Trump’s Interior Is Taking Over Tribal Education. Is It Set Up For That?

The Department of the Interior is set to take a bigger role in tribal education, and some lawmakers say the dismantling of the Department of Education could spell problems for tribal programs caught in the reshuffling.

The Interior Department will soon oversee 14 projects and funding related to tribal education previously housed in the Department of Education. The delegation to a new agency is part of the Trump administration’s first major steps toward dismantling the Department of Education and meeting its stated goal of returning power to the states.

While the Education Department will still play a role in overseeing the Office of Indian Education and other tribal-related programs and funding, lawmakers say they are worried that the changes could mean that tribal education would eventually fall completely off the table as a priority.

“I think that the federal government has failed in so many ways to live up to its trust and treaty responsibilities when it comes to tribal nations, including with education,” said Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. “To transfer Indian education programs out of the Department of Education gives me no reason to think that they’re going to do anything to protect those programs.”

The shift to the Department of the Interior was one of several “partnerships” the administration announced between the Department of Education and other agencies last week.

Interior already houses the Bureau of Indian Education, which is a school system that serves 40,000 students across 183 schools on reservations and another 325,000 students through its programming, according to the agency’s website. While Interior directly funds schools and students, the role of the Department of Education has long been to create education policies and provide federal funds to support Native education.

Sen. Ben Ray Luján did not comment specifically on moving these tribal education programs to Interior, but he pointed to broader concerns about how the administration has facilitated programs intended for Native American communities and concerns about the future of the Department of Education.

“They don’t believe in [education]. They’re gonna try to dismantle it. And now they’re proposing to send programs to Secretary Kennedy, who has been horrible on health care when it comes to [Indian Health Service], and eliminating positions and access to health care across Native American communities,” Luján said.

(The Department of Health and Human Services, which is overseen by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is currently set to oversee some of the Department of Education’s programs, but not the ones related to tribal education.)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and a lawmaker whose home state of Alaska includes hundreds of federally recognized tribes, did not answer questions from NOTUS on the tribal education aspect of the administration’s moves. But her office referred NOTUS to a previous statement, in which she was more broadly critical of the decision to splinter the Department of Education.

“The administration’s decision to transfer these congressionally mandated responsibilities and programs to other agencies that lack the necessary policy expertise may have lasting negative impacts on our young people,” Murkowski wrote in a statement last week. “And simply moving the administration of these programs to other agencies will not return control of education to the states.”

Some lawmakers see the Department of the Interior as a reasonable choice because it already handles many tribal education programs, but the process of actually shuffling the programs leaves questions.

“The Department of the Interior remains committed to strengthening educational opportunities for native students and honoring our trust responsibilities. We are excited about this opportunity to better serve Native youth,” a spokesperson for Interior told NOTUS in a statement when asked about lawmakers’ concerns that tribal education could be compromised by the partnership.

Other Republicans, including those whose constituencies include large populations of Native Americans, welcomed the news.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who is Cherokee and represents 37 federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma, saw the move as logical.

“I’m supporting that. I think it aligns,” Mullin said. With regard to tribal programs, he added: “I mean, Interior’s over everything else.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, who introduced a Returning Education to Our States Act that would transfer the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice, said he was excited about the moves.

“I’m very happy with it,” Rounds told NOTUS about the agency agreements. “This is a step in the right direction.”

Even before the moves were announced, some lawmakers were concerned about what might happen in tribal education under the new administration.

“Children on reservations weren’t getting an appropriate education, and because of federal intervention, now they do to a large extent,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, before the announcement was made. “And you have to keep enforcing it. So you remove the enforcement, you regress back to what you were used to doing.”