Tribal Nations Are Concerned That Trump’s Cuts Have The Potential To Violate Trust Responsibilities

Photo: Muscogee (Creek) Princesses for 2014, taken at Ocmulgee Mounds National Park, Georgia, Wikimedia Commons

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — In tribal nations across the United States, leaders are scrambling to respond to a directive from President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to close more than a quarter of Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, which provide vital services to Indigenous communities.

Trump and Musk are calling on the General Services Administration, or GSA, to begin terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide, including 25 regional offices of the BIA. Those offices fulfill a wide variety of rights the U.S. owes to tribal nations, and some leaders and legal experts are worried the potential closures, layoffs and funding freezes could violate those trust responsibilities.

“It’s a destabilizing action,” said Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of the American Indian. “I really have to think we have to assume the worst, unfortunately.”

In the many treaties the U.S. signed with tribal nations, it outlined several rights owed to them — like land rights and healthcare through departments established later, like Indian Health Services. Trust responsibilities are the legal and moral obligations the U.S. has to protect and uphold those rights. Tribes go through BIA regional offices to approve things like road projects and law enforcement funding.

The move to close the regional offices is part of a sweeping effort by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by Musk to reduce the size and spending of the federal government.

‍