A group of Native American tribes and students is suing the Trump administration to reverse its recent firing of federal workers at Native schools that they said has severely lowered their quality of education.
The firings, part of the series of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency that have cut thousands of federal jobs since January, included nearly one quarter of the staff members at the only two federally run colleges for Native people in the country: Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque.
Instructors, a basketball coach, and security and maintenance workers were among those who were fired or forced to resign in February. Although the total number of layoffs was not clear on Sunday, the reductions also included employees at the central and regional offices of the Bureau of Indian Education, a federal agency. Some staff members, but not all, have been rehired, according to a statement from the Native American Rights Fund, which filed the suit on Friday in federal court in Washington. About 45,000 children are enrolled in bureau-funded schools in 23 states.
As a result of the cuts, dozens of courses at the two colleges lost instructors, according to the lawsuit. And because of the loss of support staff and maintenance workers, school dorms were quickly overrun with garbage, students reported undrinkable brown water, dining halls failed to adequately feed students, and widespread power outages hampered students’ ability to study.
“Unfortunately, these firings were done without preparation and without regard to the health and safety of the students, and that is a continuation of a history of neglect and disrespect,” Jacqueline De León, a lawyer for the tribes and students, said. “We are here to fight to make sure that it doesn’t continue.”
Lawyers with the Native American Rights Fund filed the suit against the heads of the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Indian Education Programs.
Plaintiffs included the tribal nations of the Pueblo of Isleta; the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation; and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. Five students from the two colleges are also among the plaintiffs.
A spokesman for the Interior Department, which houses the Bureaus of Indian Education and Indian Affairs, said the department does not comment on pending litigation.
The federal government has a legal obligation, known as the federal Indian trust responsibility, to protect and maintain the special relationship it has with federally recognized tribes.
Included in this obligation, which was supported by federal courts as early as 1831, are requirements to uphold tribal sovereignty, work with tribes on projects and policies that affect them, and respect tribes’ right to make decisions in their own best interest. By not consulting with tribes on the firings, the lawsuit said, the government violated the trust requirement.
“Despite having a treaty obligation to provide educational opportunities to Tribal students, the federal government has long failed to offer adequate services,” Hershel Gorham, the lieutenant governor of Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, said in a 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.”
The U.S. government has a fraught history with Native schools. Over more than 150 years, hundreds of thousands of Native children were sent to boarding schools, often after being removed from their homes, to assimilate with non-Native culture. Abuse and neglect were common at the original assimilation schools, and mass graves have been located near such institutions across the country. More than 100 people are buried in one such cemetery at Haskell.
Federal funding of tribal schools has also steadily decreased since 2010, along with the enrollment of Native American and Alaska Native students.
According to the Postsecondary National Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization, Native American and Alaska Native students account for the smallest ethnic group in the country, making up less than 1 percent of students enrolled in postsecondary schools in 2021, the latest year for which data was available.
Alan Blinder contributed reporting.
