Almost a year after passing the Senate, a bill creating a commission to study the issues facing Native American children sponsored by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., went before a House committee Wednesday.
The bill would establish an 11-member commission within the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Tribal Justice, according to a memo. The bill passed the Senate unanimously in June 2015.
Heitkamp testified before the House Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs Wednesday, and pointed to high rates of depression and suicide, poverty and substance abuse in Native American communities.
"If hope were a strategy, this problem would be solved," she told the subcommittee. "We have to stop hoping and start acting."
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., is also a sponsor of the bill.
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The commission would include Indian affairs experts, including in the fields of juvenile justice, social work, education as well as mental and physical health, according to a memo. Three years after the commission is appointed and funded, it will issue a report with recommendations on how to better use existing resources, increase coordination, enhance private sector practices, along with other goals.
The subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, told Heitkamp that he has seen other appointed commissions fail to get results, and added that he'd like to "keep politics out of it."
"We need results," Young said.
Heitkamp responded that the effort is "something I intend to ... stay very engaged in."
Heitkamp first introduced the legislation in 2013, making it her first bill after elected to the Senate in 2012.
The House subcommittee took no formal action on the bill Wednesday.
