Latest news with #RobertMartin
Washington Post
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
White House budget request slashes funding for tribal colleges and universities
In President Donald Trump's budget request , he's proposing slashing funding for tribal colleges and universities, including eliminating support for the country's only federally funded college for contemporary Native American arts. If the budget is approved by Congress, beginning in October, the more than $13 million in annual appropriations for the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, would be reduced to zero. It would be the first time in nearly 40 years that the congressionally chartered school would not receive federal support, said Robert Martin, the school's president.
Toronto Star
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Toronto Star
White House budget request slashes funding for tribal colleges and universities
In President Donald Trump's budget request, he's proposing slashing funding for tribal colleges and universities, including eliminating support for the country's only federally funded college for contemporary Native American arts. If the budget is approved by Congress, beginning in October, the more than $13 million in annual appropriations for the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, would be reduced to zero. It would be the first time in nearly 40 years that the congressionally chartered school would not receive federal support, said Robert Martin, the school's president.
The Independent
12 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
White House budget request slashes funding for tribal colleges and universities
In President Donald Trump 's budget request, he's proposing slashing funding for tribal colleges and universities, including eliminating support for the country's only federally funded college for contemporary Native American arts. If the budget is approved by Congress, beginning in October, the more than $13 million in annual appropriations for the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, would be reduced to zero. It would be the first time in nearly 40 years that the congressionally chartered school would not receive federal support, said Robert Martin, the school's president. 'You can't wipe out 63 years of our history and what we've accomplished with one budget,' Martin said on Friday. 'I just can't understand or comprehend why they would do something like this.' The college, founded in 1962, has provided affordable education to thousands of Native artists and culture bearers, including U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, painter T.C. Cannon and bestselling novelist Tommy Orange. It's the only four-year degree fine arts institution in the world devoted to contemporary Native American and Alaskan Native arts, according to its website. Martin said he has spoken with members of Congress from both major political parties who have assured him they'll work to keep the institute's budget level for the next fiscal year, but he worries the morale of students and staff will be affected. Martin said he also spoke with staff in the office of U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, a member of the Chickasaw Nation and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Cole, a Republican and former member of IAIA's board of trustees and a longtime advocate in Congress for funding that supports tribal citizens, was unavailable for comment. Breana Brave Heart, a junior studying arts and business, said the proposal shocked her and made her wonder: 'Will I be able to continue my education at IAIA with these budget cuts?' Brave Heart said she started organizing with other students to contact members of Congress. 'IAIA is under attack," she said, "and I need other students to know this.' Martin said that amid the Republican Trump administration's crackdown on federal policies and funding that support diversity, equity and inclusion, trust responsibilities and treaty rights owed to tribal nations have also come under attack. 'It's a problem for us and many other organizations when you've got that DEI initiative which really is not applicable to us, because we're not a racial category, we're a political status as a result of the treaties," he said. 'We're easily identified as what this administration might refer to as a 'woke'.' Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico said the cuts are another example of the Trump administration 'turning its back on Native communities and breaking our trust responsibilities.' "As a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, I remain committed to keeping IAIA fully funded and will continue working with appropriators and the New Mexico Congressional Delegation to ensure its future,' Luján said in a statement to The Associated Press. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The congressional budget bill includes roughly $3.75 trillion in tax cuts, extending the expiring 2017 individual income tax breaks and temporarily adding new ones that Trump campaigned on. The revenue loss would be partially offset by nearly $1.3 trillion in reduced federal spending elsewhere, namely through Medicaid and food assistance. A Jan. 30 order from the Interior Department titled 'Ending DEI Programs and Gender Ideology Extremism' stated that any efforts to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion in the department's policy should exclude trust obligations to tribal nations. However, earlier this year, several staff members at the other two congressionally chartered schools in the country — the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas — were laid off as part of Trump's push to downsize the federal workforce. In a lawsuit filed in March, both institutions reported that some staff and faculty were rehired, but the Bureau of Indian Education notified those people that might be temporary and they may be laid off again. 'It shows what a president's values and priorities are, and that's been hard,' said Ahniwake Rose, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, an organization that represents more than 30 Tribal Colleges and Universities. "That's been hard for our staff, our students, our faculty to see that the priority of the administration through the Department of Interior might not be on tribal colleges." In its budget request this year, the Interior Department is proposing reducing funding to the BIE's post secondary programs by more than 80%, and that would have a devastating affect on tribal colleges and universities, or TCUs, which rely on the federal government for most of their funding, said Rose. Most TCUs offer tribal citizens a tuition-free higher education, she said, and funding them is a moral and fiduciary responsibility the federal government owes tribal nations. In the many treaties the U.S. signed with tribal nations, it outlined several rights owed to them — like land rights, health care and education through departments established later, like the BIE. Trust responsibilities are the legal and moral obligations the U.S. has to protect and uphold those rights.
Associated Press
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
White House budget request slashes funding for tribal colleges and universities
In President Donald Trump's budget request, he's proposing slashing funding for tribal colleges and universities, including eliminating support for the country's only federally funded college for contemporary Native American arts. If the budget is approved by Congress, beginning in October, the more than $13 million in annual appropriations for the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, would be reduced to zero. It would be the first time in nearly 40 years that the congressionally chartered school would not receive federal support, said Robert Martin, the school's president. 'You can't wipe out 63 years of our history and what we've accomplished with one budget,' Martin said on Friday. 'I just can't understand or comprehend why they would do something like this.' The college, founded in 1962, has provided affordable education to thousands of Native artists and culture bearers, including U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, painter T.C. Cannon and bestselling novelist Tommy Orange. It's the only four-year degree fine arts institution in the world devoted to contemporary Native American and Alaskan Native arts, according to its website. Martin said he has spoken with members of Congress from both major political parties who have assured him they'll work to keep the institute's budget level for the next fiscal year, but he worries the morale of students and staff will be affected. Martin said he also spoke with staff in the office of U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, a member of the Chickasaw Nation and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Cole, a Republican and former member of IAIA's board of trustees and a longtime advocate in Congress for funding that supports tribal citizens, was unavailable for comment. Breana Brave Heart, a junior studying arts and business, said the proposal shocked her and made her wonder: 'Will I be able to continue my education at IAIA with these budget cuts?' Brave Heart said she started organizing with other students to contact members of Congress. 'IAIA is under attack,' she said, 'and I need other students to know this.' Martin said that amid the Republican Trump administration's crackdown on federal policies and funding that support diversity, equity and inclusion, trust responsibilities and treaty rights owed to tribal nations have also come under attack. 'It's a problem for us and many other organizations when you've got that DEI initiative which really is not applicable to us, because we're not a racial category, we're a political status as a result of the treaties,' he said. 'We're easily identified as what this administration might refer to as a 'woke'.' Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico said the cuts are another example of the Trump administration 'turning its back on Native communities and breaking our trust responsibilities.' 'As a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, I remain committed to keeping IAIA fully funded and will continue working with appropriators and the New Mexico Congressional Delegation to ensure its future,' Luján said in a statement to The Associated Press. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The congressional budget bill includes roughly $3.75 trillion in tax cuts, extending the expiring 2017 individual income tax breaks and temporarily adding new ones that Trump campaigned on. The revenue loss would be partially offset by nearly $1.3 trillion in reduced federal spending elsewhere, namely through Medicaid and food assistance. A Jan. 30 order from the Interior Department titled 'Ending DEI Programs and Gender Ideology Extremism' stated that any efforts to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion in the department's policy should exclude trust obligations to tribal nations. However, earlier this year, several staff members at the other two congressionally chartered schools in the country — the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas — were laid off as part of Trump's push to downsize the federal workforce. In a lawsuit filed in March, both institutions reported that some staff and faculty were rehired, but the Bureau of Indian Education notified those people that might be temporary and they may be laid off again. 'It shows what a president's values and priorities are, and that's been hard,' said Ahniwake Rose, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, an organization that represents more than 30 Tribal Colleges and Universities. 'That's been hard for our staff, our students, our faculty to see that the priority of the administration through the Department of Interior might not be on tribal colleges.' In its budget request this year, the Interior Department is proposing reducing funding to the BIE's post secondary programs by more than 80%, and that would have a devastating affect on tribal colleges and universities, or TCUs, which rely on the federal government for most of their funding, said Rose. Most TCUs offer tribal citizens a tuition-free higher education, she said, and funding them is a moral and fiduciary responsibility the federal government owes tribal nations. In the many treaties the U.S. signed with tribal nations, it outlined several rights owed to them — like land rights, health care and education through departments established later, like the BIE. Trust responsibilities are the legal and moral obligations the U.S. has to protect and uphold those rights. The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Volusia sheriff: Remains of Atlantic Ocean diver who went missing in 2006 positively ID'd
The remains of an Atlantic Ocean diver who went missing off the coast of Ponce Inlet in 2006 have been identified, according to the Volusia County Sheriff's Office. Robert "Bobby" Martin, who was a 45-year-old condominium maintenance worker from New Smyrna Beach, went missing during a scuba diving trip in an eight-mile stretch of reefs called the "Party Grounds," some 22 miles east of Ponce de Leon Inlet. In 2007, scuba gear was recovered from a diving spot east of Ponce Inlet and was linked to Martin by tracing it to the dive shop that sold it, a Volusia sheriff's social-media post states. According to the sheriff's office, later in 2007, a woman walking along New Smyrna Beach discovered partial human remains and reported it to law enforcement. Those were two of the pieces Volusia sheriff's detectives and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Genetic Genealogy Investigations team used to help positively identify the remains as Martin's. Martin went diving with Lawrence and Rebecca Patterson on their boat Restless Native on Sept. 30, 2006. "According to two people diving with him, he surfaced, gave the signal that he was in distress, slipped beneath the surface and did not resurface," U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Donnie Brzuska said told The News-Journal in 2006. "They tried to locate him and couldn't find him." A few days after Martin's disappearance, Lawrence Patterson, then of Daytona Beach, described him to the News-Journal as someone who lived to "work, dive and sleep." Patterson said he and Martin were diving 80 feet below the surface, looking for lobsters, when Martin swam off on his own. Some 35 minutes later, Rebecca Patterson heard Martin call for help some 400 feet from the boat. "He was gone in the blink of an eye," Lawrence Patterson said at the time. A 30-hour Coast Guard search covered 240 square miles over the weekend Martin went missing. By the end, searchers were "confident" they were not going to find Martin alive, Brzuska had said. Martin worked at the Moontide condominium as a maintenance man. In his shop, Martin had posted pictures of himself in diving gear. His boss, the condo manager Tana Keith, remembered him as "hard-headed, but he had a heart of gold," as well as a "wonderful work ethic" and a "great sense of humor." A seashell-covered wreath was posted on the condo's door along with a notice to residents about Martin's loss. Someone posted a note on a nearby bulletin board: "Neptune caught himself a good one this time." Martin was listed in the Florida Crime Information Center/National Crime Information Center as a missing person in August 2008. "(Volusia) detectives exhausted all avenues to obtain a DNA match but were unable to identify or locate any potential family members, and their efforts came up empty," the sheriff's office post reads. It wasn't until January 2025 that the case started coming to a close. The Sheriff's Office post states that the Volusia County Medical Examiner's Office and funding from FDLE's Missing and Unidentified Human Remains grant led to a DNA match to one of Martin's family members. Data was submitted to Othram, Inc., for DNA sequencing and a database search. When it came back, FDLE experts conducted "extensive analytical and genetic genealogy research," providing the DNA match and positive identification of Martin in May. The medical examiner reviewed the case, including an inspection of the 2007 dive equipment recovery, and deemed Martin's death accidental, the Sheriff's Office said. This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Diver's remains identified through DNA 19 years after he went missing
