106 STRONG: The Rally for History, Culture, and Sovereignty

West Front Lawn, United States Capitol | November 9, 2026

Closing Remarks

Greg Werkheiser, Attorney, Cultural Heritage Partners 

Thank you, Prince [Albert, III].  Thank you, Martin [Luther King III].

And thank you to everyone who has raised their voice here today. Today is truly a feat of courage and community.

Before we leave this place, as I look out at your faces, I ask a final question.

With everything happening in America and around the world, why this battle?

Wars are raging. Families struggling. Communities divided. A climate crisis. Injustice and suffering that demand our attention.

So why, amid all these urgent concerns, have we gathered at the United States Capitol to fight for historic places?

It is because these places hold something that every generation needs—and that no generation can afford to lose. They hold our memory.

The stories of our triumphs and our failures. Our courage and our cruelty. Our aspirations and our unfinished work. And within those stories lies something even more precious than memory: Wisdom.

The wisdom gleaned from the journeys of those before us. Who fought for freedom, built our villages, towns, and cities, defended their homelands, and struggled to make this nation a more perfect union.

And wisdom is no luxury in troubled times. Indeed, it is the only thing that makes it possible to find our way through to the other side.

Knowledge tells us what we can do. Wisdom tells us what we should do.

That is why these places matter. They are witnesses to our history. They remind us who we have been. They challenge us to decide who we will become.

We’ve gathered today where our presidents take the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And before us stands something just as important. The American people.

Tribal elders. Preservation leaders. Architects. Archaeologists. Historians. Civil rights advocates. Conservationists. Americans from every corner of this country. More than 1,200 organizations, representing millions of people, united by a simple conviction: Our history belongs to all of us. And all of us deserve a voice in its future.

Look around you. This is what America looks like when we remember what we owe one another.

For sixty years, Section 106 has embodied a profoundly American idea. Before the federal government destroys something that matters to a community, it ought to find out what is there. It ought to listen to the people who know it. And it ought to consider whether there is a better way. That is not radical. That is responsible government.

But now we are told by President Trump and Senators Lee, Capito, Heinrich, and Whitehouse that we must choose between building our future and respecting our past. But that is a false choice. We can build highways, homes, hospitals, and energy projects while protecting the places that tell our nation's story.

What we cannot do is build a better America by silencing Americans. What we cannot do is honor Tribal sovereignty by diminishing the voices of sovereign Tribal Nations. And what we cannot do is call the destruction of our inheritance a necessary price of progress.

My friends, the hours and days ahead may be difficult. There are those saying that with so much money to be made from data centers and mining that the outcome is inevitable. That the votes, like the money, are already counted.

But look at what we have built together. In a few short months, people from across this country have come together—not because we agree on everything, but because we recognize something larger than our differences. That the places we inherit are not ours to squander.

So we will carry this fight into the United States Senate. Into the House of Representatives. Into the federal agencies entrusted with protecting our national inheritance. Into the courts, where the rule of law must still mean something. Into the voting booth in the districts of those who support this bill and those with the backbone to oppose it. And whenever necessary, peacefully into the streets, exercising the freedoms that generations before us struggled to secure.

Because the stakes are larger than one terrible bill. Larger than one administration. Larger than one election. They reach into the lives of our children, and their children. Into the country they will inherit. And into the example America sets for a world still looking to this nation for evidence that freedom, justice, and self-government can endure.

I began by speaking about the wisdom that history gives us. But history asks something of us in return. It asks us to be worthy of what we have inherited. To protect what cannot be replaced. And to remember that we are not merely the beneficiaries of history. We are its authors.

Someday, those who come after us will look back on this moment. They will ask what we did when our nation's memory was threatened. When communities were told their voices no longer mattered. When the places that carry our ancestors’ stories were under siege.

Let them say of us: They stood together. They were unafraid. They spoke when silence would have been easier. And they left us a country worthy of its promises.

We came here to defend history. We leave here determined to make it. Thank you.