Federal funding for education has been a recent target in the Trump administration’s quest to trim government costs. But the cuts haven’t just been happening at the Department of Education — they’re also happening at the Bureau of Indian Education.
The Bureau of Indian Education – which is under the Department of the Interior – funds schools that serve Indigenous students at reservations around the United States and operates two colleges. After a recent round of cuts, the Native American Rights Fund filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s efforts.
The nonprofit, based in Colorado, argued in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that laying off teachers and other school personnel at the colleges and reducing funding overall is a violation of long-standing treaties between tribes and the U.S. government. Native American Rights Fund senior staff attorney Jacqueline De León is leading the legal effort.
“The federal government has an ongoing treaty obligation to provide education to Native students and that includes post-secondary education,” said De León, an enrolled member of the Isleta Pueblo tribe.
De León said these changes were made without input from tribes. They included layoffs of about a quarter of the staff at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico, the two schools represented in the lawsuit. When funding was cut for the Bureau of Indian Education, that led to the layoffs. Those changes affected students at the colleges, De León said, with some showing up to classes that had no instructor, trash piling up because there were no custodians, occasional power outages, closed student centers, and delayed financial aid.
The biggest issue is that these changes were made without warning.
“The federal government has to consult with tribes before they make changes to education, including to staffing and they have a responsibility to fulfill those education requirements separate and apart from policy decisions or politics.” De León said. “Federal law requires certain steps to be taken before there are changes in Native American education, which again are enacted in fulfillment of treaty obligations.”
De León said a ruling could affect schools across the American Indian Higher Education Consortium of 37 tribal institutions across the country, including those that serve students in Mountain West states. That includes Diné College in Arizona, the Institute of American Indian Arts and Navajo Technical University in New Mexico, and Salish Kootenai College in Montana.
Doug Bergum, the Department of Interior secretary, is named as athe defendant in the suit and has not yet filed a response, according to court filings.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
