Montana budget includes new investments in tribal colleges, repatriation
Gov. Greg Gianforte last week finalized Montana’s two-year budget, which contains several new investments for Indian Country, including a historic increase in funding for tribal colleges and money devoted to repatriation efforts.
Though Gianforte made several vetoes in the last few weeks that trimmed hundreds of millions in spending approved by lawmakers, the money that will help fund priorities set by the Legislature’s American Indian Caucus made it through the session that adjourned in April and survived the governor’s scrutiny.
Tribal Colleges
Montana is the only state in the nation where every reservation is home to a tribal college.
Tribal colleges, which together serve thousands of Native and non-Native students in Montana, provide affordable education, boost workforce development in rural areas and revitalize tribal languages and culture. Despite their outsized role in communities, however, the schools survive on meager budgets and are reimbursed at rates substantially lower than community colleges and historically Black colleges and universities.
Tribal colleges receive, on average, between 71% and 74% of their total funding from the federal government, according to an American Council on Education report. The federal Bureau of Indian Education allocates money to tribal colleges based on the number of “full-time enrolled Indian students.” And Montana is one of a few states that appropriates money to tribal colleges to support non-Native students, also called non-beneficiary students.
The Legislature for years has allocated a maximum of $3,280 to tribal colleges per non-Native student. By comparison, lawmakers in 2019 funded full-time resident students at Montana’s three community colleges at about twice the rate of non-beneficiary tribal college students.
While past legislative attempts to raise that $3,280 non-beneficiary ceiling have failed, this year was different.
Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, worked to add a line in House Bill 2, the state’s budget bill, that increases state funding to tribal colleges. The addition raises the state’s allocation for non-beneficiary students by about 27% to $4,183.
The boost in state money comes as President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal slashes federal funding for tribal colleges nationwide. Though the budget must ultimately be approved by Congress, Trump’s proposal asks lawmakers to reduce federal funding for tribal colleges by nearly 90%.
“The federal funding (for tribal colleges) does not cover the non-Native students who attend, so it’s up to the state to cover that cost,” Windy Boy told Montana Free Press in a recent interview. “And there’s a good number of non-Natives who attend.”
About 20% of students at Fort Peck Community College in northeastern Montana are non-Native. FPCC President Craig Smith wrote in an April email to MTFP that it was “refreshing” to see the Legislature increase those funds. In past years, he said non-beneficiary funds have supported faculty positions, classroom materials and equipment, among other things.
“While not quite at the equitable level of the Montana University System higher education institutions’ funding levels, I think (the funding increase) shows solid validation of the role that tribal colleges play in the higher education scenario in Montana,” he wrote.
Repatriation Efforts
HB 2 also appropriates $367,665 to the University of Montana Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act team to support repatriation efforts.
Congress in 1990 enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which establishes a process for tribes to request the return of Native American remains and cultural items from institutions that have them.
More than 30 years later, however, not all institutions comply with the law. A ProPublica investigation revealed that the remains of more than 90,000 Native Americans had not been returned as of January 2025. While UM has made efforts to return remains and other items, the school reported still having the remains of at least 25 Native Americans, according to ProPublica’s database.
Windy Boy called NAGPRA “an unfunded mandate.” The new, one-time-only funding, he said, is meant to assist UM’s work, which is otherwise supported through grants.
“There was so much grave robbing … we’ve been pillaged and robbed for so many years,” Windy Boy said. “Please just let our ancestors rest and let their funerary objects rest with them, that’s why it’s important.”
Courtney Little Axe, repatriation coordinator at UM, said the funding will support a new team of NAGPRA tribal liaisons. Doctoral student Mikalen Running Fisher has been working in that capacity for more than one year, facilitating the return of meaningful items.
“What keeps me going in (this work) is thinking of the future generations,” she told MTFP last spring.
With funding from HB 2, Little Axe said UM could hire eight NAGPRA student liaisons — one for each tribal government in the state. The investment, she said, will help students learn more about repatriation while strengthening UM’s relationships with tribes.
Kelly Dixon, a member of UM’s NAGPRA team, said the group had been “limping along” financially and is grateful for state support.
“It is not going to be easy to rectify all that has happened over the past century plus,” Dixon said. “But we have a team and we have an institution and now a state that supports that.”
___
This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.