Tribal college leaders, recent graduate respond to proposed federal funding cuts

NINA MOINI: Tribal colleges are vital hubs for education, cultural preservation and economic growth. Recent proposed budget cuts by the Trump administration and historical underfunding by Congress have placed these institutions at risk. Native News reporter Melissa Olson has spoken with tribal college administrators in Minnesota. She's here to share what she is learning with us. Thanks for being here, Melissa.

MELISSA OLSON: Hi, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Lets start with the basics. Can you tell folks who may not know, what are tribal colleges all about?

MELISSA OLSON: Tribal colleges came into existence under legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Carter in 1978. So tribal colleges have been around for almost five decades. Tribal colleges tend to be located on tribal land, and they serve primarily Native students but also educate non-Native students. They tend to be smaller in terms of the number of students who attend.

NINA MOINI: And about how many students do they serve?

MELISSA OLSON: Those here in Minnesota serve between 200 and 400 students. Nationwide, there are more than three dozen tribal colleges serving more than 40,000 students. Many offer two-year degrees in a variety of fields-- law enforcement, business management, nursing, agriculture, and forestry degrees. Many colleges work in their respective tribal communities on Native language revitalization, archiving, and cultural preservation.

NINA MOINI: And how many tribal colleges are there in Minnesota?

MELISSA OLSON: There are four tribal colleges in Minnesota. White Earth Nation, Leach Lake Band of Ojibwe, and the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa have all chartered tribal colleges. Red Lake Nation Colleges has two locations, one on the tribe's reservation in the northwest part of the state and another in Minneapolis, just across from US Bank Stadium downtown.

NINA MOINI: And so President Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill proposes cuts to the Bureau of Indian Education funding. So tell us how those proposed cuts would affect these tribal colleges.

MELISSA OLSON: So President Trump's budget, which is now in front of Congress, has proposed $22 million in funding for tribal secondary education for 2026. That would be down from $187 million for 2025. That's according to a fact sheet put out by the Bureau of Indian Education. If those cuts were to pass, that would represent a 90% cut to funding for tribal colleges nationwide.

NINA MOINI: How would tribal colleges in Minnesota be affected by those cuts, Melissa?

MELISSA OLSON: I spoke with Red Lake Nation College President Dan King. This is how he described the proposed cuts.

DAN KING: We would be hit with a loss of about $1.8 million, and the federal budgets for our college are about 55% of our budget. So it would be a devastating cut that would greatly reduce our ability to provide higher education for Native Americans. And also, it would result in mass layoffs. Because really, the federal funding that we get from the BIE is our bread-and-butter funding for our college, operational funding.

MELISSA OLSON: I asked Dan King if the college would be in danger of having to close if those proposed cuts were passed. He told me that the college's offerings would be, quote, "greatly reduced" at both their Northern Minnesota and Minneapolis campuses. King told me that Red Lake Nation College's budget averages about $8 million a year.

NINA MOINI: So that's one college. Would all the tribal colleges and tribal communities in Minnesota be impacted by these proposed cuts?

MELISSA OLSON: Not all tribal colleges in Minnesota will be impacted. Fond Du Lac Tribal and Community College in Cloquet is the nation's only tribally chartered college that is also a member of a state higher education system. The college is chartered by the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The college has not received operational funding from the Bureau of Indian Education for many years and so wouldn't be affected by the cuts to BIE post-secondary funding. Most of their operational funding comes from the Minnesota legislature.

NINA MOINI: OK. What are tribal college administrators saying in response to the proposed cuts?

MELISSA OLSON: I also spoke with Leach Lake Tribal College Director of Advancement and Public Affairs Ryan White. He said the college that's there on Leach Lake just west of Bemidji will be impacted, but White emphasized that the college is working with their allies at the American Indian Education Consortium to push back against the cuts proposed in the president's budget. White says the college administrators are also working with congressional allies to propose alternative budget numbers that he feels they can live with. He noted the college has some funding reserves that will allow it to continue operating if those proposed cuts were to pass.

NINA MOINI: Thank you so much for your reporting, Melissa.

MELISSA OLSON: You're welcome, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Melissa Olson is a reporter for MPR News. For more perspective, I talked with a recent graduate of one of the tribal colleges in Minnesota. Summer May graduated from Red Lake Nation College last year and has also worked as a teaching assistant there. I started by asking what led her to that institution.

SUMMER MAY: The funny thing is, I didn't really have any big incentive other than my brother Charlie was going. And I did talk to him, and I asked, just because he never clearly stated to me, hey, why did you go to college? But he told me that he wanted more structure in his life. He was sick of working minimum-wage jobs. Just seeing him go, I was like, OK, awesome. Let me join too. And I ended up on an entirely different trajectory than I actually expected just by starting here.

NINA MOINI: And what do you mean by that? What was your experience like, and where do you felt like it led you?

SUMMER MAY: Yeah, yeah. So my conception of education was stereotypical. I viewed it as almost monotonous ritual in some ways. It was books, history, this and that. I never saw the relevancy of education outside of just, hey, I'm a nerd, and I think this is cool. Being here at RLNC, I was able to understand the importance of economics, of sociology, of history, and I was better able to navigate the current colonial systems that we're living under. And I was better able to understand more about my community, more about my culture. I was better able to actually reflect on my spirituality and reclaim it in a lot of ways.

It was the way that they taught the classes. It was the way that they embodied the Ojibwe values, the seven sacred grandfather teachings. It was the culture here and the feeling of acceptance and community, especially considering the experience as a city Native where the reservation is four hours that way, and you're far away from home, and you're not able to go to powwows or go to ceremonies as often as you would like to. Having that experience helped me realize my own agency and just life in general, and realizing that I also have a role to play in cultural and language revitalization, and not only for Indigenous people, but helping to cultivate a sustainable future for everyone in general.

NINA MOINI: You sound very passionate about your experience, and you want other people to have that opportunity as well. What impact do you think the proposed cuts to tribal colleges and universities would have on young people coming up behind you?

MELISSA OLSON: Like I said before, I didn't really know much about higher education. I didn't really have any incentive to go. And I think that is the biggest threat when it comes to the cuts to federal funding. There are still so many Indigenous people out there-- not even Indigenous-- people who even are thinking about pursuing a higher education. You don't know where getting a higher education is going to lead you to. And the thing is, taking away this federal funding, at least from my perspective, is going to rip that opportunity away from them.

If it wasn't for my ability to get into higher education and the ease because of all the support at RLNC, I would not have even gone in the first place, and I would not know what I'm missing out. Instead, I would probably just keep working the job I was working. My brother probably wouldn't have gone. This is a threat to access and a threat to opportunity. But even then, it could be a different story, considering all of the leaders, all of the amazing people here, all of the people who are consistently putting in effort to fight and maintain the mission that we are doing, which is to help uplift our people.

So if I don't have a job or if, out of nowhere, I lose access to my education, I have built a foundation to the point where I'm still going to do the work. Even though these impacts are very important to tribal colleges, tribal colleges in general still aren't going anywhere. And there's still a lot of advocacy being done about it, especially from the student perspective too.

NINA MOINI: Summer May, thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. I really appreciate your time.

SUMMER MAY: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for talking to me.

NINA MOINI: Summer May is a graduate of Red Lake Nation College. She's about to start her final year at Augsburg University, and last month, she was announced as a recipient of the Udall Scholarship. That's a prestigious award for undergraduates working on tribal policy or the environment.