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Trump Seeks 90% Cut for Already Underfunded Tribal Colleges
"This would basically be a knife in the chest," said the president of one tribal college, "and I don't know how we can survive these types of cuts."
Jun 04, 2025
The Trump administration is proposing a nearly 90% reduction in federal funding for tribal colleges and universities, a move that would likely force many of the nation's 37 Indigenous institutions of higher learning—which are already severely underfunded—to close, according to a ProPublica report published Wednesday.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of the Interior released its 2026 budget request, which seeks $22.1 million for tribal colleges and universities for the next fiscal year. That's down from $122.4 million allocated for the current fiscal year.
"The numbers that are being proposed would close the tribal colleges," American Indian Higher Education Consortium president and CEO Ahniwake Rose told ProPublica. "They would not be able to sustain."
Matt Krupnick, who authored the ProPublica report, previously revaled that Congress was already underfunding tribal institutions of higher learning by around a quarter-billion dollars per year, based on legislation passed in 1978 under which the government promised inflation-adjusted appropriations for Indigenous colleges and universities based on the number of students enrolled in federally recognized tribes.
Big news: The Trump administration has essentially proposed shutting down tribal colleges and universities, displacing more than 20,000 students. My latest for ProPublica:
[image or embed]
— Matt Krupnick (@mattkrupnick.bsky.social) June 3, 2025 at 12:33 PM
As Krupnick noted:
The colleges have managed, despite the meager funds, to preserve Indigenous languages, conduct high-level research, and train local residents in nursing, meat processing, and other professions and trades. But with virtually no money available for infrastructure or construction, the schools have been forced to navigate broken water pipes, sewage leaks, crumbling roofs, and other problems that have compounded the financial shortcomings.
"I'm shivering in my boots," Manoj Patil, president of Little Priest Tribal College in Nebraska, told ProPublica. "This would basically be a knife in the chest. It's a dagger, and I don't know how we can survive these types of cuts."
The Interior Department's budget proposal comes amid the Trump administration's gutting of federal agencies, which is being spearheaded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. It is also the latest in a series of administration actions targeting education for Native Americans, who suffered centuries of extermination, land theft, forced displacement, imprisonment in reservations and concentration camps, family separation, and other genocidal policies and practices of Euro-American colonizers.
Since taking office for the second time, President Donald Trump has suspended scholarship and research grants for Native Americans and rescinded a key White House initiative promoting Indigenous educational success.
However, as they always have, Indigenous people are fighting back. In March, Native students and tribal leaders sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs in a bid to stop the Trump administration's gutting of Indigenous education.
While some Indigenous leaders said they are counting on members of Congress to protect Native education, others expressed skepticism rooted in centuries of broken U.S. promises.
"It is a bit disheartening to feel like our voice is not being heard," Chris Caldwell, president of College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin, told
ProPublica. "They don't hear our message."
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US Pension Fund TIAA Linked to Brutal Land Grabs and Evictions of Farmers in Brazil
The 10 largest transnational landowners in the world control an area larger than Japan, according to a new report. This accumulation fuels human rights abuse, inequalities, and environmental destruction, and underlines the need for redistributive policies.
Jun 03, 2025
Angelim is a small rural community in Piauí, northeastern Brazil, where small-scale farmers and artisans have lived for generations. Their way of life dramatically changed a few years ago when a company arrived, claiming it had purchased the land. Residents report being threatened by armed men. They have faced forest clearances and the destruction of native vegetation that is essential for their livelihoods and way of life. New monoculture plantations began to dry up the wetlands. The plantations also used pesticides, polluting the ecosystem and threatening residents’ health and livelihoods.
Angelim is located in the municipality of Santa Filomena and is just one of many communities affected by land acquisitions by Radar Propriedades Agrícolas, a company formed in 2008 as a joint venture between U.S. pension fund TIAA and Brazilian agribusiness giant Cosan. In recent years, Radar has acquired more than 3,000 hectares in Santa Filomena, adding to the land it already owns throughout the Matopiba region, which includes the Brazilian states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia—the latest frontier of industrial agriculture in Brazil.
Elite Group
This region sits in the Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas, home to 12,000 plant species (35% endemic) and 25 million people, including Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food providers. But 40-55% of the Cerrado has already been converted to commercial tree plantations, large agro-industrial monocultures, and pastures for cattle production. Land grabs, speculation, and deforestation are displacing communities and damaging the environment. One of the major players in this expansion is TIAA and its asset management company, Nuveen.
Tackling land inequality is crucial for a more just and sustainable future.
As revealed in our new report, TIAA is one of the world’s largest landowners and has almost quadrupled its landholdings since 2012. Managing 1.2 million hectares across 10 countries, it ranks 7th among the world’s top 10 transnational landowners, who together control 404,457 square kilometers—an area the size of Japan.
Others in this elite group include financial investors like Blue Carbon from the UAE, Australia-based Macquarie, and Canada’s Manulife; agribusiness giants Olam and Wilmar from Singapore; Chilean timber company Arauco; and U.K.-based Shell via Raízen, a Brazilian subsidiary.
Global Land Grabbing and Concentration Trends
This accumulation of land in the hands of a few transnational companies is part of a global trend of land grabbing that surged after the 2008 financial crisis. Since 2000, transnational investors have acquired an estimated 65 million hectares of land—twice the size of Germany. This has accelerated a dynamic of land concentration, which has resulted in 1% of farms controlling 70% of global farmland, a trend that jeopardizes the livelihoods of 2.5 billion smallholder farmers and 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest, most of whom depend on agriculture.
As the case of the Angelim community shows, land grabbing and land concentration have devastating consequences for communities and ecosystems. Like U.S.-based TIAA, virtually all the top global landowners have reportedly been implicated in forced displacements, environmental destruction, and violence against local people.
Land concentration exacerbates inequality, erodes social cohesion, and fuels conflict. But there are deeper consequences as well: The fact that vast tracts of land, located across different state jurisdictions, are brought under the control of distant corporate entities for the sake of global supply chains or global financial capital flows runs diametrically counter to the principles of state sovereignty and people’s self-determination. In particular, it undermines states’ ability to ensure that land tenure serves the public good and enables the transition to more sustainable economic models.
“Net Zero” Fueling Evictions
The question of who should own and manage land becomes even more pressing in light of climate change and biodiversity loss. Transnational landowners are associated with industrial monoculture plantations, deforestation, and other extractive practices. In contrast, up to 80% of intact forests are found on lands managed by Indigenous Peoples and other rural communities. Moreover, small-scale food providers practicing agroecology support higher biodiversity, better water management, and produce over half the world’s food using just 35% of global cropland.
Ironically, the environmental value of community-managed land has sparked a new wave of land grabs. So-called “green grabs” (land grabs for alleged environmental purposes) now account for about 20% of large-scale land deals. Since 2016, more than 5.2 million hectares in Africa have been acquired for carbon offset projects. The global carbon market is expected to quadruple in the next seven years, and over half of the top 10 global landowners now claim participation in carbon and biodiversity markets. “Net zero” has become a pretext for expelling communities from their lands.
From Deregulation to Redistribution
While global land policy debates in the past 10 years have focused on limiting the harm of land grabs on people and nature, the scale and severity of these trends demand a shift from regulation to redistribution. Neoliberal deregulation, as well as trade and other economic policies, have fueled the massive transfer of land and wealth to the corporate sector and the ultra-rich. Redistributive policies are needed to reverse this trend.
Tackling land inequality is crucial for a more just and sustainable future. However, only very few countries implement land policies and agrarian reform programs that actively attempt to redistribute and return land to dispossessed peoples and communities.
The international human rights framework requires states to structure their land tenure systems in ways that ensure broad and equitable distribution of natural resources and their sustainable use. The tools at the disposal of governments include redistribution, restitution, and the protection of collective and customary tenure systems, as well as measures such as ceilings on land ownership (including by corporate entities), protection and facilitation of use rights over publicly owned land, and participatory and inclusive land-use planning. These efforts must also be matched by redistributive fiscal policies, such as progressive land and property taxes, which remain regressive or ineffective in most countries today, thus perpetuating inequality and enabling wealth concentration.
International Cooperation
Because land grabbing is driven by global capital and the accumulation of land across jurisdictions by transnational corporations and financial entities, international cooperation is essential. The upcoming International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) in Colombia in February 2026 offers a critical moment for governments to agree on measures that end land grabbing, reverse land concentration, and ensure broad and sustainable distribution of natural resources.
To be effective, these discussions should connect with initiatives on a global tax convention and an international mechanism to address sovereign debt, empowering states to have the fiscal space to implement human rights-based, redistributive policies and just transitions. Also important are binding legal provisions that prevent transnational corporations from using the power of their money to bend national rules in their pursuit of profits.
In a world facing intersecting crises—climate breakdown, food insecurity, persisting poverty, and social inequality—and a reconfiguration of the global balance of power, there is an opportunity to move away from neoliberal policies that have benefited very few, and to create a more just and sustainable global future for all.
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The Ocean, Our Common Future: A Call For Legal Recognition
By sending a strong message to advance the rights of the Ocean everywhere in the world, the United Nations Ocean Conference would represent a historic turning point for the protection of marine life.
Jun 02, 2025
We, the undersigned associations and committed citizens, proclaim, as the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025 approaches, the necessity of recognizing and defending the fundamental rights of the Ocean. We call upon U.N. Member States to incorporate Ocean Rights in the Nice Ocean Action Declaration, to trigger a transformative change in our relationship with the Ocean.
Humans are part of the living community of the Planet. Thus, the future of humanity and the preservation of human rights are inseparably linked to the existence of marine species, which can only thrive in a healthy ocean.
The Ocean possesses intrinsic value, independent of its economic utility. A source of life and a cultural pillar for many coastal communities and Indigenous Peoples, it must be treated with respect.
In the face of the challenges ahead, we must be the guardians of the Ocean, the stewards of its integrity, the protectors of its biodiversity, the architects of its prosperity.
The living community of the Ocean and all marine beings have fundamental rights, including the right to exist, thrive, reproduce, and evolve in a healthy environment. Rights that do not oppose human rights, but complement them.
At the international level, progress is showing us the way. Constitutional advances in Ecuador for the protection of the rights of coastal marine ecosystems, the Galápagos, sharks mangroves; the law for the rights of the Mar Menor lagoon in Spain; the protection of the rights of sea turtles in Panama; and even a river in England, with many other pioneering victories of the movement across the world.
These steps mark a new horizon—that of an era of harmonious coexistence between humans and the Ocean. For the recognition of the existence and intrinsic value of all members of the community of the living, as well as their inalienable rights, constitutes the foundation of justice, stability, and peace in the world.
This is why we are calling for the inclusion of the rights of the Ocean in the Nice Declaration “Our Ocean, Our Future: Accelerating Action.”
By sending a strong message to advance the rights of the Ocean everywhere in the world, the United Nations Ocean Conference would represent a historic turning point for the protection of marine life and our common future, strengthening the agency of coastal communities, and helping put an end to projects and activities causing most harm to the health of the Ocean and to marine beings.
In the face of the challenges ahead, we must be the guardians of the Ocean, the stewards of its integrity, the protectors of its biodiversity, the architects of its prosperity.
We call on every person, organization, and public institution to support this proposal, to share it, and to join us by signing the petition, counting over 53,000 signatures already, for the rights of the Ocean. The future of the Ocean is the future of us all.
The authors of the Tribune:
Earth Law Center (U.S.), Longitude 181 (France), Ocean Vision Legal (U.S.) Vagues (La Réunion Island), Wild Legal (France), Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (Ecuador), the Varda Group (Spain/Netherlands), and The Ocean Rights Coalition (U.K.).
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