Kevin Abourezk
ICT
As waves of snow battered the Rosebud Indian Reservation in December 2022, John Miller went to work alerting his community about closed roads, closed tribal programs and places where people could take shelter. Residents learned about the storm’s extent from the radio, which broadcast National Weather Service alerts, from people they knew and trusted.
Many residents of the South Dakota reservation lived in remote places that had become cut off by impassable roads, and some were cut off for as long as two weeks and ran out of propane to heat their homes. Miller, station manager for KOYA 88.1 FM, answered phone calls from people seeking help and directed them toward programs that could help.
The snowstorm eventually claimed the lives of six people, including a 12-year-old boy with health problems who couldn’t be reached in time, an elderly man who froze to death, and a man who froze in a ditch.
Even though there were other ways people learned about the storm and where they could find help, many still relied on their local radio station, KOYA 88.1 FM, to provide them with constantly changing weather information and resources.
“Even though there’s tons of apps and alternate places to get information, folks still turn to us, which I thought was pretty awesome,” Miller said.
The event inspired Miller to apply for a federal grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for upgrades to the radio station and two of its transmitter towers to ensure they could continue to operate even when they lost access to the power grid. Recently, however, the Trump administration’s decision to cut FEMA funding and many federal grants led to the cancellation of the radio station’s $500,000 grant.
Now the radio station, along with dozens of other tribal community radio stations, faces further funding cuts after the U.S. House of Representatives voted July 17 to cut $1.1 billion in funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as nearly $8 billion for foreign aid, totaling $9.4 billion. Sealing the deal to send the legislation to President Donald J. Trump’s desk and signed on July 24. It was the first time in decades that billions of dollars already approved for spending was rescinded.
Kyler Edsitty, program coordinator for Native Public Media, which supports 36 tribal radio stations that receive public media funding, said the federal cuts would impact every one of those radio stations.
“Most of our stations are going to lose most of their funding,” he said. “This could turn to things like having to lay off or furlough staff members.”
Native Public Media, which is headquartered in Flagstaff, Arizona, supports a network of nearly 60 tribal community radio stations, though many of these are commercial stations that don’t receive public funding. The organization receives funding from the Corporation for Public Media to provide support to the federally funded 36 tribal community radio stations and likely will lose those funds. However, Edsitty doesn’t expect the loss of those funds will entirely shut down its support programs for those radio stations.
“At the end of the day we will remain committed to serving our stations in any capacity that we can,” he said.
Native Public Media lobbies for federal policies that benefit tribal community radio stations and supports those radio stations as they work to remain compliant with Federal Communications Commission regulations. The organization also works to improve alert systems that use federally funded radio stations, including an alert system that provides information about missing and endangered Indigenous people, much like an Amber Alert.
Native Public Media also develops curriculum for radio stations and educates station managers how to raise funds and create emergency operations plans.
It is one of at least three Native-focused public media organizations that receive public media funding.
Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, based in Anchorage, Alaska, and Vision Maker Media, based in Lincoln, Nebraska, also receive public funding. Koahnic “serves 192 stations in 34 U.S. states, including 57 rural Tribal stations and operates Native Voice One, also known as NV1, a content distribution service providing programming that is all Tribally produced to stations throughout the nation through a satellite channel.”
Vision Maker Media provides funding for Indigenous-focused programming, including documentaries. Francene Blythe-Lewis, president and chief executive officer, told ICT recently that she expects the federal funding cuts will lead to a loss of nearly half of her organization’s $2.8 million annual budget. It also will impact the organization’s ability to distribute its content through PBS stations.
While it is available online, ICT’s weekly newscast could become less available to viewers through their local television programming. The 30-minute, Indigenous news program airs on more than 190 public television channels across 118 media markets in 41 states, and is broadcast on PBS stations, First Nations Experience, also known as FNX, and the PBS World Channel.
The ICT newscast is also carried on main PBS channels, subchannels (like 8.2 or 5.3), and secondary PBS stations, expanding access especially in rural and tribal communities.
Following the House’s vote to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, said he secured a deal from the White House that some money administered by the U.S. Department of Interior would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states.
But Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said that deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save.”
A spokesperson for Rounds’ office said the senator had secured $9.4 million for 35 Native radio stations in 11 states and one TV station through already appropriated Department of the Interior funds, according to Current, a news organization that covers public media issues. The $9.4 million represents the total amount given to the 35 stations through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in fiscal year 2025.
The grants will be administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and likely will be awarded this fall, an Interior Department spokesperson told Current.
“The Department of the Interior and Indian Affairs are working to accelerate the implementation of a grant program to support tribal radio stations, utilizing existing program structures and staffing to ensure timely execution,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement to Current.
According to Current, the Interior spokesperson couldn’t say whether the grant funds would continue beyond the first year.
Mollie Kabler, executive director of CoastAlaska, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of 27 radio stations in Alaska that receives Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds, said she has reached out to Rounds’ office to ask about the funding deal for Native radio stations but has received no reply.
She said she was able to talk to a staff person for Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, Republican, and learned the senator also is working to get funds for Alaska radio stations affected by the public media funding cuts.
Kabler said she doesn’t expect the funds that Rounds may have secured will benefit radio stations in Alaska considering none of them are tribally owned, though many of them serve Native populations.
“There’s just a lot of confusion right now about is there money, who will administer it and when will radio stations find out what’s happening,” she said. “I don’t want to appear skeptical, but we just can’t find anything out, and timing is short.”
She said the current fiscal year public media funds are scheduled to end by October.
“We can’t get anything specific but everybody keeps saying, ‘We’re working on it,’ but what are they working on and who’s working on it.”
Kabler said the average publicly funded radio station in Alaska will lose 40 percent of its funding and some will lose as much as 90 percent of their funding.
“The deeply rural stations, many of them are in very small communities so the idea that they can raise enough funds to supplant what was federal funding is not realistic,” she said. “There are some stations that are in clear danger of closing.”
ICT reached out to Rounds’ office for clarification and a comment multiple times but did not hear back.
Edsitty said Native Public Media had not heard anything about whether Rounds’ efforts would lead to funding for tribal community radio stations being protected from federal budget cuts.
He said the loss of tribal radio stations would have a detrimental effect on the communities they serve, especially those who live in areas that don’t have internet access. They would no longer receive first alerts about weather and natural disasters, such as wildfires,
“People may see media such as radio as something that is very dated, but it’s absolutely not,” Edsitty said. “They are the first and foremost for these communities providing news and community updates, cultural programming, emergency alerts given circumstances that a lot of Indigenous communities experience, like lack of electricity and cultural programming. Radio is one of the most reliable forms of media for them.”
Representatives at two tribal community radio stations in South Dakota and a rural radio station serving an Indigenous community in Alaska that receive public media funding said they also have heard nothing about whether the federal public media budget cuts will affect them or not.
Bill Means, chairman of the Board of Directors for KILI Radio, based on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, said the station receives $180,000 annually from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which makes up nearly 70 percent of its funding.
“This is a heavy hit, just when we launched our campaign to become more self-sufficient,” he said.
The radio station recently launched a $3 million capital campaign to allow it to build a new headquarters and equipment. Public media funds pay for the station’s salaries and equipment, he said, adding that he doesn’t yet know whether the funding cuts will affect the station’s ability to keep all of its full- and part-time employees.
He said public funding for tribal radio isn’t a gift. It is reparations for land theft, including that of the Black Hills in South Dakota, Means said.
“We want the government and public to understand that we deserve compensation for all this mineral development that’s happening and the theft of the Black Hills,” he said.
He said KILI provides essential weather emergency alerts and cultural programming for its listeners, as well as information about health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the 100,000-watt radio station serves a nearly 2 million-acre reservation nearly the size of Connecticut.
“We play a very key role in disaster prevention and disaster response,” he said.
John Miller, station manager at KOYA Radio on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, said his organization receives $184,000 in public media funds, which account for about 92 percent of the station’s annual budget.
“It’s going to affect us,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of way yet.”
KOYA has an affiliated commercial radio station, KINI, and Miller said he hopes to be able to increase advertising revenue for KINI so it can support KOYA in turn, but he expects it will be difficult to compete against other nearby radio stations that serve other rural communities.
“There’s already an established base for advertising through their radio stations,” he said.
Unlike KINI, which plays contemporary music, KOYA provides cultural programming, and Native news and music.
“It’s not a good future at this point,” he said. “It’s frustrating when you love what you do. You’re here for the people.”
He said many reservation residents live alone in remote places where they depend on KOYA to keep them occupied.
“It’s company for them, especially when you live way in the country,” he said. “We’re family, tiospaye, and we want to be received like that in a respectful way.”
He thanked the station’s listeners, including many tribal citizens who live in distant places like Australia, Arizona and Oregon but continue to listen to their home community’s radio station online.
“We really appreciate their support of both stations and we hope that with the cuts that we are still able to serve our listeners,” he said.
In southeast Alaska, Kyle Clayton, general manager of KHNS, said he is concerned that the loss of federal public media funding could force the station to make drastic changes unless it can find funding to replace the public funding.
KHNS is located in Haines, Alaska, which is only accessible from the rest of Alaska via ferry or by small airplane. The station also serves the nearby villages of Skagway and Klukwan, a traditional Tlingit village with about 90 people.
The radio station provides local and state news, National Public Radio programs, and numerous shows focused on local affairs, including a show hosted entirely in the Tlingit language. It employs four full-time and several part-time employees, including several DJs.
Clayton said the loss of Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds would lead to a loss of nearly $170,000, which accounts for 37 percent of the station’s funding. Much of the rest of the station’s budget comes from listener donations.
“We really need those federal funds to keep our services where they’re at,” he said. “It’s going to change dramatically if we can’t get our funding back.”
He said the station has savings to cover some of its losses but would see a $100,000 deficit this year if it doesn’t increase its revenue. He said he would like to see Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, to find funding for tribal community and rural radio stations to replace lost public media funding.
He said rural radio stations will suffer disproportionately compared to radio stations that serve larger communities, as well as national programs like National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, which he said can rely on a much larger donor base than rural radio stations.
“It’s these stations in rural communities that don’t have the same funding mechanisms, and we’re the ones that are really, really going to suffer,” he said.
