For the second year in a row, President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal seeks to reduce federal funding for tribal colleges and universities, a move tribal leaders say could jeopardize the schools’ ability to operate and serve Native American students in rural communities.
The proposal, released last week, would carve billions of dollars out of programs that fulfill trust and treaty responsibilities to tribal nations. It also would eliminate funding for the Institute for American Indian Arts, which the proposal would make the only federally funded college for contemporary Native American arts.
The budget includes additional changes affecting tribal higher education, with proposed cuts aimed at tribal colleges and universities across the country. There are about three dozen tribal colleges operated by tribal nations, and tribal leaders said most rely on federal funding for a large share of their budgets, tying the institutions’ stability to federal commitments.
The proposal also targets two schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Education: Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico. Students at both colleges sued the Bureau of Indian Education last year over funding and staffing cuts that the administration made, according to the report.
Ahniwake Rose, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which represents tribal colleges and universities, said, “If this budget was to pass, our TCUs would be forced to close within a year.” Rose said Congress needs to defend federal funding for tribal colleges rather than allowing the administration’s proposal to advance.
Rose also said the issue is not limited to the specific institutions that the proposal would directly eliminate or cut, pointing to how last year’s budget actions also trimmed funding for tribal colleges and minority-serving institutions. Leaders at tribal colleges said they were not expecting reallocated funds that had been directed to historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges in the prior round.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico and a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said in a statement that “President Trump’s budget proposal to eliminate IAIA’s federal funding is a direct attack on Native communities.” Luján also said the proposal to eliminate funding for the Institute for American Indian Arts would come alongside broader cuts affecting other grant programs that benefit Native Americans, including areas such as housing, business and infrastructure.