The Trump administration slashed staff at two tribal colleges. Students are suing.
The Trump administration slashed staff at two tribal colleges. Students are suing.
Federally-run tribal colleges were among the targets of February’s mass-downsizing of the government workforce. Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico each initially lost about 20% of their staff.
Some have been hired back, but a lawsuit filed by three tribal nations and Indigenous students says that’s not enough.
Ella Bowen is a freshman at Haskell Indian Nations University. She’s studying to be a teacher. Her academic advisor helped her map out all the classes she needs to graduate.
“My whole four-year program was laid out in her computer,” she said. But last month, Bowen’s advisor was abruptly let go along with dozens of other faculty and staff.
Now, Bowen said professors are taking on extra courses, and students are filling in for fired custodians and cafeteria workers.
“I think everybody’s really stressed out and sad as a community here, but we’re all trying to work together,” she said.
Bowen is part of the group suing the federal government over these firings. Their attorney, Jacqueline De León with the Native American Rights Fund, said Haskell and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute help fulfill the federal government’s trust responsibility to tribes.
“You know, as part of the bargain with the United States to give up vast swaths of land, Native Americans were guaranteed, in many treaties, education,” she said.
De León said that tribes had a right to be consulted on downsizing at the two colleges — which, according to the federal government’s own watchdog agency, are chronically understaffed.
“Even if some staffing cuts had to happen, tribes had the right to talk about the structure of those cuts, indicate which programs are of the most priority to them,” said De León.
The Department of the Interior declined Marketplace’s request for an interview about the lawsuit.
Twyla Baker is president of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in North Dakota, one of 33 tribal colleges not run by the federal government. Those institutions are safe from federal layoffs, but she said they still rely on government support to fund some job training and academic programs.
“Our sponsored programs are about anywhere from 60% to 75% federal dollars,” she said — including some grants currently frozen by Trump’s DEI order. “Everything’s kind of just ground to a halt with everything that’s going on.”
Many tribal colleges are the only institutions of higher education in their rural regions, and Baker said they’re bracing for lean times.
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