SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Tribal colleges and universities - known as TCUs - offer tens of thousands of students a unique experience in parts of the country that do not otherwise have a lot of options for higher education. But the Trump administration has gone back and forth on funding for TCUs, first announcing a plan to cut funding in June, then in September announcing that TCUs would get more funding, at least in this fiscal year. And that uncertainty is raising a lot of concerns about the future for tribal colleges and universities. Here with us now to talk more about this is B.A. Parker, host of NPR's Code Switch. Hey, Parker.
B A PARKER, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: Before we talk more about funding, tell us more about tribal colleges.
PARKER: Yeah. There are about three dozen TCUs serving nearly 30,000 students, and they're mostly in rural parts of the country. And they provide four-year degrees, but they're also steeped in Indigenous traditions. I spoke with Graham Lee Brewer, a reporter who covers Indian country for The Associated Press, and he explained it like this.
GRAHAM LEE BREWER: TCUs often serve as repositories and protectors of traditional knowledge. They're places that are leading the way when it comes to preserving language, culture and agricultural practices that have been around since time immemorial - the very lifeways that were threatened or severed when tribal nations were forced to cede their homelands.
DETROW: So just to help us understand TCUs a little more, are their student populations entirely Native American?
PARKER: Well, like historically Black colleges and universities, TCUs are actually open to anyone, but yeah, they're mostly made up of Native American students. Tuition is free or reduced for tribal citizens, and some of the financial support these schools get is related to a long-standing agreement between the federal government and the tribal nations.
DETROW: Tell us more about that.
PARKER: Yeah. It's known as the trust responsibilities to tribal nations. Those are the legal obligations the U.S. government has to tribes through treaties, laws and acts of Congress. Here's Brewer again.
BREWER: To put it simply, it's part of what the U.S. government promised in return for taking the land that built the country.
PARKER: And Brewer said that TCU administrators and faculty are making the argument that even though federal funding goes to Native students, it isn't a DEI initiative. It's a legal obligation.
DETROW: So as we talk about mixed messages for the future of federal funding, help us understand where else TCUs get their money from.
PARKER: Well, a few places. They get funding and resources from tribal nations. Then there's the broader federal education funding that's for TCUs to operate. Those are the cuts we just talked about. But Brewer also told me they get grants from specific departments.
BREWER: Places like the USDA, Department of Labor and the National Science Foundation - departments that have been the focus of significant funding and staffing reductions by the Trump administration.
DETROW: So as far as we know then, what comes next for these schools and their students?
PARKER: Well, it's hard to know. Brewer visited Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in North Dakota, and he spoke with the college's president, Twyla Baker, who had just returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the federal money that ended up coming through.
TWYLA BAKER: We have to be kind of statesmen on top of being presidents and administrators.
BREWER: She said that she's of course grateful for the money, but she wonders how much work she could get done back at home if she wasn't having to constantly fly to the capital and remind the government of its responsibility to tribes.
BAKER: You know, it's part and parcel to the relationship that Native people have had with the United States government since the beginning of time. And, you know, we're small, but I like to think that we're mighty - also resilient against our will (laughter).
PARKER: So there are multiple avenues for instability here.
DETROW: B.A. Parker, host of NPR's Code Switch, thanks so much for bringing us this reporting.
PARKER: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: And you can listen to the full episode of Code Switch on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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