Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum discusses his views on Indian education on February 12, 2025.

As the leader of the Department of the Interior, Burgum oversees the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). The BIE system includes 183 elementary and secondary schools on 64 reservations in 23 states, along with two post-secondary institutions: Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in New Mexico.

“This is going to be a fun one for me. Fun in the sense that I like tackling challenging problems,” Burgum said of the BIE.

According to Burgum, BIE schools “are the ones that have the most dollars going in and have some of the lowest outcomes coming out.” He did not elaborate, other than saying that the poor performance of the Indian education system was a “fact” in “many” states.

Burgum spoke at the executive council winter session of the National Congress of American Indians in Washington, D.C. A couple of days later, the Donald Trump administration began terminating BIE employees — including 27 percent of staff at Haskell and 24 percent of staff at SIPI.

“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 said.

Burgum did not address the BIE terminations, or the tribal colleges, in his remarks. His full speech at NCAI’s meeting ran about 45 minutes.