The Donald Trump administration is facing a major test of its commitment to Indian Country with a lawsuit challenging the firings of government employees at two tribal colleges.

In a complaint filed on March 7, three federally-recognized tribes, along with five Indian students, blasted the Department of the Interior for the purges at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in New Mexico. The complaint alleges that employees were terminated without tribal consultation and in violation of the trust and treaty obligations of the United States.

“Tribal Nations and the federal government should be working together to best serve our Native students,” Pueblo of Isleta Governor Eugene Jiron said in a news release from the Native American Rights Fund, the legal non-profit that filed the lawsuit.

“Instead, the administration is randomly, without preparation and in violation of their federal trust responsibility, taking away teachers and staff from already-underserved facilities,” Jiron added. “Our students deserve better.”

The Pueblo of Isleta is based in New Mexico, where 24 percent of the workforce at SIPI was terminated without warning last month. Kaiya Brown, a student at the tribal college near Albuquerque, said the firings came ahead of widespread power outages that went unresolved for lengthy periods because no employees were there to fix them.

“SIPI already was understaffed and things have gotten much worse,” said Brown, a citizen of the Navajo Nation. “We had a power outage in my dorm for 13 hours because there was no maintenance staff available to restore power. I had to leave my dorm to find somewhere I could submit assignments.”

“There also was a campus-wide power outage that cancelled classes,” Brown added. “It is really hard to focus on learning and classes when these interruptions keep happening. Meanwhile, the administrators and faculty that are left are having to cover several jobs. It is really demoralizing.”

In Kansas, where Haskell is located, the situation is just as dire, according to the lawsuit. The college lost 27 percent of its workforce through terminations carried out by the Bureau of Indian Education at the behest of the Trump administration.

“We have a say in how BIE operates the education provided our children in fulfillment of our treaty rights,” said Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Chairman Joseph Rupnick, whose community is based in Kansas. “We will fight to protect the education they deserve and fight to protect the staff that serve them.”

Four Haskell students — including two Prairie Band citizens — are a part of the lawsuit. Ella Bowen, Danielle Ledesma, Victor Organista and Aiyanna Tanyan say their educational careers have been significantly disrupted by the firings, which have resulted in massive changes to coursework and class schedules, delays in financial aid and health and safety problems on campus.

“They keep saying that these cuts won’t impact individuals and services, but they do – they affect us a lot,” said Bowen, who is a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. “Besides the classes that lost instructors, the entire school only has three custodial staff now. The school’s restrooms have overflowing trashcans and no toilet paper. Students are cleaning up the restrooms themselves just to make them usable.”

The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, based in Oklahoma, had 35 citizens enrolled at Haskell at the start of the fall semester, according to the lawsuit. Lieutenant Governor Hershel Gorham said his community doesn’t want to see the institution fail as a result of the firings.

“Despite having a treaty obligation to provide educational opportunities to Tribal students, the federal government has long failed to offer adequate services,” said Gorham. “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,” said Gorham.

In their complaint, the tribes and students name Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum as a defendant. Also named are Bryan Mercier, the director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs> who is currently carrying out the duties of the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs; and Tony Dearman, the director of the BIE.

“The United States government has legal obligations to Tribal Nations that they agreed to in treaties and have been written into federal law. The abrupt and drastic changes that happened since February, without consultation or even pre-notification, is completely illegal,” said Jacqueline De León, an attorney with NARF.

“Although the schools have reportedly been able to hire back some of their instructional staff, it ignores all of the other important staff members who are gone. It is not even close to enough. The students and the Tribes deserve better, and we will fight to make sure they get it,” said Matt Campbell, the non-profit’s deputy directory.

Burgum took control of the federal agency with the most trust and treaty responsibilities in Indian Country at the end of January. During his confirmation process, he won bipartisan praise for his work with tribes in his home state of North Dakota.

Ever since his arrival in Washington, D.C, however, Burgum has largely remained silent about the cuts within the Department of the Interior (DOI). According to former employees who have been monitoring the developments, at least 2,200 people have been let go at the BIA, the BIE and other agencies, offices and bureaus at DOI.

“Education, this is again a question of inputs versus outputs,” Burgum told tribal leaders as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) met in D.C. last month.

“Uh, Bureau of Indian Education, which is …,” Burgum said on February 12. “This is going to be a fun one for me. Fun in the sense that I like tackling challenging problems.”

Despite speaking at NCAI’s executive council winter session for 45 minutes, Burgum did not offer any specifics about his plans for Indian education, whether elementary, high school or post-secondary institutions. But he drew a distinction between the public system and the BIE, which he said does not perform as well.

“But one of the things that we really couldn’t touch in our state was the few BIE schools that we had,” said Burgum, who served eight years as governor of North Dakota. “There’s tribal schools, there’s public schools, and there’s BIE schools.”

“And it’s a fact: I know we’ve got hardworking, dedicated, committed people inside of Interior that work in BIE and I’m looking forward to working with them,” Burgum continued.

“But I also know that it’s also a fact that in many places, in many states, that BIE schools are the ones that have the most dollars going in and have some of the lowest outcomes coming out,” Burgum added. “And that’s something we just have to, you know, look at. We have to make sure that our focus is on the students.”

The BIE is run by a director who is a career government employee. But the agency is overseen by the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, which is a political position at DOI. [PDF: Indian Affairs Organizational Chart]

Burgum has not publicly discussed President Trump’s nomination of Billy Kirkland, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. Indianz.Com asked DOI for a comment on February 4 but did not receive a response. Burgum did not mention Kirkland during his NCAI remarks either.

Although Kirkland served in the White House during the first Trump administration, he does not have much direct experience in Indian law or policy. Almost every recent Assistant Secretary has worked in tribal, state or federal government, and all came to the position with a significant background in the issues facing the BIE and the BIA, whether it’s education, transportation or economic development.

And despite being nominated over a month ago, Kirkland has told associates that he doesn’t plan on relocating to the nation’s capital from his home in Georgia until the end of the current school year — so that his own children’s education and care won’t be disrupted. That means the BIE and the BIA won’t have a political appointee advocating for their interests until May, or possibly later in the summer.

The tribes and Indian students filed their lawsuit in federal court in D.C. Last Thursday, the case was assigned to Judge Amir H. Ali, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic former president Joe Biden.

The case is Pueblo of Isleta v. Secretary of the Department of the Interior, No. 1:25-cv-00696. [PDF: Complaint]