Trump swings at tribal colleges

Initiative to integrate languages zapped

The college logo on a jacket. Photo by Melanie Lenart

“S-ke:g Tas,” we told each other at Tohono O’odham Community College.

Roughly translated as “Good day,” we learned the phrase in the O’odham language and culture course every faculty member took. Our contract required it. We took a course, too, in the history of this tribal nation stretching across the border between Arizona and Mexico.

I wish we had learned how to curse in O’odham.

I felt like doing that yesterday, after receiving a text from a TOCC instructor. She texted us about Trump nixing an executive order promoting integration of Native languages into educational settings.

Biden’s executive order 14049—tossed out by Trump this week alongside scores of other executive orders and policy directives—acknowledged the importance of language in a tribal nation’s ability to maintain itself as a sovereign nation. That promise of self-determination is sealed by treaty, Acee Agoyo noted at Indianz.com, as is access to education.

As a former TOCC faculty member myself, I feel compelled to address this particular slap in the face among so many this week. Indigenous peoples have important knowledge gleaned across millennia when it comes to working with the planet many call Mother Earth. In these changing times, the more Indigenous individuals who are prepared to take leadership roles, the better.

Education can support this preparation. And incorporating Native languages into education helps connect Indigenous students to higher education. My five years at the tribal college through 2020 and subsequent years working for a publication covering science for readers associated with tribal colleges in the U.S. helped me understand the importance of integrating language and culture into curriculum.

It helps the students succeed. I could see it in the classroom. For instance, I co-taught an Agroecology course with my TOCC colleague Clifford Pablo, a longtime O’odham farmer who helped establish the tribal nation’s biggest organic farm. In labs, he showed the students how to grow their own food, from planting seeds to preparing the soil to setting up irrigation to pest control to harvesting. He also taught them O’odham words for the corn, beans, squash and other vegetables we planted.

When I would follow up to teach them the western science that would help them shift to mainstream universities, they had an interest in the knowledge. They wanted to know more about how plants take up nutrients, the environmental advantages of organic gardening, and how to do the math needed to design a garden. And they did well.

Occasionally, I come across some of these students in leadership roles, managing the tribal nation’s farm or guiding its outreach programs.

Besides making coursework more relevant, incorporating Indigenous languages takes a step toward reparations of a century and a half of brutality at the hands of the people running boarding schools. Biden’s executive order 14049, like the man himself this past October, apologized for the abuse of Indigenous students in the boarding school system operated by the federal government and Christian groups. School officials often beat students who attempted to practice their cultural traditions or speak their native languages. Many died.

“For over 150 years, the federal government ran boarding schools that forcibly removed generations of Native children from their homes to boarding schools often far away,” stated an October fact sheet highlighting the Biden administration’s support of tribal nations. “Native children at these schools endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and, as detailed in the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report by the Department of the Interior, at least 973 children died in these schools.”

Washington Post reporters found triple that number of deaths. At least 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970, their December story revealed after a year-long investigation. They estimated 800 students were buried in cemeteries on school grounds.

“The fact that there are cemeteries at these schools—just saying it just sounds weird, right?” a Northern Cheyenne woman who goes by Marsha Small told ABC Nightline in a March 31, 2022, episode about the boarding schools.

The experience damaged families for generations, and became part of inherited trauma for many. It helps explain why some Indigenous students struggle at mainstream universities far from home, where few others if any speak their language or understand their culture.

In contrast, receiving an educational background that integrates language and culture into curriculum helps Indigenous students navigate the western academic system.

It also helps students to see people who look like them in leadership roles. Deb Haaland, who hails from the Pueblo nation embedded in New Mexico and served as Biden’s Secretary of the Interior, has inspired many. And she understands the importance of incorporating language.

“The cornerstone of any culture or community is its language. Languages are where oral histories are passed down, knowledge is shared, and bonds are formed,” Haaland said.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona acknowledged the language efforts fit into the federal government’s requirement to further tribal sovereignty and self-determination. “A vital part of that work entails ensuring that the cultural and linguistic identities of Native American students are affirmed in school. Native American languages connect to a delicate and meaningful balance with belief systems and treasured heritage.”

We can only hope that this first salvo doesn’t portend deeper cuts into tribal nations’ best practices for educating its members and producing leaders who can navigate western ways.

It's one thing to aim for an equal chance for everyone, as the Trump actions claim to do. When there aren’t enough jobs or college scholarships to go around, it can feel like a game of musical chairs. But rescinding this initiative does not even out the playing field. It pulls the chair out from under people already seated at the table.

Notes and Resources

President Trump targets Indian education in first round of executive actions, by Acee Agoyo, January 22, 2025.

What America Owes: The Stolen Generation. ABC News, Nightline, March 31, 2022.

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative and report

More than 3,100 students died at schools built to crush Native American cultures, by Dana Hedgpeth, Sari Horwitz, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Andrew Ba Tran, Nilo Tabrizy and Jahi Chikwendiu, December 22, 2024, The Washington Post.

Biden administration fact sheet released in October summarizing his administration’s historic support of tribal nation sovereignty.

Safekeeping Native Knowledge, by Melanie Lenart, March 29, 2023, Native Science Report.

Some back ground on funding for tribal colleges is found in this Native Science Report story, Searching for Equity in Agriculture.

National Congress of American Indians report, Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction

Wellspring Media video about Indigenous science students, Growing Self-confident STEM students.