A clinical pharmacist with the Seattle Indian Health Board administers a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine in 2020. Tribal organizations, including health care clinics, have been disrupted by recent cuts to federal funding and staffing. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce and government spending have reverberated across Indian Country, leaving tribes with deep uncertainty about their health clinics, schools, police agencies and wildfire crews.
Native officials say the cuts could hit a vast array of core public services in tribal communities — even though the federal government is legally required to provide those services.
“These are real jobs that our society depends on. These are cops, nurses in clinics, people who manage our forests and fisheries,” said W. Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in Washington state and a longtime leader on Native sovereignty issues.
“You can’t just come in with a chainsaw and slash everything and think you can get away with undermining this [responsibility].”
Allen, like many tribal leaders, flew to Washington, D.C., last week to lobby federal officials to change course. Tribal experts note that the cuts will be felt far beyond reservation boundaries.
“This is going to destroy whole regional economies in rural areas around the country,” said Matthew Fletcher, an Indian law professor at the University of Michigan and a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.
The federal government’s unique role in supporting tribal services is not an act of generosity. It’s a legal mandate based on treaty rights guaranteed to tribal nations in exchange for conceding land. Tribes across the country signed nearly 400 treaties in the 18th and 19th centuries, and modern legal efforts have reaffirmed the feds’ obligation to uphold those promises.
In addition to the specific rights outlined in those treaties, the federal government also must uphold its trust responsibility to tribes — a legal obligation under which the United States must protect tribal sovereignty and provide basic social services for tribal nations.
Many legal experts say the Trump administration’s efforts to gut federal agencies and cut off funds to Native communities likely violate the government’s obligations. Tribal leaders have called on Trump to reverse the cuts — and earned at least one reprieve last month when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. verbally rescinded layoffs at the Indian Health Service.
“There’s certainly a lot of trepidation in Indian Country because so many tribal programs rely on federal funding,” said Gussie Lord, managing attorney of the Tribal Partnerships Program with Earthjustice, an environmental law group. “These are absolutely legal obligations based on the federal trust responsibility.”
Some tribal observers also fear that Trump’s administration could roll back regulations that allow tribes to protect their water quality. That’s imperative for tribal members whose diet features high amounts of traditional foods such as salmon and wild rice.
Meanwhile, Trump has pledged to block funding for DEI programs — efforts to boost diversity, equity and inclusion. Tribes told Stateline they have been warned by federal agency insiders that many of their grants could be at risk. Native leaders are pushing Trump officials to acknowledge that the feds’ relationship with tribes is based on their status as sovereign nations, not racial preference.
Tribes are still working to understand how their communities will be affected, and many tribal nations and organizations did not respond to interview requests. Some observers have noted that Trump’s penchant for targeting his political enemies may make some officials wary of putting their tribe in the crosshairs by speaking out publicly.
Officials at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Education did not respond to interview requests.
Health care
When Trump announced a freeze on all government grant funding in late January, the Seattle Indian Health Board found it had been locked out of its payment management system. The community health center serves thousands of patients and offers a variety of services; more than half of its expenses are reimbursed from federal money.
Judges have since blocked Trump’s move to freeze the funding. The health center is now able to access the payment system during brief windows, officials there said. The organization is managing so far, leaders said, but they fear the worst is yet to come.
“The looming threat that our resources will get cut off again is terrifying,” said Esther Lucero, the board’s president and CEO, who is of Diné (Navajo) descent. “We’re operating with very little confidence.”
Lucero said the health center is concerned it will lose federal funding to construct a planned 92-bed residential treatment facility. The group has halted its work on multiple construction projects — including a clinic and housing project — based on fears that federal money will disappear.
The Seattle Indian Health Board has enough reserves to maintain services for about four months if its federal support were to be cut altogether, she said. But Lucero noted that many tribal clinics and organizations are run directly by the Indian Health Service, making them even more vulnerable to cuts.
In mid-February, 950 staffers at the Indian Health Service were told they were being laid off. A coalition of Native organizations raised the alarm, sending a letter to the feds that the cuts would have “life and death” consequences, according to ICT, a news service formerly known as Indian Country Today that covers Indigenous issues. The letter noted that 214 tribal nations receive direct care from the agency.
Hours later, Kennedy said that the layoffs had been rescinded, telling the news outlet in a written statement that IHS, long the “redheaded stepchild” of the federal health bureaucracy, would be a “priority” during Trump’s second term.
While tribal groups were relieved at the sudden reversal, experts say the prospect of cuts at the agency remains a major threat.
“IHS is already underfunded,” said Dean Seneca, an epidemiologist and member of the Seneca Nation who spent years working for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support. Seneca now runs his own private firm. “Any kind of cut to the IHS would literally cripple the agency. There will be tribes that won’t be able to provide services.”
Education
Trump’s cuts also have targeted schools serving tribal members. Education, like health care, is part of the federal government’s legal trust responsibility to Native people. The federal Bureau of Indian Education operates 55 elementary and secondary schools, while funding another 128 schools that are managed by tribes.
The agency also operates a university and community college, which were hit hardest by the layoffs. Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, which had roughly 160 employees, saw more than a quarter of its staff get cut.
Dalton Henry, the interim president of the school’s Board of Regents, shared with Stateline a letter he sent to federal leaders. The cuts, he argued, would “have disastrous consequences for fulfilling its educational mission,” noting that Haskell exists to uphold the government’s legal trust responsibility to Native people.
“We desperately need to get this fixed,” said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which advocates for tribal colleges. “We already have students that are questioning staying out the rest of the semester.”
Rose said the cuts have thrown Haskell, as well as the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico, into chaos. Overnight, the schools lost numerous instructors, safety personnel, cafeteria workers and coaches when the layoffs came down last month.
Meanwhile, staffers at K-12 schools run by the federal agency have had a $1 purchase limit placed on their work credit cards, she said, making it impossible for them to buy supplies.
Federal funding cuts have also crippled a science and health program at Northern Arizona University that was largely made up of Indigenous students, Cronkite News reported. The program, which is now in danger of shutting down, was targeted due to Trump’s ban on DEI funds, although it did not exclusively serve Native students.
Environment
During President Joe Biden’s term in the White House, federal agencies adopted new regulations to ensure that environmental standards protected tribes’ rights to hunt, fish and harvest. The feds also moved in recent years to bolster tribes’ ability to set their own water quality standards and weigh in on federal permitting decisions.
Ken Norton, a top environmental official with the Hoopa Valley Tribe in California, said the tribe had a strong relationship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s local project officer when Biden was in the White House. Following the cuts to federal staff, they’ve had no communication from the EPA.
“Where is your contingency plan, and who are our contacts?” Norton said in an interview. “You left us in the dark. This is a breach of your trust responsibility to tribes.”
Norton also chairs the National Tribal Water Council, a tribal advocacy group. He said some EPA officials have quietly warned tribal leaders that Trump loyalists are using artificial intelligence to single out Clean Water Act grant proposals that include terms such as “climate change” or “environmental injustice.”
Trump is also attempting to dismantle the National Environmental Policy Act, a keystone law that requires environmental reviews of major projects that need federal permits. Norton said the act is crucial for protecting natural resources in Indian Country.
“They’re dismantling these regulatory agencies — reducing the staffing, reducing the funding, chipping away at the regulatory authorities — until they become nonfunctional,” Norton said.
Trump said last week that he intends to cut 65% of EPA staff.
Lord, the Earthjustice attorney, said the cuts could particularly hurt tribal water treatment facilities.
“Any cuts there, even 10 or 15%, could potentially be devastating and have long term effects on water quality,” she said.
The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs has lost 118 employees as a result of Trump’s cuts, ICT reported. The agency supports a vast array of tribal programs including energy development, natural resources, law enforcement and irrigation.
Meanwhile, U.S. House Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee said that Trump’s administration is planning to close more than a quarter of the agency’s offices, covering 25 locations.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington state depend on the BIA to provide support during wildfire season, and for funding to hire the tribe’s own firefighters. Trump’s freeze on federal hiring has halted the onboarding process for those staffers.
“A lot of the funding we do get comes from federal appropriations,” said Chairman Jarred-Michael Erickson. “It’s a big concern. We’re not only worried about it from a fire standpoint, but health care, law enforcement, education.”
The funding freeze also affected a federal grant to install 112 electric vehicle chargers in Cherokee Nation communities in Oklahoma. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., in a statement to Stateline, said the cut would be a major setback for the regional economy if the funds are not restored. He said the tribe is still evaluating the full effects of the federal cuts, and is concerned about their impact on schools, housing funds and BIA programs.
Other programs
Meanwhile, tribal leaders warn that Trump’s efforts to cut national programs, such as Medicaid and the Department of Veterans Affairs, will have a disproportionate effect in tribal communities.
Nearly a fifth of Native Americans and Alaska Natives were covered by Medicaid as of 2020, according to the National Council of Urban Indian Health.
Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs paused cuts to billions of dollars in contracts after significant public backlash. The cuts would have affected programs including cancer care and toxic exposure assessments, The Associated Press reported. Prior to the contracts dispute, the VA also cut more than 1,000 employees due to Trump’s staffing reductions.
Native Americans serve in the military at higher rates than any other group, leaving them particularly vulnerable to cuts to veterans care.
Tribal leaders are also concerned that Trump’s ongoing efforts to slash DEI programs could mistakenly target funding for Native communities.
“A lot of people who object to Indian affairs just straight-up think it’s racial preferences,” said Fletcher, the Indian law professor. “It’s not DEI at all, but that doesn’t mean the Trump administration won’t go after it that way.”
This article was first published by Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.