UPDATE: This story has been updated to indicate that another source insists that Haskell won’t close. Read the latest story.
Jourdan Bennett-Begaye and Kevin Abourezk
ICT
Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute are wrestling to offset the loss of key workers after federal layoffs and resignations gutted their staffing, officials familiar with the matter confirmed Monday to ICT.
At least two sources told ICT that complete closure of the tribal colleges were not off the table but another source was adamant that Haskell would not close and no courses would be canceled.
At SIPI, in New Mexico, approximately 20 employees were laid off Friday out of the institute’s 100 employees, leaving about 80 employees to run the school of about 200 students for the current trimester, sources told ICT.
SUPPORT INDIGENOUS JOURNALISM. CONTRIBUTE TODAY.
Numbers for staff members who took the additional “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation option from the Trump administration are unknown.
Pearl Yellowman, Navajo, who was vice president of operations at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute until she was laid off Friday, said the sharp cuts are devastating for the school.
“It’s detrimental because on Tuesday, our students are going to say, ‘Where’s my instructor?’ ‘What happened to my class?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Is my future of being a student okay here?’ ‘Where’s my tutor?’ ‘What happened to this person?’ ‘Are my scholarships in jeopardy?’ ‘Is my financial aid in jeopardy?’” Yellowman told ICT Saturday.
“One of our departments was literally left with just one person,” she said.
Haskell and SIPI are the only post-secondary institutions controlled by the Bureau of Indian Education through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is under the Department of the Interior.
They are also part of a land-grant university system that dates back to 1862. Federal legislation in 1994 designated more than a dozen tribal colleges and universities land-grant institutions, and most tribal colleges and universities now operate with that designation.
The cuts to both schools are part of thousands of layoffs wider federal layoffs ordered by the Trump administration through the Office of Personnel Management. The abrupt dismissal of probationary federal workers included thousands at the BIE, the BIA, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Justice.
Initial attempts to lay off more than 2,000 workers at the Indian Health Service were rescinded late Friday by newly confirmed Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in what was described as a temporary move.
The BIE lost nearly 85 employees, an increase from the losses expected on Friday, sources told ICT Sunday. Among those laid off were nearly 30 from non-school positions in the BIE agency offices, excluding kindergarten through 12th grade schools.
About half of the 40 employees laid off had worked directly with students.
The layoffs leave the school with about a 25 percent reduction in its workforce, which already was lower than in 2022, when the school had 250 fewer students. Haskell averages about 1,000 students a semester, according to the school’s data online.
The tribal university could face loss of accreditation, a source told ICT. The best-case scenario would be for Haskell to cancel approximately a dozen courses, since about 15 employees dealt directly with students, sources said.
It raises questions about what would happen to their classes.
Francis Arpan, president of Haskell, released a statement Feb. 15 informing the campus about the staff changes.
“While these adjustments present challenges, our priority remains the continued success of our students, faculty, and staff. In the coming days, we will share more information on how departments will work together to ensure continuity,” he wrote on Facebook.
The layoffs left students and staff in turmoil at both institutions.
Haskell Indian Nations University
“I wasn’t expecting it,” said Sierra Two Bulls, Oglala Lakota, a social work lecturer at Haskell who was laid off Friday. “I felt so devastated and heartbroken.”
Haskell Indian Nations University was founded in 1884 as the United States Indian Industrial Training School, part of the federal government’s assimilation policies. The school was renamed to Haskell Institute after Kansas Rep. Dudley Haskell. In the 1970s, the school became Haskell Indian Junior College then Haskell Indian Nations University in the 1990s.
Haskell is most notably known for its alumni, who include Olympic gold medalist and runner Billy Mills and legendary Olympian Jim Thorpe.
Haskell had 984 students registered for the Fall 2024 semester, and all students are members of nearly 150 federally recognized tribes.
Two Bulls – a 2014 alumnus of Haskell – said she was in her office on campus shortly before 2 p.m. Central Friday when her supervisor stopped by her office and informed her that she was being laid off, along with all other probationary staff and faculty, including six other instructors.
“I immediately went into shock,” she said.
She immediately walked to another building to tape a sheet of paper to the door of her classroom to inform her students that her class was canceled due to an “emergency.” After finishing her grading, she walked to the administrative building to turn in her professional items, including her laptop.
She then walked with her personal belongings to her car.
“I got in my car, and I just started crying,” she said. “It just hit me.”
The 34-year-old said she suffers from a chronic illness and depends on her health insurance to cover her medical costs.
She said she also worries about those of her students who are planning to graduate this spring who needed her class to complete their degrees.
She said some student extracurricular clubs have lost their faculty sponsors, and that the university likely will struggle to continue to operate considering the many staff members – cafeteria, maintenance, housing, and student support workers – who have lost their jobs.
Professionally, she said, she doesn’t know what she’ll do next. Many other social workers in her community have also lost their jobs because of budget cuts within nonprofits that relied heavily on federal funding that is now uncertain.
But she remains hopeful.
“As Lakota people, we’re resilient,” she said. “You get the rug pulled beneath you, you get back up.”
The layoffs came as U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann of Kansas were working on legislation that would remove Haskell from BIE oversight. Moran spoke on the Senate floor on Jan. 10.
“We should not allow Haskell – a cornerstone of Native American higher education – to become another promise we fail to keep,” Moran said. “The students who walk through the doors at Haskell deserve better than the inefficiency and mismanagement and neglect they face under the current governance system.”
Moran and Kansas released the draft legislation in December 2024.
Haskell has faced other problems in recent years.
In July 2024, then-Haskell President Ronald Graham appeared at a hearing before members of two U.S. House committees to respond to a 2023 BIE report that included student allegations of sexual assault, bullying, nepotism and retaliation. Congressional leaders warned the university’s leadership and the BIE to improve the university’s treatment of its students.
“It’s really frustrating when you hear that we need to do better, but then the government turns around and gets rid of 20 to 30 percent of our employees here,” said Garret Elliott, an Indigenous and American Indian Studies student at Haskell.
The 33-year-old Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma citizen said he learned of the layoffs while working at the campus library Friday afternoon.
“I started noticing people within the library who have offices there returning their books,” he said. “At first it was pain, shock and sadness. I did a lot of crying, then it really turned into anger at that point, because it started hitting me that (what) if this is only the beginning?”
He said he hasn’t been paid for weeks as a student worker and has yet to receive his financial aid for the semester, a situation that many other students have reported experiencing. And he said he questions whether the university can continue to operate after losing so many employees.
“I’m afraid that we’re going to lose enrollment, which I believe is exactly what they intend because they want this place to shut down. … I am already preparing for something that to me feels inevitable,” he said, adding that he’s begun looking for a storage unit for his belongings.
He said most of the university’s library staff, except the librarian, and nearly all of its success coaches, were laid off. In addition, the school lost nearly its entire maintenance department.
“We’re a small campus, but it’s big enough that we need more than one maintenance worker,” he said.
The university’s art department was hit especially hard.
“The art department is essentially non-existent at this point,” Elliott said.
He said students plan to meet and share their concerns with university President Frank Arpan on Tuesday and also have created a Facebook page, which they are using to organize a protest either at the state Capitol in Topeka or in front of the offices of Kansas’ congressional representatives later this week.
He said students have begun contacting alumni and tribal leaders to try to find emergency funds to keep the school operating.
Elliott said Haskell is a place where students from tribes across the nation make lifelong connections and connect to their Indigenous cultures and history.
“I feel more seen and heard when we’re around each other, and I just don’t want any of that to become diminished,” he said.
Christina Haswood, a former Kansas state legislator and 2014 Haskell alum, said she has been worried about how the Trump administration’s efforts to slash government spending and the federal workforce would impact Indian Country.
The Diné woman said she hopes Native leaders will work to educate the new administration about the federal government’s trust responsibility to tribal nations.
“It seems like a lot of things are really up in the air,” she said. “I am angry. I am very sad.”
Haswood said the outpouring of support for Haskell online in recent days demonstrates how important it is to Indian Country.
“There’s energy there,” she said. “There’s a desire for voicing our concerns and to try and convince this administration that Indigenous education is important.”
She said doesn’t entertain much hope that the Trump administration will respond favorably.
“They have not shown any support to uphold treaties and put that best foot forward to work with Indian Country,” Haswood said.
Haskell plans to postpone its annual Welcome Back Powwow, originally scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 22.
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute
Two senior administrators at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque struggled through their emotions.
They had been asked to read a script laying off about 20 instructors, tutors, a vice president of college operations and a grants director, as ordered by the Trump administration.
“They were in tears,” said Thomas De Pree, the sole environmental instructor for the institute who was among those laid off. “They had a written printout that they were told to read for us, and they could barely get the words off the page because it made them so upset [at] what they were being forced to tell us.
“They made it very clear that SIPI did not want to let us go, and that these were orders from above.”
The staff was given two hours to clear out their offices, De Pree said, along with filling out exit paperwork and turning in their keys.
“We did not receive any official documentation that we’ve been let go or terminated. We aren’t even sure what the circumstances of the termination are,” De Pree told ICT. Only that it was “effective immediately.”
SIPI was created by the All Pueblos Council of Governors and other tribes in the area in 1971 to provide technical and higher education to Native American and Alaska Native students.
All Pueblos Council of Governors did not respond to a request for comment from ICT.
The school, which this trimester has approximately 200 students and represented 120 tribes, built partnerships with four-year universities in the state, including the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and New Mexico Highlands University.
Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico — both federal government laboratories focused on national security, artificial intelligence and more — also partnered with the school under the Department of Energy’s Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program, which helps students build career paths in the technical workforce.
Yellowman, the former vice president of operations, would have celebrated three years at the technical college in March. She said that some people who were laid off were on leave, lunch, or just coming in for duty.
Yellowman sat in on the first preparation meeting as part of the team to give notice of the SIPI layoffs. She would help them exit.
“As we were preparing to exit, even in those conversations, there was very limited conversation about process, list selection. We didn’t know who was on the list. We didn’t know how they were [selected]. All we were shared with was that possibly veterans wouldn’t be on this list,” Yellowman said. “Then I learned in the group that I was on the list.”
She excused herself to process the situation, called family members, packed her personal belongings in her office, consoled her colleagues and left in an hour. She didn’t even go through with the formal meeting of being let go like the others.
“People were crying, people were shocked, people were off work, people were at lunch. People were not on duty, but coming in later on, in the afternoon. I just don’t think that we had the capacity to respond,” she said.
“Think of your own workplace right now. Do you have the capacity and the resources to let go 30 percent of your workforce within an hour? It’s pretty detrimental,” she said.
Yellowman oversaw security, finance, budget management, information technology, and facilities and maintenance. She also had a helping hand in performance evaluations and human resources, and coordinated the Summer Bridge program, a program designed to help high school, GED or HSET students transition to college life.
Just last week, on Tuesday, she pulled a 12-hour shift, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., to make sure the school was up and running.
“While the instructors taught, I kept the lights on, payroll and dealt with staff behaviors and conduct,” she wrote on Facebook after she was let go.
She now also has to think about providing for her children and family as the head of the household. She said sharing the news with her family was “pretty hard.”
Other SIPI workers who wished to stay anonymous also shared their experiences with ICT.
“As a now former federal employee who was fired Friday for NO REASON, I disagree that my salary was ‘wasted money,’” one person wrote. “My agency/college was tragically understaffed and underfunded before these unilateral terminations, as is the case for most agencies affected.We were predominantly funded by grants, so very little federal money supported us. All this project does is increase unemployment rates, increases potential homelessness, threatens tribal treaties and will devastate the economy. Hundreds of thousands of people are without jobs right now and can’t afford to live without their income. We are emotionally and financially devastated. We took these positions to SERVE the American people (aka YOU).”
The worker continued, ““I was given NO NOTICE. We were told by college leadership last week that we would likely be unaffected by these termination plans, as the college is “forward funded” through June, and that bureau leadership was working on prevention measures and exemptions. We ‘should’ be exempt… or at least protected through June. Instead I was given 2 hours to clean out my office… With no severance… In the middle of a pay period… In the middle of the month… On a Friday afternoon… On a holiday weekend. I haven’t even received a written notice. I was told in a GROUP MEETING that I was not being laid off but terminated effective immediately.”
The worker is now worried about how to support the family.
“I’m now in danger of losing my home,” the worker said. “I can’t support my family. I only have 2 weeks to find a job so I can prevent eviction because I won’t have the money to pay my March rent. I’ll be charged early lease termination fees and potentially court costs for breaking my lease if I have to move. My level of education and experience will make it nearly impossible to find a job, especially one that will pay what I’m worth or even what I need to survive. It took me almost 3 years to find this one. So, thanks…”
Another SIPI worker initially applied at the institute to help students.
“It was out of a desire to do something more directly impactful than the research I had been doing at a national lab,” the worker said. “It meant taking a significant pay cut and shifting the course of my career, but it was a choice made with purpose. I did not expect that, just a few months after I started at SIPI, our government would go to great lengths to first demonize the federal workforce and then begin firing employees arbitrarily, seemingly motivated, at least in part, by cruelty.
“The students at SIPI are brilliant,” the worker said. “They come from backgrounds that are often shaped by many difficulties, the result of centuries of mistreatment and systemic inequity, a word we can no longer even say in the federal government. Still, they chose college because they wanted better lives for themselves and their communities.
The worker said SIP has always been underfunded.
“For years, we have needed new dorms, classrooms, and equipment,” the worker said. “And yesterday, despite the fact that SIPI is forward funded through Congress until June 30, 2025, about 20 probationary employees were fired without cause. Because apparently, an unelected monster, who doesn’t even know we exist, unilaterally decided that the little funding we had was still too much. This will cripple the school, if not destroy it.”
Our stories are worth telling. Our stories are worth sharing. Our stories are worth your support. Contribute today to help ICT carry out its critical mission. Sign up for ICT’s free newsletter.