Aboard Air Force One
En Route Phoenix, Arizona
5:07 P.M. EDT
MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Hi, everybody. Hello, hello.
Okay. Very excited about this trip. It's going to be a fantastic trip. As you know, we are headed to Phoenix, Arizona, where the president will visit the Gila River Indian Community. This historic visit delivers on the president's promise to visit Indian Country and builds on actions the president and the vice president has taken to support Tribal Nations.
Under President Biden, we saw the largest direct federal investment in Tribal Nations in history, with $32 billion provided by the American Rescue Plan and $13 billion through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build high-speed Internet, roads, bridges, public transit, clean water, and improve sanitation in Tribal communities.
In particular, the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona received $84 million to build a pipeline that will help irrigate its community's crops while conserving water to help al- — alleviate ongoing drought conditions.
The first lady has also been a champion for Native communities, visiting Indian Country 10 times to highlight the Biden-Harris administration's historic investments in youth mental health, Native language revitalization, and infrastructure and economic development. And she has worked tirelessly to improve access to cancer screening and cancer care for Native communities.
Tomorrow, the president will take a critical step in order to usher in the next era of the federal-Tribal relationships by fully acknowledging the harms of the past. This historic presidential apology for the Federal Indian Boarding School era will acknowledge that i- — if we truly love our country, we must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful, and we must learn from that history so that it never repeated — it is never repeated.
