to order. the subcommittee is meeting today to share testimony on a single bill on a very important piece of legislation. it is hr 5444. the truth in healing commission on indianborder school policies at . by representative charisse of kansas. under committee rules are opening statements on hearings to the chair and ranking minority member or their designees will allow us to help members keep to their schedules. therefore i ask unanimous consent of all other members opening statements he made part of the hearing record by 5 pm today or those of the hearing projected first. hearing no objection so ordered. without objection the chair may also declare a recess object to the chair. i want to note we will be having both later on so i might recall that witness and i thank everybody for their patients. i've described in the notice the documents and motions submitted to the electronic age and rc mail.house.gov. members should provide a hard copy. please note members are responsible fortheir own microphones . as members can be muted by staff only to avoid inadvertent background noise. finally members and witnesses should inform committee staff immediately. i also asked unanimous consent that representatives davis of kansas have permission to sit on the dais and participate in the hearing. hearing no objection so ordered . i will begin by recognizing myself for my opening statement. good afternoon. today we are dedicated to our full hearing and attention to hr 5444, the truth and healing commission on indian boarding schools act. this bill is imperative to recognize the atrocities of the federal government in these boarding school policies. it is critical to provide a voice to survivors, family members and tribal nations. it is necessary of all to better understand this dark history so that we can grow and heal from it. along with this bill i'm very proud of the work that my secretary deb holland and department of interior are taking to begin to address this issue . with that i will turn over the remainder of my time for opening statements to representative charisse david sue as a sponsor of this legislation and an incredible leader on this issue as well as one of the firstnative american women in congress . >> thank you chairwoman hernandez and also ranking member westerman. thank you for this hearing today. i appreciate the opportunity to provide these remarks and the truth in healing commission on indian policies act. i am a proud member of the nation of wisconsin and my grandparents little george or both survivors and i'm honored to be one of the first native american women ever elected to congress. i would not be here today were it not for the resilience of my ancestors and those who came before me. the policies and assimilation practices of the united states and assimilating native americans in residential boarding schools across the country. children were coerced and compelled to attend boarding schools away from their home . many children did not return to their families or their communities. those that did return lost generations of cultural knowledge, stories and traditions and communities lost their language keepers, cultural practitioners and future leaders . as a cochair i worked with other native members and our colleagues to ensure the needs of tribal nations are prioritized and our voices are heated in discussion. that's what i worked with native american caucus cochair tom cole to introduce 5444 and work across the aisle to gather bipartisan support. this legislation will establish a formal commission to investigate and document the attempted termination of cultures and languages of indigenous people and assimilating these practices that occurred against native people through us indian border school policy. this investigation will be documented and be culturally respectful and the commission will receive guidance from a truth in healing advisory board to develop recommendations for the federal government and a final report due no later than five years. this legislation builds on the important work being done at the department of the interior. we saw in volume one of their boarding school initiative report the separation of native children and families in the name of assimilation caused significant impact. this bill does not duplicate the efforts of the department of the interior but rather expands and continues to acknowledge that legacy with the help of survivors, tribal leaders, policy experts and communities that can guide this process and i'm sure you will learn morefrom our witnesses today the impact of the boarding school policy touched all native people . both past and present and i'd like to acknowledge how painful and uncomfortable these conversations are going to be. i honor and thank the witnesses and survivors here today are brave enough to inform my colleagues about the impact wording school policies have had in their lives and their community. there were 14 federal indian boarding schools incampus . one sits and is a shawnee indian manual labor school that is now preserved as a shawnee indian mission state historic site. it operated from 1838 to 1862 at one time and rolled, have nearly 200 children and in lawrence kansas the industrial trainingschool was one of the largest early boarding schools in the country . while i was fortunate to ask attend the nation's university there's still the history that must not be forgotten. the campus includes known gravesites of over 100 native children who died at the school when it was implemented . this commission will build off secretary hollins initiative by collecting information outside boarding school system. the department of the interior's efforts along with the support of this bill shows that the branches of federal government are ready to work towards fully acknowledging its contribution to this history. as federal partners we go for native children and lost relatives the resources to investigate and fully understand how we got here. establishing a truth commission will bring survivors, experts, partners and leaders to the table to continue this investigation and develop a culturally respectful healing process. as if native children were able to endure and survive the indian boarding school era in our nation we should be able to find it in ourselves to investigate what happened to our relatives and work towards a brighter path for the next sevengenerations . thank you to chairwoman for calling this hearing and i'm looking forward to working with the subcommittee and with my colleagues. i healed back. >> thank you representative davis. this will be i believe a very powerful hearing that we hear today from all witnesses. i would now like to recognize acting ranking member over before his opening statement. >> thank you madam chair and thank you to you and to the author for bringing this bill forward and for convening this hearing on a very important topic. the events that catalyzed the need for a hearing like this are nothing sort short of horrific and i think if you look at the report that was just issued yesterday either department of the interior it seems very clear that the harm that was done to native american tribes was unfortunately inflected deliberately with the bull of not only forcing cultural assimilationbut also of achieving territorial disposition . so i expect that we are going to hear some horrifying things in this hearing and rightfully so and i really like the title of this bill because i think this is what we're all after. the truth in healing commission. we need to achieve both of those things to not only write the wrongs of the past but to try to achieve some kind of healing so that we can emerge together as one society which i think is the goal of everyone inthis room . i would like to add some respectful suggestions both to the author and the chair because i would like to see this legislation be bipartisan and i think it deserves to be. one of the things i hope we're going to have a discussion about today is whether or not this commission should have subpoena authority. as i'm sure most in the room are aware it's not the norm for a commission like this to have subpoena authority. in fact there are standing committees in the house that don't even have subpoena authority so i understand the goal of having subpoena authority that we the truth in healing commission however i'd like to everyone to think about the fact that assuming that this is going to be an adversarial relationship with the people that testify we might be doing a disservice to the goals of the commission so subpoena authority while it might serve the goal of truth might be adversarial to the goal of healing and i thinkthat we should have that discussion . because i'm not sure that that serves the purpose of the commission. i also think we need to be very clear about the taxpayer resources expended here at appropriately so. we need to have a discussion about whether or not service should be compensated as the bill is written right now it's compensated at level 4 of the executive schedule which is almost$200,000 a year and i would hope it would be more of a community service goal . and i also think we need to talk about the total cost of the bill. i'm not opposed to investing substantial taxpayer resources but i think we need to be explicit about what those resources are and right now at the end of the bill merely says that the necessary resources such sums as may be necessary are made available until expended so we need to quantify what those sums are and write it in the bill so everyone is clear on that and so that it would withstand challenge in the future. those are a couple of respectful suggestions madam chair but i'm looking forward to testimony today. it is a very difficult topic for all of us but i amvery supportive of the goal of achieving both truth and healing here and looking forward to our time together . >> thank you representative. now i will transition to our panel of witnesses for today. before introducing them i will remind our witnesses they are encouraged to participate in a written diversity survey created by the congressional office of diversity and inclusion witnesses may report for further information. under our committee rules all statements are limited to five minutes but you may submit a longer statement for the record if you choose and i would simply note that we have received your statements and we have read them. thank you for the witness statements you already sent us. when you begin the time will begin counting down and it will turn orange when you have one minute remaining. i recommend members and witnesses joining remotely lock the timer on their screens. when you go over the allotted time i will my gavel and kindly ask you to please wrap up your statements. after your testimony is complete please remember to mute yourself to avoid any inadvertent background noise. i will allow the entire panel to testify before webegin to question portion of the witnesses . as we've noted we are asking for testimony from survivors and those who have firsthand knowledge of a very difficult and dark period of our history. before i introduce our first witness i want to advise members, viewers and listeners that some of the testimony we are about to hear today may be graphic and disturbing. we are simply noting that so that everyone tuning in and listening will be aware of such possibility. the chair now recognizes this. james lavelle senior who is the first vice president of the national native american boarding school healing coalition and all boarding schoolsurvivor. mister james l you are recognized for five minutes . >> thank you. my name is james william lavelle senior. and in my culture i am also known as a name known as best runner i was named after an uncle who had passed away in a tradition in our culture to be named after someone who came before us . i'm a product of a mixed marriage .my father was french and irish and my mother was eskimo or otherwise known as in you pack as we say. she came from a little village above the arctic circle. on the bering state coast. i was born in fairbanks alaska in 1947. and i just turned 75 years old a few weeks ago. i come to you as a very assimilated and acculturated man. when i first went to boarding school i believe i was truly bilingual and i could speak inupak and could speak english but i suppressed my wishes to speak my english because of the horrors i saw and witnessed when other children were severely beaten for speaking their language. i'm also a vietnam era veteran. i have a younger brother who was killed in vietnam. i am married for 52 years. i have three children and seven grandchildren. i'm part of the village tried . and a shareholder in one of our corporation in alaska. i've been waiting 67 years to tell this story. while i might have received an education or white man's education in the process i lost my own language. my own culture, my traditions. and today i cannot speak my language nor could i conduct all those wonderful traditional activities we call subsistence hunting fishing and gathering. i guess i'd like to give you an idea how i got started. when my father died my mother was immediately asked to give us up to adoption or to boarding school and she chose to give us up to boarding school. in 1955 i went to wrangell institute for the first six years that i was there. and witnessed so many atrocities it almost became normal or normalized. at the fairbanks airport we were given nametags. we were sent on our way to all of our flights. it was terrifying for many because transportation in the mid-50s was not what we know today. i met other children that were tethered together with ropes and i was tied together with ropes tothe other children . we had took almost 2 days to get to wrangell, the institute i was at. and while there, we were stripped naked at the boys dorm. had our hair short and to where we were bald. all are close were confiscated. we were standing naked among other children who were foreign to each other. put in showers that were strange to us. given numbers for names and many children had difficult names and were often times only referred to by their number . every step of the way there was punishment for speaking our language. either in the dormitories or in the classroom or in the mess hall. boys and girls were all equally psychologically, sexually and spiritually abused and i have many witnesses to those atrocities . you. >> thank you mister bell for sharing the story that you have been waiting to tell her so long of your loss. the chair will now recognize mister matthew bonnie who is a boarding school survivor and a citizen of the rosebud sioux tribe. mister barnum for five minutes. >> thank you madam chair. thank you for this opportunity to provide this testimony in support of the indian boarding school bill. my name is matthew. i am of the people who call the sue reservation home. i am the son of matthew war bonnet and danielle harris and great-grandson of dirty bird. i am 76 years old. the topic i am speaking about today the boarding schools and my experience with them is a difficult topic to talk about and it's hard to speak about it without making myself feel bad by bringing up these memories. but i agreed to speak only because my sisters leave me permission to speak but i am one of 10 siblings and we all attended the same boarding school. my mother and my father also attended boarding schools. i was only six years old when i was taken to the st. francis boarding school in south dakota in 1962. i attended this boarding school 24 seven for 10 months out of the year for eight years total and the majority of my childhood i left st. francis boarding school after the eighth grade in 1960. my boarding school experience is painful and traumatic. i remember when i first got to school. the priest took us to a big room which had 6 to 8 bathtubs in and placed all us middle guys, put us in one top and scrubbed us with a big brush. the brush made our skins and our backsides all law. and we had to have our haircut. the school then put all the little guys in the same dormitory . we were together in the first through fourth grades. nighttime we could hear all the children crying for their families. i remember seeing them. during the day i stayed at the school and corporal punishment was common. the priests would often get impatient and hit us with a strap. it was also punishment that we called the teeth which was a rope with several strands going off ofit . we were hit with this and the regular straps and sometimes they use a cattle prod on us. another way the priest disciplined us was to lock us out of the school during the cold winter. when this would happen to young guys would be shivering and crying and us older boys would take our coats off. and cover them. one time a priest through my older brother joe down a flight of stairs and he broke his arm. i think the priest was also abusing him in other ways. the priest also punished us isolating us and limiting our access to food. one time i got in trouble and my punishment was for 10 days i was separated from other kids and given only bread and water to eat. i don't even remember what i did to deserve that type of punishment . each june every parent would come and pick us up to go home for the summer. my parents, we were not allowed tospeak . allowed to speak english and latin. sometimes they taught us spanish as well. it was difficult to speak of to my parents and my language. that got away from us. but we were still trying hard to catch up with that ever since. i went to the high school at the pine ridge community high school in south dakota . i was always feeling very proud of our service people and people who served in the military and others. one day i was taught by high school students and told them about my dad's service in the army and how he got captured by the japanese and i said that he was captured and tortured by the japanese and each day they cut off the tow until all his toes were gone. one guy my cousin said to me your dad was never in the army. he was basically calling my dad a liar and got in a fight. when i got home my dad told me when he was in the first or second grade he ran away. and because of that he froze his toes off and when he died it was because gangrene setin . all us kids that attended boarding school never speak about our experience in the school. a lot of our family has never spoken to each other about it and our parents have never talked to us about it. iguess we just didn't want to hurt each other . and i'm hoping that by doing this discussion that many would recognize what happened to them those many years later. these boarding schools have caused longtime trauma for kids and many tried to cope with this trauma through alcohol and some people later became abused, later became of users themselves of their families andcommunities . i credit my dad for being there for me and helping me because of him i turned out the way i did. when i was at boarding school my dad taught me a song that gave me spiritual strength. the song has a simple translation. it simply says i live again. every day i would sing this song to myself before i went out toplay . the boarding school was sanctioned by the united states government and the government gave churches land so that they can patronize and modernize us and assimilate us. the church treated us wrong and i thank you for letting me testifytoday . >> thank you mister war bonnet for that moving testimony and sharing with us the song that helped you. the chair will now recognize doctor ramona klein who is also a boarding school survivor and a citizen of the turtle band of chippewa indians . for five minutes. >> you for this opportunity to testify in support of the indian boarding school. i am doctor ramona klein and enrolled member of the turt