Addressing the delegates, the Secretary of the Interior, Oscar L. Chapman, remarked, "The Ukrainian tradition is completely in harmony with the American tradition. A thousand years ago, before the existence of the North American continent was known, the great Kingdom of Kiev was the political and cultural creation of the Ukrainian people, the easternmost bastion of Western culture. Still later, the rising princes of Moscovy came to assert their mastery. The independence of Kiev vanished, and there began a long period of foreign rule, which unhappily exists to this day. But at the heart of the Ukrainian tradition lies the significant fact that although political independence was destroyed, the great desire for independence did not die."