Native American Child Protection Act passes Senate, championed by Ruben Gallego in the House

The National Children’s Alliance estimates that Native children have the highest rate of victimization when it comes to child abuse. A bill introduced last year by Congressman Ruben Gallego to help tribes address this pressing issue finally got Senate approval this month and is now headed to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The Native American Child Protection Act is supposed to build upon a law that Sen. John McCain championed in 1990 by further equipping tribes with the tools they need to treat, prevent, investigate and prosecute cases of family violence, child abuse and neglect.

McCain’s Indian Child Protection and Family Violence Prevention Act neither got fully funded nor reauthorized. So Senator-elect Gallego, who will sit in the upper chamber, shared a sense of honor in broadening his bold vision for Indian Country.

“Had I won or lost this Senate race,” Gallego told KJZZ News, “it would have been great to know, at a minimum, that we’re going to be able to save lives and families in the process. Now I get to at least have six years of overseeing this program, making sure that it actually helps our Native American brothers and sisters.”

A key provision of his bill expands eligibility to urban Natives in the Valley and beyond.

His rationale for adding this amendment is based on the fact roughly 7 out of 10 Native Americans live off tribal lands. By leaning on already trusted urban Indian organizations, Gallego explained they’ll play a critical role in “stemming the tide of child abuse within Native American families.”

“If we want to attack the problem of child abuse and domestic violence,” he added, “you have to go where they are, and that means not just on reservation land.”

Now, if signed into law, organizations like Native American Connections and NATIVE HEALTH of Phoenix would be eligible to apply for grant funding and provide additional treatment services more than three decades after McCain brought forth his bill.

“We haven’t been paying much attention to this particular act before, because we weren’t included,” said Walter Murillo, CEO for NATIVE HEALTH of Phoenix. “Now all of a sudden, it becomes accessible to us.”

Murillo, who is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and serves as board president for the National Council of Urban Indian Health, mentioned that part of this systemic problem stems from generations of federal Indian boarding schools.

“Their conditions and their trauma travel with them,” he elaborated, “and so those resources need to be available in urban areas as well as on reservations.”

More than 4 out of 5 Native American men and women experience some form of violence — physical, emotional or sexual — throughout their lifetime.