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Alexandria Ehlert pursues university education that he hopes to become a park ranger and climate scientist. Now she wonders whether she will finish her studies at a university in Menominee.
Scholarships that floated at Wisconsin tribal universities have disappeared in recent weeks, with optimism about earning a degree there and continuing to study in the facility for four years.
Ehlert is one of approximately 20 Menominee national students who rely on scholarships funded through US Department of Agriculture grants. The Trump administration has halted grants amid widespread cost-cutting efforts. Unless other money is found, Ehlert and other scholars will be on campus in their final weeks.
“It leaves me without much hope,” said Ehlert, a member of Oneidanation. “Maybe I should just get a warehouse job and drop schools entirely.”
Many staff and students at the universities and universities of the 37 tribes of the country, which rely heavily on federal dollars, are wary of the suspension of key grants early on Donald Trump’s second presidency.
Even before he took office, the school essentially paid for his salary. The 1978 law promised them a basic level of funding, but Congress has not come close to fulfilling its obligations for decades. Today, universities are earning more than they need to have $15 billion a year when they receive little to build and maintain campuses when considering inflation. Water pipes often break down, roofs leak, ventilation systems break down, buildings collapse. In some cases, tribal universities that lose federal funds, with the exception of small amounts of national funding and crushing personal donations, have few other sources of income.
“You ask us to freeze our funds and wait six months to see how it shakes,” said Enjiway Close, of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which lobbies for tribal universities in Washington, D.C.
Rose said Tribal Colleges and University has suspended USDA grants of at least $7 million. School concerns have been magnified by a lack of communication from federal agencies. She was partly due to the fire of many federal workers, just as the Trump administration cut the federal bureaucracy completely.
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Staff at Menominee National University were seeking a refund of $50,000 on research and other work carried out in January. It’s a technical issue and they said when they first reached someone in the agency and they told me they should contact technical support. But it didn’t solve the problem. A few days later, the department told the university to suspend all grant activities, including Ehlert’s scholarships, without explaining the reason or duration.
Freezing grants are administered by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture or NIFA. They derived from the impartiality of the Education Land Cultivation Status Act, a 1994 law, and designated tribal universities as land cultivation institutions. The Parliament created a land cultivation system in the 19th century and provided more funding for agricultural and vocational degrees.
The addition of the tribal university to the list of land cultivation institutions in 1994 gave the school access to more funding for specific projects focused primarily on food and agriculture. Many grants funded food research and projects to increase food availability. This is especially important in rural areas with fewer grocery stores and restaurants.
“It’s really unstable for a tribal university,” said Tuilla Baker, president of Nueta Hidatusa Sanish College in North Dakota. Her university also lost access to NIFA funds that paid for food research, as well as programs that connected Indigenous farmers, ranchers and gardeners to one another. “We don’t have a big donation to retreat.”
Several other university presidents said they were preparing for the worst. Minnesota’s Red Lake Nation College had frozen pay, travel and employment, President Dan King said. The United Tribe Technical College in North Dakota similarly suspended renovations to the dormitory, originally built as military barracks, in 1900. Prodepreca reported in October that tribal universities would need more than $5 billion to keep up with campus maintenance.
“We hope to start soon because there is a short construction season here,” said Leander McDonald, president of United Tribe University.
At Blackfeet Community College in northern Montana, NIFA grants are helping to create a program to train workers for new Blackfeet slaughterhouses. The university has begun construction of a new building, but President Bradhall worries that he may have to suspend the project because he has no access to the promised federal funds.
School President Hall, on the campus of Blackfeet Community College in Browning, Montana Credit: Rebecca Stumpf of Propublica
Like other tribal college leaders, Hall was unable to get a clear answer from the USDA. Unlike some other schools, his university has had access to federal funds, but he has been wondering how long.
“Without no clarity and no communication, it’s very difficult to make a decision right now,” he said. “We are in a retention pattern, combined with situations where our satisfaction levels are not answered.”
A USDA spokesperson refused to answer the question. The agency emailed a written statement, noting that “the NIFA program is currently under review,” but did not provide details on which grants were suspended or how long it lasted. The agency did not respond to requests for clarification.
Some tribal university leaders theorized theorizing that they were targeted because of the fairness of the Land Grant Status Act of Education, the formal name of the Land Act of 1994. The Trump administration is wasting federal spending on programs that involve “diversity,” “fair,” or “inclusion” in their names.
“Fair” often refers to fairness related to race and gender, but in the 1994 bill, Congress used the term to emphasize that tribal universities could access the same funds that 19th century law ultimately made available to universities on other lands. The Association of Public University, a spokesman for an organization representing non-tribal land grant agencies, said he is not aware of USDA funding to non-tribal universities where he has been suspended.
Tribal college campuses are falling apart. The United States has not fulfilled its promise to fund schools.
Tribal universities argue that their funds are protected by treaties and federal trust liability, a legal obligation that requires the United States to protect Indigenous peoples’ resources, rights and assets. Several university presidents said it was illegal to cut funding to tribal universities.
“We were promised education, healthcare and basic needs,” said King of Red Lake Nation College. “The fact that we’re gathering in these other programs — well, we’re not like them.”
Menominee National University was just one year after a year that changed its $9 million USDA grant to fund workforce development, train students in local deals such as forestry, and improve food access for Indigenous peoples. The five-year grant was a once-in-a-lifetime award.
“I want my students to graduate and graduate from healthy employment opportunities,” Caldwell said. “Now, that was cut off a bit at my knee.”
