Tribes, Native students sue feds over education cuts
The staffing cuts, part of President Donald Trump's effort to reduce the federal workforce, have slashed basic services on the campuses of Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, known as SIPI, in New Mexico. The lawsuit says the feds failed to notify or consult with tribal nations prior to making the cuts.
The lawsuit notes that those schools — as well as the federal Bureau of Indian Education — are part of a system that fulfills the federal government's legal obligation to provide education for Native people. Tribal nations secured that right in a series of treaties in exchange for conceding land.
"The United States government has legal obligations to Tribal Nations that they agreed to in treaties and have been written into federal law," Jacqueline De León, staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, the legal group leading the lawsuit, said in a statement announcing the case. "The abrupt and drastic changes that happened since February, without consultation or even pre-notification, are completely illegal."
Three tribal nations and five Native students have joined the lawsuit. Asked about the case, federal officials told media outlets they do not comment on pending litigation.
According to Haskell student Ella Bowen, cuts to custodial staff have left bathrooms with overflowing trash cans and no toilet paper. SIPI student Kaiya Jade Brown said that school's campus has suffered from power outages because of a lack of maintenance workers.
Both schools lost roughly a quarter of their staff last month after Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency task force ordered major cuts across a slew of federal agencies. While the schools have since been able to hire back some instructional staff, "[i]t is not even close to enough," Native American Rights Fund Deputy Director Matthew Campbell said in the statement.
Thirty-four courses at Haskell lost their instructors in February, according to the statement.
Some students have reported delays in their financial aid, and SIPI students are dealing with brown, unsafe tap water, with repairs put on hold due to the cuts, the statement said. And the school did not have enough faculty to administer midterm exams.
The Pueblo of Isleta; the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation; and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are suing the feds.
"Despite having a treaty obligation to provide educational opportunities to Tribal students, the federal government has long failed to offer adequate services," Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Lieutenant Governor Hershel Gorham said in the statement. "Just when the Bureau of Indian Education was taking steps to fix the situation, these cuts undermined all those efforts. These institutions are precious to our communities, we won't sit by and watch them fail."
Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at [email protected].
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