As the U.S. Department of the Interior prepares to take on a greater role in administering federal funding for tribal colleges, institutional leaders fear financial uncertainty and losing long-standing trust with the Education Department.
The grant program is one of dozens the Education Department reshuffled to other federal agencies late last month in yet another effort by Secretary Linda McMahon to trim down its duties and ultimately dismantle the department. Through an interagency agreement, the Department of the Interior will now manage tribal colleges’ Title III funding, while ED retains oversight and policymaking responsibilities, according to an Education Department announcement.
Trump administration officials argue the move makes sense. The Department of the Interior, home to the Bureau of Indian Education, already oversees tribal K–12 schools and two tribal higher ed institutions, Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico. The Department of the Interior also already administers higher education scholarships for Native students and other grant funding for tribal colleges.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in the announcement that his department will assume administrative responsibilities “for enhancing Indian education programs, streamlining operations, and refocusing efforts to better serve Native youth and adults across the nation.”
The American Indian Higher Education Consortium said in a statement that it’s monitoring the policy shift and plans to work closely with the Department of the Interior “to ensure stability and continuity” for institutions and their students.
“AIHEC will continue to advocate for approaches that uphold the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations and protect the vital role of TCUs in advancing Tribal sovereignty and student success,” the statement read.
Concerns and Questions
Despite reassurances, tribal college leaders are leery of the upcoming change.
Stephen Schoonmaker, president of Tohono O’odham Community College in Arizona, said he understands the logic of the shift, given tribal colleges already have a strong relationship with the Bureau of Indian Education.
But the department also proposed cutting more than 80 percent of tribal colleges’ funding earlier this year, from roughly $127 million last year to about $22 million this year.
Congress didn’t approve the cut, but the proposal “was an existential threat to tribal colleges,” Schoonmaker said.
He believes institutions like his are safest when they have grants coming from multiple federal agencies. That way, if one agency cuts funding, there are still federal dollars flowing in from elsewhere.
“Putting everything under one basket that could be just cut all at once is not reassuring,” he said.
Even though he’s had positive experiences working with the BIE, he said he’s jarred by the uncertainty.
“With this administration, there is a propensity to shuffle things around and make a flurry of proposals, some of which get headway, some of which get dropped almost immediately,” Schoonmaker said, “and it makes it challenging to plan, to ensure for our students and for our employees and for our communities that we serve that the way we’ve been structured, the way that the trust and treaty obligations work … will continue to be honored.”
The administration hasn’t shared a transition plan with tribal college leaders, adding to their worries, said Chris Caldwell, president of the College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin.
According to Caldwell, tribal college leaders are most concerned about the future of the funding mechanisms and support that has historically come from the Department of Education. “We want to make sure that those are retained or even increased,” Caldwell said.
He also questions how much the BIE will listen to tribal college leaders in its decision-making. For example, its proposal to slash tribal college funding came shortly after a listening session with institutional leaders, he said.
At the same time, he’s buoyed by the fact that bipartisan support not only saved colleges from proposed cuts, but it increased their funding; the Education Department funneled a historic one-time tranche of funds to tribal colleges, redirected from grants for other minority-serving institutions, earlier this year. Contributions from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, including a $10 million gift to the College of Menominee Nation, have also offered some extra stability.
“I have been on roller coasters, but never a roller coaster like this,” Caldwell said. But “I think that strong bipartisan support bodes well for us, even in the midst of this restructuring.”
Twyla Baker, president of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in North Dakota, said what’s most concerning to her is that the interagency agreement came as a “total surprise.”
“Tribes, tribal nations, tribal educators should have known about this,” she said. They “should have had input on this well before any type of moves should have been made, before any type of interagency agreements should have been signed … Consultation should have happened and needs to happen quickly if we’re going to continue on this path.”
She also has her doubts about ED shifting responsibilities over to the Department of the Interior. She said tribal college leaders have worked to develop expertise within the Education Department about their institutions and now it feels like that effort was for naught.
“You’re kind of pulling the rug out from under us,” she said. “And that structure, the regularity of how business is done, is going to be dismantled. You can’t just shove it over to somebody else’s responsibility and expect it to work well.”
She worries the transition could affect students if services and resource allocation are interrupted.
“That type of interruption can be pretty untenable for small schools in rural areas, which is what a lot of us are.”
Whatever happens, Baker said the transition is “a diversion of energy that didn’t necessarily have to happen where we could have been just focusing on our missions.”
A Fraught Past
The Bureau of Indian Education has come under fire in the past for its negligent oversight of K–12 schools and the two higher ed institutions in its care.
Members of Congress held a heated hearing last year in which many accused the Bureau of Indian Education of responding slowly or inadequately to student and employee complaints at Haskell Indian Nations University, including reports of sexual assault. Some Kansas lawmakers even proposed removing Haskell from federal control.
The BIE has also historically drawn criticism for poor academic outcomes, limited reporting, inadequate technology and deferred maintenance backlogs at its K–12 schools, ProPublica reported. A 2014 report by Sally Jewell, interior secretary under President Barack Obama, and former Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the BIE a “stain on our Nation’s history.” The report denounced the agency for producing “generations of American Indians who are poorly educated” and promised to undertake reforms.
(Tony Dearman, director of the Bureau of Indian Education since 2016, told ProPublica that the BIE has undergone changes since then, including a more direct process to inspect school buildings, make major purchases and enter into contracts.)
In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, the Department of the Interior described its new responsibilities toward tribal colleges as an “opportunity to better serve Native youth” and emphasized plans to solicit tribal college leaders’ input during the transition.
“As we move forward with efforts to improve the coordination and delivery of Native American education programs, the Bureau of Indian Education will continue to engage closely with tribes and education partners to ensure their perspectives inform our work,” the statement read.
“We value the input we receive from tribes and stakeholders, and we remain dedicated to building a future where Native students have the tools, support, and opportunities they need to thrive for generations to come.”
When the U.S. Department of Education abruptly ended grants for most minority-serving institutions last week, it raised questions about what the department would do with the hundreds of millions of dollars already slated for these programs. The department offered an answer Monday, announcing plans to repurpose funds from programs “not in the best interest of students and families” to historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges, charter schools, and civics education.
“The department has carefully scrutinized our federal grants, ensuring that taxpayers are not funding racially discriminatory programs but those programs which promote merit and excellence in education,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will use every available tool to meaningfully advance educational outcomes and ensure every American has the opportunity to succeed in life.”
The department promised to direct an extra $495 million to HBCUs and tribal colleges, on top of the funds already anticipated for fiscal year 2025—increases of 48.4 percent and 109.3 percent, respectively. In total, HBCUs are slated to receive over $1.34 billion and tribal colleges expect to receive $108 million this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The department is also giving an additional $60 million to charter schools and putting $137 million toward civics education grants. The department didn’t share more specifics on how it would allocate the funds to institutions.
The move has been met with mixed reactions. Some HBCU advocates are celebrating the one-time influx as a game-changer for cash-starved institutions. Others’ joy is tempered by concern that the Trump administration is uplifting some MSIs at the expense of others, sowing tensions between them.
The new funds come less than a week after the Education Department quashed grant programs for Hispanic-serving institutions and other MSIs, deeming them “unconstitutional” because they require colleges to serve a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background to qualify. (HBCUs and tribal colleges don’t have enrollment thresholds.) This blow to MSI grants, as well as cuts to teacher prep and gifted and talented programs, is paying for the department’s recent largess, The New York Times reported, citing several anonymous sources familiar with the department’s plans.
Lodriguez Murray, vice president of public policy and government affairs at the United Negro College Fund, which represents private HBCUs, said the funds are “nothing short of a godsend” for institutions operating on lean budgets.
“Now, all of a sudden, [HBCUs] have much more wherewithal to do the things, not just that take you from year to year, but can make an impact on your campus,” he said. He foresees HBCUs using the funds to buy property, improve their campus infrastructure and invest in student and faculty supports in new ways.
Murray said he doesn’t have qualms about the money coming from the slashed MSI programs.
He claimed many of these institutions are predominantly white, tend to have higher endowments than HBCUs and serve lower shares of Pell-eligible students. (Most enrollment-based MSIs are required to serve at least 50 percent low-income students. HBCUs have no such requirement but tend to enroll at least 70 percent Pell-eligible students.)
As far as he’s concerned, the Trump administration is channeling “resources toward the institutions that seem to need it the most—and the institutions that have a better track record at taking students from underserved backgrounds and … changing the economic outlook of their lives,” Murray said. “That is the reason why we have no pause about receiving the funds this morning.”
Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents public HBCUs, said he wants to see other types of MSIs thrive, and at the same time, he’s excited about how the new support could help HBCU students.
He didn’t know the Trump administration planned to drop millions on the institutions, he said. And while TMCF regularly lobbies for HBCU funding, “candidly, we have never made any recommendations about where the money should come from to the administration, because that’s their decision in terms of how they operate.”
He said he’s “sensitive” to the challenges facing MSIs, noting that TMCF has three predominantly Black institutions among its members. TMCF put out a statement last week in support of them when the department said it was ending MSI grant programs, including PBIs.
“We do support MSIs and PBIs and all the groups in that category and recognize the importance of them having resources, too,” he said, “but our primary focus has always been working with HBCUs.”
Pitting MSIs Against Each Other
Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, said HBCUs and tribal colleges deserve the money.
These institutions have “always been underfunded” and “the federal government should always be thinking about ways to enhance them, especially based on our country’s history of racism and inequities,” she said.
But Gasman believes other types of MSIs are also deserving of these resources. She pointed out that many Hispanic-serving institutions are community colleges, and they serve about a third of the country’s students over all, not just Latino students.
The Education Department is “trying to pit different types of minority-serving institutions against each other,” even though MSI leaders and advocacy groups have worked together for years toward similar policy goals, she said. “And that is really, really troubling … I hope people don’t fall for that.”
Gasman noted that department officials made a “purposeful” decision to share that new funds for HBCUs and tribal colleges came from defunded programs. She called the framing of the announcement “spiteful” and said she worries for the future of the MSI community.
“There is enough pie for all of these institutions,” she said. “It’s not like you need to take from one to feed the others.”
Dominique Baker, associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, said the funding for HBCUs and tribal colleges, while necessary, doesn’t lead her to believe the Trump administration has their best interests at heart.
The funds are “a nice way” for the administration to claim “they hold no racial animus, because look at all the money that they’ve given to HBCUs,” Baker said, at the same time as they crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion at predominantly white institutions.
“It can both be true that you are providing funding to institutions that deserve funding—and you are working to ensure that the institutions that you hold in high prestige resegregate,” she added.
Executive Branch Overreach?
The legality of the department’s move—cutting funding for some programs to be showered on others—is also a little murky. Department officials say they are relying on “existing flexibilities in discretionary grant programs” to move the money around.
Amanda Fuchs Miller, former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs under the Biden administration and now president of the higher ed consultancy Seventh Street Strategies, said under statute, the department legally has the right to “reprogram” funds within an account.
But even if department officials are following the law, she said the “intent” of reprogramming was never to end programs authorized and continually funded by Congress, like the MSI programs. And the executive branch claiming it has the authority to declare anything unconstitutional is “the real problem.” So, as far as she’s concerned, the department went out of bounds by eliminating the MSI programs and regifting their money to other institutions.
“It’s great that the HBCUs and TCUs will get more money—they need it,” Miller said. “Those students will benefit from it. But to take away funds from one group of students to help another group of students, that’s not beneficial to anybody. We should be pushing back to help all students succeed and have these resources.”
Tribal colleges and universities are known to play an outsize role in educating and employing members of their local tribal communities. But they also offer major returns to taxpayers and the economy at large, according to a new economic impact study by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and Lightcast.
The study, released on Tuesday, drew on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau and institutional reports from the 2022–23 academic year at all 34 tribal colleges and universities across the country.
It found that associate degree graduates from tribal colleges earned, on average, $9,400 more per year than those with just a high school diploma. Students earned $7.50 in future returns for every dollar invested in their tribal college education, an annual return of 27.2 percent.
Meanwhile, alumni of tribal institutions contributed $3.8 billion to the U.S. economy through the higher wages they earned, the increased output of the businesses that employed them and the money students and their employers spent. Tribal college alumni also supported 40,732 jobs nationwide, particularly in industries such as health care and social assistance, retail, and professional and technical services.
For every federal dollar invested in tribal colleges, the institutions return $1.60 in tax revenue through the increased tax payments of their alumni and alumni’s employers. According to the study, the colleges generate a total of $785.6 million in additional tax revenue and save taxpayers $96.8 million because of higher education’s benefits to alumni, including improved health, fewer interactions with the justice system and less reliance on income-assistance programs.
“Tribal Colleges and Universities are powerful engines for opportunity, growth, and stability, not just for Native people, but for everyone,” Ahniwake Rose, president of AIHEC, said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “The evidence is clear: Supporting Tribal higher education is not only the right thing to do, it is one of the smartest investments this country can make.”
David John Baer McNicholas sleeps every night next to a bomb.
The worst thing about being homeless is the weather, he says. Santa Fe gets so cold that sometimes diesel fuel turns to gel. At those temperatures, frostbite hits in minutes.
In The Martian, Matt Damon’s character Mark Watney uses a radioactive isotope to keep his rover warm. In the Martian landscape of New Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert, McNicholas keeps his van warm with a rusty five-gallon propane tank hissing beside his bed.
It’s not just the cold of the desert at night, either. Santa Fe is also the highest state capital in America, at 7,000 feet above sea level. That’s higher than the base lodge at most ski resorts. To stay warm, he keeps a pile of old covers and shirts in his van. A top from TJ Maxx. A blanket from a friend. An oversized green-and-black fleece from his sister who died of cancer.
But in the thick of winter, it’s nowhere near enough. So he fires up the heater hooked to the propane tank beside his bed. Burning an open flame inside a flammable structure filled with combustible fuel isn’t exactly safe, so he keeps a carbon-monoxide detector on his pillow. It’s a thin safeguard since these alarms can, and do, fail. But it’s better than nothing. To avoid freezing to death, he has to risk burning alive.
Summer brings no relief either. “The average temperature in the van during summer is about 110 degrees,” he says. “There’s only so much shade in Santa Fe, especially considering most people don’t want you parking near them.”
And if the weather doesn’t get you, there are a hundred other little things about being homeless that surely will. For one, his van is tiny, and he’s tall. Cooking involves a camp stove that makes his clothes stink of grease, increasing the risk of fire, and turning his van into a dripping sweatbox. Not to mention, the constant anxiety of knowing his belongings are not safe. Or that his home could be towed. Or having to move multiple times a day to avoid such an outcome. Or having to pee into a plastic bottle every night. Or having to find a place to dump the bottles every morning.
“I go to bed every night thinking, this could be it,” he says, reflecting on how his propane tank might blow up and kill him in his sleep. “I might not wake up.”
He adds, after a pause, “All my troubles would be over.”
The moment of truth
McNicholas is a student journalist who studies creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, and he is on track to graduate this spring with a 4.0 GPA. He often writes about life on the road. His poem “Flatbed,” which earned the 2022 Betty and Norman Lockwood Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, captures a cross-country adventure he took with his father when he was 15.
In New Mexico, over half of students face food insecurity. When a whistleblower at IAIA uncovered evidence that school officials might have misused a $50,000 grant meant to support campus food pantries, McNicholas thought it was clearly newsworthy. When students claimed school officials retaliated against the whistleblower who raised the alarm, he published their allegations.
This was groundbreaking journalism. Food scarcity in Native American communities is a dire problem, so a food-pantry scandal at the nation’s top indigenous arts college is a five-alarm fire. Native Americans are twice as likely to face food insecurity compared to white Americans, and sometimes three times higher. In fact, the entire Navajo Nation, which overlaps New Mexico, is considered a food desert.
But instead of being celebrated for such journalistic work, David McNicholas was fired. Put on probation. Evicted. Homeless.
One of the two anonymous student submissions published in The Young Warrior
McNicholas’s clash with IAIA leadership began in 2024, after he published two anonymous submissions in his student-run zine The Young Warrior. One piece accused school officials of bullying a beloved student advisor, Karen Redeye, out of her job. Redeye herself later confirmed this, writing:
I resigned from IAIA due to repeated lack of support from my superiors, maltreatment and bullying from my direct supervisors. It elevated to the point of affecting me physically and my workspace did not provide me emotional safety … I loved my job but it became a hostile workplace and I could not continue on with my position.
The second piece accused Dean of Students Nena Martinez of misappropriating the $50,000 food-security grant. After publishing, McNicholas says he received a flood of thanks and support from his fellow students. Many of them, like McNicholas, depended on the food pantry for survival.
But the administration was not so grateful. They hit back hard, claiming McNicholas was “bullying” university staff. They opened a formal investigation with consequences sure to follow.
“Oh shit,” McNicholas remembers thinking at the time. “They’re going to throw everything at me.”
Learning to hide
“Wonder” by McNicholas’ mother Mary Alice Baer, depicting her son
I grew up in the 1980s near the poverty line, raised by a single mom. The McNicholas residence was a one-car garage with a few rooms tacked on the back in Newington, New Hampshire. Mom was an artist who scraped by doing cleaning jobs. She struggled with alcoholism. Dad was absent until I was 12, but sent $150 a month in child support. Mom didn’t really cook, but she could make a pot of beans. Most nights, we ate TV dinners. It was more than some folks had.
I had undiagnosed autism as a kid, so as you can imagine, school was hell. I learned to keep my mouth shut or get beaten up. Most of the torment from my peers was psychological. I was terrified and lonely. But work was different. In high school, I worked part-time at Market Basket, on the front end. Got hired as a bagger, promoted to keyholder within a day. I found it easier to talk to the cashiers and baggers my age because there, our roles were clearly defined.
Life at school was harder. Blending in became its own kind of hobby. I spent years studying people like an anthropologist, trying to fit in. And I spent years ostracized and harassed for being different. But every year, I got better at hiding myself.
I had traditional hobbies too, you know. I liked computers. I even thought I might study computer science. But I changed my mind at the close of senior year because I knew I had to study people more if I was ever going to have a normal life.
I could only take so much. I started drinking and ended up living in parking lots, storage closets, and couch-surfed for over a decade. But eventually I got sober, bought a house, even started a business. The startup life was too stressful, though. I lost everything — except my sobriety. I entered IAIA to study creative writing. I did my first two years at IAIA while living in my van. In my third year, I moved into the dorms. It was a chance at more stability. And life began to make sense.
I entered at 42, while my peers were mostly 19, so there wasn’t the same pressure to make friends. I contextualize my social life at IAIA as work. Most of my peers are half my age and I am a trusted mentor. These clearly defined roles make me comfortable. Around this time, I was diagnosed with autism, and that helped make sense of things. I also started The Young Warrior, and people liked it. I was part of a community.
When I got into trouble for publishing those pieces, I did what I always do. I tried to study my way out of the problem. I went to the archives and read about old IAIA publications. I read Dean Spade’s “Mutual Aid” and FIRE’s “Guide to Free Speech on Campus.” I studied other undergrad publications and wrote an official proposal and operations manual for what I hoped would be the new Young Warrior.
But overall, life was going well. I haven’t had a drink or drug in 13 years. IAIA has been a huge part of my continued sobriety. And my creative studies have given me the space to unpack the person I hid away so long ago.
Going public
Anticipating housing sanctions barring him from his dorm room, McNicholas left campus before they were formally applied and started living out of his van. But the school’s vicious overreaction in moving to evict him only convinced him it was trying to cover something up. In addition, McNicholas says when Dean of Students Martinez heard the allegations about school officials robbing the food pantry, she simply dismissed the need for food pantries to begin with. According to him, she said, “Students have meal plans. They don’t need food pantries.”
But that explanation didn’t sit right with McNicholas, who lives below the poverty line and depends on food pantries to survive. The situation escalated, he says, when the administration denied that the grant even existed. On March 21, 2024, after McNicholas, acting as press officer for the Associated Student Government (ASG), re-posted an image on Instagram summarizing the scandal, Provost Felipe Colón emailed ASG officers:
It has come to my attention over the last 24 hours that in response to the resignation of Student Success Adviser, Karen Redeye, several students, including members of ASG, have been involved in bullying, defamation, and possibly legally actionable slander and liable [sic] against members of the IAIA staff.
He then suggested that the ASG officers invite him to discuss “Karen’s departure, and particularly to receive information about the pantry grant fund and re-stocking process which has been repeatedly and grossly misrepresented.”
When McNicholas and other ASG members met to discuss the matter with Colón, McNicholas didn’t come empty-handed. An anonymous source had already given him a photocopy of the grant-award letter for $50,000. But when Colón denied the existence of the grant, and McNicholas brandished the proof, Colón tried to explain it away.
Not only that, but university President Robert Martin later threatened to sue them all.
McNicholas was floored. But given the school’s history, he wasn’t surprised. IAIA has a pattern of silencing critics — especially those trying to improve the school’s performance where it falls glaringly short. During a faculty meeting with the Board of Trustees in February 2022, former sculpture professor Matthew Eaton cited an academic paper by a former IAIA department head that showed a staff turnover rate of 30%. According to McNicholas, “They came down on him hard.”
Colón told Eaton he had embarrassed Martinez and demanded that Eaton write a public apology. Eaton wrote the coerced apology and quit the next day. In it, he said citing the high turnover rate was “disparaging” to Martinez as well as “a direct assault” against her.
But McNicholas’ main concern was for his fellow students. The lack of food, coupled with legal threats and the intense stress of having to deal with an administration that appeared to prey on its students rather than support them, had taken an emotional toll on him and his peers. And that toll was beginning to show.
David McNicholas on IAIA campus
One day, the ASG called yet another meeting to discuss the situation, but this time they only invited ASG members because the students feared they couldn’t trust their own advisors. When the meeting began, the ASG president showed up in tears. She had just come from a one-on-one meeting with President Martin, who had delivered shocking news — the school was seriously considering suing ASG and her over the bad publicity.
“She came to us and said, ‘They told me to fix it,’” McNicholas says. “She was in tears. And that made me mad.”
At the next ASG meeting, now that the existence of the grant was proven, Colón changed his tune. McNicholas says, “He showed up and said, ‘Oh, you know what? I did some looking, I researched it, and I think I found the grant that you guys were talking about. And I’d like to come and explain how it was spent.’”
“I was like, yeah,” says McNicholas, “I bet you do.”
McNicholas was unable to attend the meeting, but he got the sheet Colón handed out, which showed budget-to-actual figures. When pressed to release the ledger, however, Colón claimed bank statements might not go back that far. “We’re talking a year,” says McNicholas, “maybe two at most. I think he thought he could get away with that because he was in a room full of 19-year-olds. If I’d been there, I would’ve pushed back.”
In all this, what got under his skin the most, he says, was how the school treated his fellow students, such as the girl who had posted the original Instagram summary of the scandal. “I can’t stand that they did the same thing [they did to me] to a 19-year-old freshman for making an Instagram post,” he says. “They kicked that person out, kept their money, and made a 19-year-old student homeless. As far as I’m concerned, that’s unconscionable.”
IAIA’s anti-bullying policy
Meanwhile, Colón concluded his investigation, finding McNicholas guilty of violating IAIA’s highly restrictive anti-bullying policy, which broadly bans “unwanted, aggressive behavior” and includes constitutionally-protected expression as examples of prohibited conduct. That is, he accused McNicholas of bullying administrators by publishing claims that those administrators had bullied others. McNicholas later successfully appealed his ban from campus housing and recovered about $2,000 in lost fees, but much of the damage was already done. Given this victory, he could move back into housing this upcoming semester, but continues to live in his van where IAIA can’t kick him out.
The sanctions against him not only sent him back to homelessness, but cost him work too, including a federal work-study opportunity that should have been protected from administrative meddling. “I was hired to be an orientation mentor at the end of last summer,” says McNicholas. “And the day before I was going to start, I got a call from the director of that program who said, ‘Yeah, you can’t participate because you’re on institutional probation.’”
Finding himself ruthlessly targeted by the administration, McNicholas turned to the press. Teaming up with a few peers, they went to the Santa Fe Reporter, and the article that followed made an immediate impact. “When that article came out,” he says, “both the interim director and dean of students were gone within days. Like, they were gone.”
Breaking through
After the Santa Fe Reporter exposé and the ensuing leadership shakeup, the food pantry underwent a striking transformation. The 20-foot-long conference table in the Student Success Center, once a barren surface lined with unused cans of tomatoes, is suddenly overflowing with fresh groceries. McNicholas’s journalistic work, for which he was evicted from campus housing, has not only been vindicated, but has helped make his campus a better place.
As for himself, McNicholas is about to enter his fifth and final year at IAIA. He is applying to MFAs this fall and says he hopes all this doesn’t affect his chances. “But,” he adds, “I chose to stick up for my community — and to incur the costs of doing so.”
That said, he remains shaken by the experience. “The school administration violated my rights and treated me like a criminal, offering no meaningful due process, and protecting themselves over the community at every turn.”
Indeed, IAIA has offered little in the way of accountability. The school has refused FIRE’sdemands to clear McNicholas’s disciplinary records or those of any other student punished and threatened for speaking out, including the ASG president. It has also failed to revise its vague and censorial anti-bullying policy, still found in the publicly-available student handbook — leaving open the possibility of IAIA silencing other students the same way they did McNicholas. On top of all this, IAIA leadership has also failed to offer any legal or moral justification for its actions.
Following President Martin’s retirement this July, one can only hope that the newly minted president, Shelly C. Lowe, breaks from his administration’s legacy of censorship and authoritarianism. IAIA’s crackdown on student dissent must be challenged. Oversight from the school’s Board of Trustees and the Bureau of Indian Education is essential to help push IAIA in the right direction. Because no student should ever be left homeless for telling the truth.
Each night, McNicholas returns to his van. On cold nights, the propane tank hisses beside him, threatening him in whispers. On hot nights, he lies there sweating. But he remains unshaken. In one of his poems, McNicholas describes chopping through six feet of ice, the water “fixed like concrete,” his hands burning in the cold “with thin gloves or nothing.” It’s a searing image. McNicholas is nothing if not resilient.
“I want my uncredited legacy to be a small part of the student handbook,” he says, “enshrining the right to free speech that we all fought for.”
The Trump administration is asking Congress to cut funds for tribal colleges and universities by nearly 90 percent, according to the Department of the Interior’s proposed budget released Monday.
Tribal college advocates told ProPublica, which first reported on the cuts, that tribal colleges could have to shutter if Congress approves the plan, leaving thousands of students without the support they need to complete a degree program. And reports from ProPublicashow that it will only further devastate institutions that were already underfunded.
“The numbers that are being proposed would close the tribal colleges,” Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, told ProPublica. “They would not be able to sustain.”
The budget request calls for about $860 million to operate Indian Education Programs, which includes two federally controlled tribal colleges—Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute. Of that $860 million, about $22 million would go toward postsecondary programs. That’s about a $161 million cut compared to fiscal year 2024.
Tribal colleges argue that their funding is protected by treaties and contend that the institutions up for discussion are critical providers in some of the country’s poorest areas.
“It doesn’t make sense for them to [approve the cuts[ when they’re relying on us to train the workforce,” Dawn Frank, president of Oglala Lakota College in South Dakota, told ProPublica. “We’re really relying on our senators and representatives to live up to their treaty and trust obligation.”
After weeks of uncertainty, two tribal colleges have been told they can hire back all employees who were laid off as part of the Trump administration’s deep cuts across the federal workforce in February, part of a judge’s order restoring some federal employees whose positions were terminated.
Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, widely known as SIPI, in New Mexico lost about 70 employees in mid-February amid widespread staffing cuts to federal agencies. While most of the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities are chartered by American Indian tribes, Haskell and SIPI are not associated with individual tribes and are run by the federal government.
About 55 employees were laid off and 15 accepted offers to resign, according to a lawsuit filed last month by tribes and students. The colleges were forced to cancel or reconfigure a wide range of services, from sports and food service to financial aid and classes. In some cases, instructors were hired by other universities as adjuncts and then sent back to the tribal colleges to keep teaching.
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It was not clear this week when and if the workers would return, whether the employees who resigned would also be offered their jobs back, or if the government would allow colleges to fill vacancies. Both colleges said some employees had turned down the offers.
The Bureau of Indian Education, which runs the colleges, declined to answer questions except to confirm the laid-off workers would be offered jobs with back pay to comply with a judge’s order that the government reverse course on thousands of layoffs of probationary employees. But the agency also noted the jobs would be available “as the White House pursues its appeals process,” indicating possible turmoil if an appeals court reinstates the layoffs.
Both colleges said the bureau also has refused to answer most of their questions.
SIPI leaders were told last week that the positions were being restored, said Adam Begaye, chairman of the SIPI Board of Regents. The 270-student college lost 21 employees, he said, four of whom decided to take early retirement. All but one of the remaining 17 agreed to return, Begaye said.
The chaos has been difficult for those employees, he said, and the college is providing counseling.
“We want to make sure they have an easy adjustment, no matter what they’ve endured,” Begaye said.
The chairman of Haskell’s Board of Regents, Dalton Henry, said he was unsure how many of the 50 lost employees were returning. Like SIPI, Haskell was forced after the layoffs to shift job responsibilities and increase the workload for instructors and others.
Haskell was reviewed by accreditors in December, and Henry said he was worried how the turmoil would affect the process. Colleges and universities must be accredited to offer federal and state financial aid and participate in most other publicly funded programs.
Henry declined to discuss his thoughts on the chaos, saying there was nothing the college could do about it.
“Whatever guidance is provided, that’s what we have to adhere to,” he said. “It’s a concern. But at this point, it’s the federal government’s decision.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs declined to make the presidents of the two colleges available for interviews.
Tribal colleges and universities were established to comply with treaties and the federal trust responsibility, legally binding agreements in which the United States promised to fund Indigenous education and other needs. But college leaders argue the country has violated those contracts by consistently failing to fund the schools adequately.
In the federal lawsuit claiming the Haskell and SIPI cuts were illegal, students and tribes argued the Bureau of Indian Education has long understaffed the colleges. The agency’s “well-documented and persistent inadequacies in operating its schools range from fiscal mismanagement to failure to provide adequate education to inhospitable buildings,” plaintiffs claimed.
Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann, both Kansas Republicans, said before Trump took office that they plan to introduce a bill shifting Haskell from federal control to a congressional charter, which would protect the university from cuts across federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education.
“[F]or the last few years the university has been neglected and mismanaged by the Bureau of Indian Education,” Moran said in a written statement in December. “The bureau has failed to protect students, respond to my congressional inquiries or meet the basic infrastructure needs of the school.”
The February cuts brought rare public visibility to tribal colleges, most of which are in remote locations. Trump’s executive orders spurred outrage from Indigenous communities and a flurry of national news attention.
“We’re using this chaos as a blessing in disguise to make sure our family and friends in the community know what SIPI provides,” said Begaye, the SIPI board president.
The uncertainty surrounding the colleges’ funding has left a lasting mark, said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which advocates for tribal colleges. But she added she was proud of how the schools have weathered the cuts.
“Indian country is always one of the most resourceful and creative populations,” she said. “We’ve always made do with less. I think you saw resilience and creativity from Haskell and SIPI.”
Contact editor Christina A. Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].
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Leaders of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College were thrilled to find out two years ago that they won a nearly $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote Indigenous food and agriculture practices. That five-year grant, which is roughly the same amount as the college’s endowment, funded student internships and several staff positions.
But just as the college was gearing up to work on the project after putting in place the initial pieces, like selecting interns, funds for the program ceased when the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture froze the grant in February.
The college has already spent about half a million dollars on the project, expecting those funds would be reimbursed, like other government grants, said Twyla Baker, president of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College. Now, six students have lost their internships, and the college is scrambling to reassign staff to other projects to avoid having to let anyone go.
“We don’t have a timeline or any type of information as to when or if that [funding] will be restored to us,” Baker said.
She and other tribal college leaders across the country are scrambling to make contingency plans as the Trump administration continues to review, freeze and slash federal grants in a massive effort to downsize government and roll back federal programs they perceive as related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Some have already seen grants disappear, while others are preparing just in case. Meanwhile, staff cuts to the Bureau of Indian Education and the Department of Education—not to mention plans to dismantle the department—are exacerbating fears and uncertainty on campuses.
Tribal college leaders watched nervously as the two tribal colleges administered by the bureau, Haskell Indian Nation University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, experienced major layoffs in February, spurring a lawsuit from tribes and students. The cuts sent the two institutions into what some worried was a death spiral, with professor-less classes and mounting infrastructure problems, until those layoffs were reversed in recent weeks.
We’re survivors, and we’ll be here, but it’s going to be a rough couple years, that’s for sure.”
—Dan King, president of Red Lake Nation College
The country’s 37 tribal colleges already live a precarious existence. They tend to serve small, disproportionately first-generation and low-income student populations in remote areas on or near reservations and operate on lean budgets. They depend heavily on federal dollars, and many campuses are struggling with crumbling infrastructure thanks to chronic underfunding from Congress. Some tribal college presidents fear even small changes to federal funding or staffing could mean losing critical student supports, services and academic programs or risk the most vulnerable institutions closing altogether.
“It takes so many different tiny little grant programs and resources woven all across the federal government just to keep the doors open and the lights on,” said Moriah O’Brien, vice president of congressional and federal relations at the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. “Any interruption or disruption or pausing of federal funding and resources or the federal employees that support those programs … could have very disruptive impacts.”
‘Sitting and Waiting’
Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College isn’t the only tribal college waiting on frozen USDA funds. College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin, for example, found out that a grant covering 20 student scholarships was suspended, putting those students’ continued enrollment in jeopardy, ProPublica reported.
Baker worries other federal funding sources could be next. At this time of the year, she normally would have received a request for proposals for Title III grants from the Department of Education by now. (Title III funds help to support infrastructure improvements at tribal colleges as well as other minority-serving institutions.)
“We’re sitting and waiting,” she said. “And if those dollars go away, it’s another colossal loss.” Tribal colleges received roughly $82 million in discretionary and mandatory Title III funds last year.
Amid the uncertainty, tribal colleges are tightening their belts. Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College is considering a travel moratorium and looking into ways to strengthen partnerships with foundations and state lawmakers in hopes of diversifying its funding. Although Red Lake Nation College in Minnesota hasn’t had its grants suspended, the college has frozen hiring, pay increases and nonessential travel. Red Lake Nation is aiming to cut spending by 20 to 25 percent to prepare for any future funding losses.
Dan King, president of Red Lake Nation, said he’s been trying to stress to others, “We’re going to make it through this … We’re survivors, and we’ll be here, but it’s going to be a rough couple years, that’s for sure.”
O’Brien said that AIHEC is working to assess how many institutions have had grants suspended and how colleges are responding to this moment of uncertainty. In the meantime, the group is working to educate federal policymakers about tribal colleges—namely that the federal government is obligated to support them by treaty and that funding for tribal colleges is unrelated to DEI.
“The federal government’s unique responsibilities to tribal nations have been repeatedly reaffirmed by the Supreme Court, legislation, executive orders and regulations … and this legal duty and trust responsibility applies across all branches of the federal government,” she said. As a result, the “conversation about tribal sovereignty and the federal trust and treaty obligations is entirely separate and distinct from the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Uncertainty at ED
Tribal college leaders are also anxiously waiting to see what comes of the Education Department after mass layoffs and President Donald Trump’s order to close it down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law” and “return authority over education to the States.”
O’Brien noted that not only do many funding sources for institutions flow out of the department, but 75 percent of tribal college students are also eligible for the Pell Grant, a federal financial aid program for low-income students.
American Indian communities are incredibly resilient, because we have to be, but [there’s] not an unlimited supply of resources to be resilient with. And so, there’s a breaking point.”
—Sandra Boham, chief operating officer at Native Forward
“We want to make sure that there’s no interruption to the resources that are going to TCUs as institutions and to individual tribal citizens who are students,” she said.
O’Brien also wants to ensure that any funding set aside for tribal colleges, through tribal college–specific or broader federal programs, goes directly to them, rather than being administered by states.
“It’s not clear that those funds would ever get to TCUs,” she said. Plus, “the trust and treaty obligations are between tribal nations and the federal government,” not the states.
Cheryl Crazy Bull, president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, said it’s hard to know what will happen to department programs, so tribal colleges are preparing for all kinds of scenarios, including programs possibly coming under the auspices of other federal agencies.
“We don’t want the Department of Ed to be dismantled,” she said. “At the same time, if it’s going to be dismantled, what strategies need to be used in order to ensure continued funding?”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said that shutting down the department won’t mean funding cuts and said that core functions will continue.
But major reductions in force at the Department of Education and other federal agencies have made it difficult for tribal colleges to find out which of their funding streams may be at risk.
Tribal college leaders stressed that getting through to the right people at the Education Department, the USDA, the Department of the Interior or other federal agencies to ask questions is a challenge in and of itself, let alone budgeting for an uncertain landscape.
Not being able to even “get ahold of” the people who administer grant programs “causes a lot of worries for people, too,” said King at Red Lake Nation. “It’s very stressful. It’s chaotic and it’s unpredictable right now.”
What’s at Stake
Tribal college advocates worry some of these institutions wouldn’t survive federal funding losses.
While some tribal colleges have managed to scrape together meager endowments, many operate on low reserves. Some have as little as 90 days’ worth of operating funds on hand at any given time, said Sandra Boham, chief operating officer at Native Forward, a Native American scholarship provider, and a former president of Salish Kootenai College.
“American Indian communities are incredibly resilient, because we have to be, but [there’s] not an unlimited supply of resources to be resilient with,” she said. “And so, there’s a breaking point.”
Tribal college leaders are also concerned about the ripple effects if colleges are forced to cut down on student supports and services.
“You don’t have the big travel budgets to trim,” Boham said. “You don’t have the big athletic budgets to trim. You’re talking support and instructional staff and shuttering buildings or those kinds of things, and that is not a pleasant conversation to have.”
O’Brien described tribal colleges as “anchors of their community,” as well, that provide “not just individual classes, but often [serve] as a hub for the community, providing all kinds of different [services] from GED classes to certificate programs to community space to having their libraries open to the community.”
Baker said the value of tribal colleges “is not a difficult story to tell,” but “just the fact that we’re having to tell it is pretty frustrating.”
Some of these institutions “function on the brink,” Baker said, and they serve “some of the poorest parts of our nation. If it weren’t for tribal colleges, some of these students wouldn’t access higher education at all.”
Native American education advocacy groups are calling on the Trump administration to spare Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute from employee cuts, after the Office of Personnel Management ordered federal agencies to lay off most probationary employees.
The two tribal colleges are the only ones operated by the Bureau of Indian Education rather than tribal nations, making them vulnerable to the administration’s federal workforce reductions.
At Haskell Indian Nations University, about 40 people have already lost their jobs across campus departments, out of about 160 employees, according to a Monday letter from the Haskell Board of Regents to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The board urged in the letter that the university be exempt from the staff cuts. The Lawrence Timesreported that the institution has had to postpone or cancel some campus events. Meanwhile, roughly 20 employees were laid off at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, out of a staff of about 100, according to Indian Country News.
Pearl Yellowman, the former vice president of operations at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, who was recently laid off, told the Native American news outlet that one department has only a single employee left.
“Our students are going to say, ‘Where’s my instructor?’ ‘What happened to my class?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Is my future of being a student OK here?’ ‘Where’s my tutor?’ ‘What happened to this person?’ ‘Are my scholarships in jeopardy?’ ‘Is my financial aid in jeopardy?’” Yellowman told Indian Country News.
Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, said in a news release that “there are legitimate concerns that workforce reduction at these institutions will eliminate vital services and much-needed educational programs the students need to complete their degree programs.”
Jason Dropik, executive director of the National Indian Education Association, emphasized in the release that the Bureau of Indian Education has a “federal trust obligation to educate Native youth.”
“Significant workforce reductions will negatively impact students and have long-term educational consequences for our Tribal Nations,” he said.
For Haskell, this isn’t the first time the university’s status as a federally run tribal college has been a source of tension. Kansas lawmakers have recently debated about whether Haskell should be under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Education at all.
U.S. senator Jerry Moran and Representative Tracey Mann of Kansas announced plans late last year to propose legislation to remove federal control of Haskell, arguing the institution would be better run by a new university Board of Regents. The plan, backed by the then-president of the Haskell board, came after a tense congressional hearing regarding student and employee complaints about the university, which were revealed in a report by the bureau.
After the recent staff cuts, Dalton Henry, president of the Haskell Board of Regents, recognized these policymakers and the Bureau of Indian Education for “working to reduce the impact of these changes.”
“We are grateful for their attention to this issue,” Henry said in a news release.
