSTK to talk about what the priorities are with the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. She became chairman this year after serving on the committee since 2003. She’s also the chairman of the subcommittee on Interior and Insular Affairs on the Appropriations Committee. That committee oversees the Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management. It oversees matters related to Native people and Park Service Lands.
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
One of the things that we have been working on and we were successful in passing legislation through the Senate at the very end of this last year was the establishment of a commission to look into Indian boarding schools around the country. And of course, here in Wrangell, that’s very relevant. Many Alaska Natives were sent to Wrangell from all parts of the state for their education at a very early age.
There is a history, unfortunately, a very tragic history, when our country really had as a policy, one of assimilation of native people, effectively trying to take the native out of the child in ways that were detrimental, were traumatic and were ongoing.
Another area that I have been focused on is making sure that women and girls, but particularly native women and girls, because our statistics in this area are just so troubled that they are unsafe, and so I’ve been working on issues related to murdered, missing Indigenous women, trying to better understand why we’re seeing the disproportionate number of those who go missing, or worse, who are found later murdered and why we have failed.
Those are two that are pending.
But I will tell you that one of the challenges that we’re facing as I go around the state, in various communities, is the issue of housing. We are seeing, whether it is in places here in Southeast or really all over the state, housing is so so very challenged.
I think the last thing that I would mention, I’m very cognizant that when we’re talking about health of people, it’s not just physical health, but it’s also mental health. It’s mental health that can be brought about because of levels of addiction, because of untreated or undiagnosed conditions and then individuals are not able to follow through. So it is something that, again, I want to have better understanding as to what more we can be doing.
The other thing that passed the Senate, that stuck out to me, was (promoting) veterinary services to improve public health in rural communities. Can you speak more about that?
To shine a light on an issue that many people just can’t relate to, but in rural Alaska or in certain reservations in the Lower 48 part, of the challenge that we have is we don’t have veterinarians out in so many parts of our state, right? We don’t have a veterinary school in Alaska, but we just have a shortage. And we have a lot of animals. We’ve got a lot of dogs, and so your dogs can’t get rabies vaccinations, your dogs can’t get spayed or neutered.
But the proposal that we have advanced, and that has passed the Senate, is one that allows those in the Public Health Service Corps to basically be delegated to provide for certain veterinary services, so that you can address some of the challenges that we have had.
A couple months ago, we talked about natural disaster forecasting of all types. Where are we now with that?
I so wish that I could tell you that we were successful in passing the landslides legislation before the end of the year.
We were not able to get it included, not because there was opposition to what we had incorporated, which was more monitoring for landslides, but also other disasters.
We have reengaged on this issue to make sure that there are no barriers to moving it forward quickly. There should be no cause for concern or issue about making sure that we are able to better monitor for safety within our communities.
These are important to people and to save lives.
Is there anything else you would like to say?
I just want to give a big shout out to the community of Wrangell. As everyone knows, Wrangell was front and center when it came to Christmas in Washington, D.C. this year.
I hope that the community feels proud, because everywhere I went back in Washington, the comments that I was getting were about, ‘Hey, you know this Wrangell, this is an amazing place.’ But I just want to brag on the Wrangell kids, because they knew that the invitation for them to be there was special, and they showed it. They were dressed up. They looked like a million bucks. They acted mature, and they were engaged and curious and I was just so proud of it.
