Leech Lake Tribal College Officials React to Federal Funding Uncertainty

With the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, Tribal colleges in the viewing area, such as Leech Lake Tribal College, have been left wondering how to best serve their students as funding towards those schools remains frozen with no date set on when they will become unfrozen.

Instead of receiving state subsidies, Tribal colleges often rely on federal funding sources like the Bureau of Indian Education and the Department of Education, both of which have been targets of the Trump administration for reform or dismantlement. This came as a surprise to some of the staff at Leech Lake Tribal College.

“You just see the news and you’re like, ‘What does that mean?'” said Anyea Hake, Dean of Academics at LLTC. “‘Will we still have federal student aid? Will we still have this, will we still have that?’ It all just seemed like so fast that we just had this inability to plan and we’ve just been in kind of reaction mode ever since.”

Hake says the uncertainty of what types of funding options will even be available is the trickiest part of navigating the situation.

“It will seem like there’s an initial reaction, but then there’ll be an explanation, and then we can kind of stabilize,” says Hake. “It seems like a tactic, almost.”

Leech Lake Tribal College just got access back to a USDA NextGen program grant in conjunction with Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, but that still leaves some question marks for funds that were always previously available.

“There’s some other things coming down the line like, “Is other funding going to be available that was usually available?'” asked Hake. “We don’t know that, which makes challenges for long-term planning.”

Leech Lake Tribal College officials say their reserve funds should cover any cuts that could be made, and that it shouldn’t affect any of the students already enrolled, but that doesn’t mean the college isn’t concerned for students who enroll in the future.

“We do still rely on community and state support and donor support to keep those reserves strong, so we can keep access to students and a quality higher education grounded in Anishinaabe values,” said Hake.

No program cuts or any layoffs are to be expected because of these proposed funding cuts, but officials say they won’t be able to provide much help to their students and staff members.

“We might not be able to supply the same amount of support to our students, the same amount of professional development support for our staff,” Hake added. “We’re working on wage strengthening, and we might have to put that on pause.”

There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered in regards to funding for Tribal colleges, but officials in Leech Lake are wanting to remain hopeful thanks to their reserves and endowments that they are currently working on.

“One of the endowments that we’re working on is to help stabilize the college through this,” explained Ryan White, Director of Advancement and Public Affairs at LLTC. “So it’s a long-term planning. It takes a larger endowment to get to that point, but that is our plans for the future, is create our endowment large enough so it will will provide stability.”

Leech Lake Tribal College currently has over 150 students enrolled, along with another 50 faculty and staff members. A majority of the students are from the Leech Lake Reservation. Only 5% of those students are non-Native American.