The Trump administration’s proposed funding cuts by 90% for tribal colleges and universities surprised many last week, especially for a tribal university already impacted by federal layoffs since February.
Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, has faced numerous challenges since President Donald J. Trump took office in January, including losing nearly a quarter of its staff on Valentine’s Day, when the administration laid off all probationary federal employees. The layoffs cost the university 37 employees, who included kitchen workers, custodians, teachers, administrators and academic advisers. The university is one of two tribal colleges and universities that is federally controlled by the U.S. Department of Interior.
However, two federal judges later ordered those employees, as well as all federal probationary employees from six federal agencies who had been laid off, to be reinstated.
According to an Interior Department budget overview, the Trump administration has requested $22 million for all 37 tribal colleges and universities for 2026, compared to the $196 million appropriated for those programs in 2025.
“This is incredibly concerning,” said Moriah O’Brien, who serves as the vice president of Congressional and Federal Relations for the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the 35 accredited tribal colleges and universities and two developing institutions and based in Alexandria, Virginia.
TCUs receive core operational funds from three separate government agencies: Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Education. Think of the situation as a three-legged stool, O’Brien said. If even one leg is removed, the stool falls.
“I think someone may have misunderstood that because TCUs receive funding from a number of different federal agencies that they could somehow make up the difference or use other resources, but it really takes those three core funding streams in order for them to keep the lights on,” O’Brien said. “This is absolutely critical core operational funding.”
Tribal colleges and universities receive 74% of their total revenue from federal funding, the consortium told ICT during tribal college week in February.
More than 30,000 jobs are created across the local and regional economies near the tribal colleges and universities in 16 states where all these institutions are located – Montana, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Alaska, California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Michigan Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The majority of these jobs are tied to federal funding and would affect faculty and staff positions.
This federal funding cut would impact 80% of Indian Country, the approximately 160,000 Native students and community residents that these institutions serve, plus the more than 245 federally recognized tribes that have students studying in these postsecondary institutions.
RELATED: ‘Losing our voice, losing our space’
Unlike Harvard University or other major schools, TCUs don’t have massive endowments, O’Brien said. Rather, they heavily rely on this funding from the federal government.
“It would be difficult to quantify the exact impact on each TCU, but it would be extremely dire and they don’t have any other options to turn to,” O’Brien said.
A Bureau of Indian Education spokeswoman and the Bureau of Indian Affairs public affairs office declined to comment on the president’s proposed cuts. The Department of Agriculture’s public affairs office also declined to comment.
For Oglala Lakota College in western South Dakota, this funding loss could mean less financial aid for students, said college president Dawn Frank, Oglala Lakota. Frank said cuts to funding will directly impact these students, cutting student aid and forcing them to choose between continuing their education and supporting their livelihoods.
“We are part of one of the poorest counties in the United States,” Frank said. “These policies widen existing gaps and threaten educational attainment and workforce development. They also threaten tribal sovereignty by reducing access to higher education, particularly among low-income, non-traditional, first-generation students.”
Oglala Lakota College has campuses in Rapid City, South Dakota, and on the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River reservations, and has an enrollment of 1,188. A significant percentage of the students are non-traditional, meaning they’re working full-time or part-time jobs and caring for families of their own.
“(Tribal colleges) are change agents,” Frank said. “They change individual lives. They provide stability to families and also work in the form of employment on the reservation. … They provide hope.”
Haskell students who learned about the president’s proposed budget cuts expressed shock and dismay at the news.
“It’s an amazing school and I think cutting the funding is way out of line, especially for Native Americans,” said Creighton Youngbird, Cheyenne Arapahoe and a sophomore paraprofessional education major.
Stopping before the Haskell dining hall, Youngbird said the university provides an affordable education to Indigenous students who might otherwise not be able to afford college. It also serves as a powerful cultural education center for Native students seeking to reconnect to their cultures.
Ryan Kingfisher, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and a junior social work and Indigenous studies major, said he worried the cuts could force Haskell to close.
“The students and the employees have been walking on egg shells knowing that we’re hanging by a thread,” he said. “I really don’t know what to think about it.”
Pe-quas Hernandez, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, and a junior environmental sciences major, also expressed concern about Haskell losing its accreditation.
“I put a lot of work into my grades, into my studies here,” she said.
Hernandez has worked to manage a garden and greenhouse at Haskell, and she said she worries what might happen to those places should she lose her job.
“We’ve been restoring a lot of this land here that is historic,” she said. “Who’s going to be there to continue taking care of that?”
She said it’s taken nearly three months for the university to start to heal from the March 14 layoffs. She said the layoffs generated significant support for Haskell as tribes and other donors stepped forward to help provide funds to keep the university operating.
“I think that we carried on just fine. We had our tribes pulling together for us,” she said. “I have a lot of hope that we’re going to be able to continue what we’ve been doing here.”
Haskell President Frank Arpan, who recently announced his decision to leave the university, declined to comment recently regarding the proposed cuts, referring an ICT reporter to the Bureau of Indian Education, which also declined to comment.
One of the schools specifically targeted is the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, O’Brien said. IAIA is a living institute of Native art, a public tribal land-grant college that serves anyone interested in the study, creative application, preservation and contemporary expression of Indigenous arts. Along with Haskell, IAIA is the second tribal college that is federally controlled.
Within the thousand-page appendices in the fiscal year 2026 budget released by the Trump administration, a line specifically requested to completely zero out funding for IAIA, O’Brien said.
“This is shocking,” she said.
IAIA’s board of trustees and administration released a statement on social media on Wednesday, June 4.
“The IAIA Board of Trustees and administration reject this ill-conceived and harmful proposal,” the statement read on Instagram. “Trump would erase nearly 63 years of progress in American Indian and Alaska Native higher education, artistic expression, and Congressional support for IAIA, the only institution of its kind. As the birthplace of contemporary Native arts, we cannot let this happen.”
The statement continued: “We have reached out to the New Mexico Congressional Delegation to convince the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Interior Appropriations subcommittees and committees to fund IAIA at a minimum of $13.482 million in FY 2026. Our New Mexico Delegation is solidly supportive. We could not ask for a stronger delegation and are confident they will do everything possible to restore IAIA funding.”
IAIA President Robert Martin, Cherokee, said in a statement that IAIA is resilient and determined to remain operating.
“Every day at IAIA, we witness students discovering their power – artistically, academically and personally. These proposed cuts would cut off that momentum. IAIA is where students learn to lead, innovate and uplift Indigenous knowledge. We cannot let that be erased,” Martin said.
He added the school has a longstanding impact and responsibility for its former, current and future students.
“IAIA exists because our ancestors signed treaties in exchange for education. To defund IAIA is to undermine a sacred promise. More than 4,000 graduates have carried forward our cultures, stories and leadership – this is what’s at stake.”
O’Brien said the AIHEC is currently working to push out letters to congressional delegates educating them on the dangers of the proposed cuts.
“It would be devastating if these cuts were enacted,” she said. “TCUs specifically enjoy incredibly strong bipartisan support in Congress. We have many champions on each side of the aisle for which we are incredibly grateful. I think the administration may have misunderstood the depth of the negative impacts of cutting the Department of Interior funding for TCUs.”
• This story was originally published by ICT News.
