{"id":123649,"date":"2025-03-04T01:39:32","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T07:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/?p=123649"},"modified":"2025-03-04T01:55:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T07:55:00","slug":"mr-secretary-why-are-you-silent-interior-department-cuts-impact-indian-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2025\/03\/04\/mr-secretary-why-are-you-silent-interior-department-cuts-impact-indian-country\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mr. Secretary, Why are you silent?’: Interior Department cuts impact Indian Country"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Department<\/a>
The main building of the Department of the Interior, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C., is seen on March 3, 2025. Photo by Indianz.Com (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n
‘Mr. Secretary, Why are you silent?’<\/div>\r\n
Cuts at Interior Department continue to impact Indian Country<\/div>\r\n
Tuesday, March 4, 2025<\/div>\r\n
By Acee Agoyo<\/div>\r\n
Indianz.Com<\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C. — “We should be having a party. Instead we are protesting.”\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWith those words, a small yet feisty group of former employees of the Department of the Interior<\/a> gathered in the nation’s capital on a cold Monday afternoon. But they did not show up to 1849 C Street NW to celebrate the 176th anniversary<\/a> of the federal agency with the most trust and treaty responsibilities in Indian Country.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nNo, more than a century after the agency’s establishment on March 3, 1849<\/a>, the crowd came to ask recently-confirmed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum<\/a> a simple question.\r\nWhy have so many of their former colleagues lost their jobs since Donald Trump became the 47th president of the United States?\r\n

<\/P>\r\nAnd more specifically, what is happening to employees that are supposed to help the federal government meet its trust and treaty obligations to tribes and their communities? In the last couple of weeks, Haskell Indian Nations University<\/a> in Kansas has lost 27 percent of its staff. At the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute<\/a> (SIPI) in New Mexico, 24 percent of the workforce has been terminated.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n“These actions, taken mid-year, are causing nothing but chaos on our campuses,” Ahniwake Rose, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium<\/a>, said in Congressional testimony<\/a> last Thursday.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n“As students struggle for answers on how these impacts will impact their graduation, they worry about whether they’ll be able to continue their coursework past this spring, and they lose trusted coaches mid-season,” Rose told key lawmakers on the final day of an unprecedented three days of Indian Country hearings<\/a>.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“They deserve better,” Rose asserted.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nBut Burgum, a former two-term governor of North Dakota, has not publicly accounted for the mass firings, which coincidentally began right after he addressed a meeting of the National Congress of American Indians<\/a> in Washington, D.C. on February 12. Despite speaking to tribal leaders for 45 minutes<\/a>, he did not offer any specifics about his plans for advancing the nation-to-nation relationship that is at the heart of government’s legal and political obligations.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nSo instead of a birthday cake, Jane Lyder<\/a>, a longtime former Interior employee who helped organize the protest on Monday, brought a bullhorn. With the iconic Washington Monument<\/a> in the distance behind her, she led the crowd in pressing Burgum to explain exactly what’s going on at the building that houses the central offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs<\/a> (BIA), the Bureau of Indian Education<\/a> (BIE) and the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration<\/a> (BTFA).\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“Mr. Secretary, why are you silent?” asked Lyder, a question that was asked repeatedly from a small park across from the C Street entrance of Interior’s headquarters.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n

\"Jane<\/a> <\/div>\r\n
Jane Lyder, a former longtime employee of the Department of the Interior, holds a sign reading “Tribes” outside of the agency’s main building in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2025. Photo by Indianz.Com (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nLyder told Indianz.Com that she worked at Interior for 36 years, serving in a number of leadership roles and in the department’s legislative office, reporting to Secretary Burgum’s predecessors in Republican and Democratic administrations alike. She retired from government service more than a decade ago, so she was not among those who have lost their jobs in President Trump’s efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nBut as she held a sign that read “Tribes” — one of Interior’s primary responsibilities<\/a> — she continued to speak out. She said more than 2,200 employees have been fired throughout the department, though exact figures about cuts from the BIA, the BIE and the BTFA are not readily available.\r\n

<\/p> \r\n“It\u2019s been hard to get numbers,” Lyder said in reference to the employees that serve tribes and their communities.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nDuring three days of testimony to the House Committee on Appropriations<\/a> last week, tribes and their advocates started to provide an on-the-ground assessment of the cuts and their impact on Indian Country, which has long suffered from underfunding. Every program — from education to health care to public safety — is at risk, witnesses said.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n“A reduction in force is an abrogation of treaty and trust obligations and further reduces our already deficit capacity to provide needed services to our tribal citizens,” Cheyenne Robinson, the Secretary of the Omaha Tribe<\/a>, said last Wednesday<\/a>.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nEven energy development — a stated priority of President Trump — faces setbacks, according to Mike Natchees, a council member for the Ute Tribe<\/a>.\r\nHe informed the committee that Interior employees who ensure that oil and gas production occurs on federal and Indian lands are among those who have lost their jobs.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“Just this past week, we lost seven of the eight people who help us secure those federal approvals at the agency level,” Natchees said<\/a> last Tuesday. “We need those employees back immediately.”\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“Our tribal energy production cannot afford to become an unintended consequence of national budget cuts and employee terminations,” said Natchees, who noted that oil and gas development on his tribe’s reservation in Utah generates $643 billion in revenues for local, state and federal governments, along with creating and supporting 8,300 jobs.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“Shutting down the key essential workers that are necessary to maintain and develop our energy resources shuts down the United States’ and Utah’s ability to maintain energy dominance,” Natchees added. \r\n

<\/p>\r\n“This is not a tribal issue, it is an American issue, and the lack of adequate staffing and budgetary support undermines national security interests and impacts the environment by pushing that energy development to other areas of the world,” Natchees said.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n