DOGE Bites Indian Country
- WULR Team
- Oct 9
- 3 min read
Analysis of DOGE's budget cuts and its effects on Indian Country
Written on March 21st, 2025
Written by Zeke Lega
According to the executive order that established it, the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, exists to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” by cutting wasteful spending and incentivizing increased performance from federal employees. While DOGE’s proponents argue that the agency promotes spending transparency and reduces waste, critics consider the agency’s questionable constitutionality, with some arguing that its actions could violate the Appropriations Clause, as outlined in an article by Vox. The targeted nature of DOGE’s cancellations and its dubious claims of fraud within the government is an extremely negative indication of the remainder of President Donald Trump’s second term. Beyond its constitutionality or lack thereof, DOGE’s actions targeting Indian Country present another vital question — is DOGE’s present meddling in Indian Affairs in conflict with the U.S. treaties with and responsibilities towards tribes and the American Indigenous population?
DOGE has planned to cancel over forty leases previously held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service, in addition to freezing funds and cutting numerous jobs at tribal schools and in the Bureau of Indian Education, according to the Turtle Talk blog. As agencies like the BIA, IHS and BIE are integral to the federal government’s ability to maintain its obligations to tribes across the country, tribal communities are already experiencing major negative consequences from DOGE’s actions. Layoffs in education have hit tribal schools in Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona hard, while teachers at BIA-run schools find themselves unable to purchase school supplies for their students given new $1 spending limits, reports a Stateline article. In Wisconsin, lease terminations are steeped in uncertainty — the Wisconsin Public Radio reports that the cancellations include the lease for a BIA office in Ashland, which did the vital work of converting land mortgaged by Wisconsin tribes and tribal members into lands held in trust by the federal government. With the office space gone, the future of that vital work is unclear, as is the job security for the employees of the office. According to the BIA, the United States is legally bound to provide certain public services to its 574 federally recognized tribes. These cancellations, budget cuts and firings often directly contradict the federal government’s obligation to tribes nationwide.
The federal government has a long history of similar missteps, though. For nearly three centuries, the all-but-explicit policy of the United States has been to make agreements with Natives that would inevitably be abandoned when said agreements ceased being favorable to the United States. Take President Andrew Jackson’s infamous choice not to enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, a decision that denied the Cherokee nation’s status as a sovereign entity as defined in previous treaties and accelerated the Indian removal project, giving way to the eventual Trail of Tears. Viewed in this context, DOGE’s attacks on Indian Country are merely another point in a long history of anti-Indigenous government action. DOGE’s uniqueness lies in its framing. The agency claims it intends to identify and eliminate wasteful and fraudulent government spending, a mission statement that casts cancelled leases and expunged jobs in Indian Country as, most charitably, excessive and non-essential to government operations, a worldview that completely disregards the legal standing of tribes and the obligations the United States has to them. This is an intentionally and egregiously disingenuous framing of money dedicated to Indian Affairs. In reality, funding the BIA, IHS and BIE combined in 2024 was less than 1% of the U.S.’s annual budget, according to the US Department of the Interior. In short, the proposed savings from cutting funds and canceling leases are comically negligible. Likewise, a Turtle Talk blog article reports that canceled leases from the BIA and IHS amount to less than $7 million — a pittance compared to the $6.75 trillion spent by the federal government in the 2024 fiscal year, reported by Fiscal Data. While the benefit of reducing these costs is insignificant, the harm of closing down community health centers, firing Native teachers and closing BIA offices will likely be disastrous for tribal communities and their economies.
