Tribes and Native American students sue over Bureau of Indian Education firings

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum walks to the House Chamber before of President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

NORMAN, OKLA. — Three tribal nations and five Native American students say in a lawsuit that the Trump administration has failed its legal obligations to tribes when it cut jobs at Bureau of Indian Education schools.

Firings at two colleges as part of the administration’s cuts to federal agencies, with the help of Elon Musk, have left students and staff with unsafe conditions, canceled classes, and delayed financial aid, according to the lawsuit Friday.

Lawyers at the Native American Rights Fund filed the suit in federal court in the nation’s capital against the heads of the Interior Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Indian Education Programs on behalf of the Pueblo of Isleta, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. The tribes allege they were not consulted when the federal government laid off several employees at the two colleges under the purview of the BIE.

Nearly one-quarter of the staff at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, including nine instructors, were fired or forced to resign in February. The lawsuit alleges that security and maintenance firings have left the campus unsafe, including two power outages in the past few weeks that went unresolved due to the lack of staff.

One SIPI student named in the lawsuit, Kaiya Brown, said in the filing that her dorm was without power for 13 hours. “Ms. Brown was forced to leave her dorm residence and drive to a second location to be able to complete her school assignments,” according to the lawsuit.

Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas lost more than one-quarter of its staff, including “the Dean of Students, instructors, property management specialists, coaches, tutors, residential advisors, academic advisors, custodians, and food services employees” as well as its only bus driver, the lawsuit states. It also notes that Haskell’s student center has been shuttered and students reported their financial aid has either been delayed or has not been disbursed.

Students also reported reduced meal sizes, bathrooms without toilet paper, and classes that are now being taught by deans who do not have the same expertise as the professors who were fired.

Both institutions report that some staff and faculty have been rehired, but “BIE notified those individuals that this might be temporary and they may be laid off again,” according to the lawsuit.

The BIA said it was department policy to not comment on pending litigation. A spokesperson for the Interior Department declined to comment.

The BIE is responsible for providing educational opportunities for Native Americans and Alaska Natives across the country, part of the U.S. government’s trust responsibilities — the legal and moral obligations the U.S. has to protect and uphold treaties, laws and congressional acts dealing with tribes.

There are 183 bureau-funded elementary and secondary schools on 64 reservations in 23 states, that serve about 42,000 Indian students, according to the BIE’s website. It says 55 are BIE-operated and 128 are tribally operated.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has highlighted for several years significant understaffing at the BIE that has impacted its ability to monitor and assist schools.

One of the federal government’s obligations to tribal nations is to provide meaningful consultation before it takes any action that could possibly harm tribes or their services, said Hershel Gorham, lieutenant governor of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, which has 35 students at Haskell. “In this case there is no consultation that was done, not only from the BIA and BIE, but the federal government in general.”

Recent cuts to the Departments of the Interior and Health and Human Services that affect tribal citizens and were later rescinded might show that Doug Burgum and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the respective secretaries of those departments, understand those trust responsibilities, Gorham said, but also might suggest they don’t have the autonomy to prevent the violation of those rights for Native Americans.

“Right now it seems like they’re not being given that full autonomy, if you look at the cuts that were made to Haskell, SIPI and the BIE schools,” he said.

Article written by Graham Lee Brewer.