February 9 2025.
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), urging them to immediately issue a memorandum directing all federal agencies to ensure that Indian Tribes and the related Tribal programs and federal funding they receive due to their political status are not affected by implementation of the President’s Executive Orders and policies, such as those addressing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), and environmental justice (EJ).
“In the implementation of these Presidential initiatives, Tribes have raised concerns that Tribal programs may be misclassified as DEIA or EJ. Any pauses or elimination of these programs would undermine the United States’ trust responsibility to Indian Tribes and their ability to provide services to their members. I ask OMB to take action now to reaffirm the unique treatment, programs and services to Indian Tribes based on their political and legal status, which is recognized in the U.S. Constitution, treaties, and many federal laws and policies, to ensure that there is no disruption to federal Tribal programs,” Chairman Murkowski wrote.
Chairman Murkowski commended the Department of Interior for issuing Secretarial Order (SO) 3416 implementing Executive Order 14151, which could serve as a model for other federal agencies as they implement these Presidential initiatives.
“At least one federal agency seems to understand this distinct legal and political relationship with Indian Tribes—the Department of the Interior. On January 30, the Department of the Interior issued Secretarial Order (SO) 3416 implementing Executive Order 14151. SO 3416 includes a limitation that acknowledges that nothing in the order should be construed to affect activities that implement legal requirements independent of the EOs, including ‘the statutory authorities, treaty, and/or trust obligations of the Department and its Bureaus/Offices to Tribal nations and the Native Hawaiian Community,’” Chairman Murkowski wrote.
In addition to issuing the requested memorandum, Senator Murkowski requested that the OMB provide a written response outlining any additional actions they plan to take to ensure all federal agencies properly recognize the unique status of Indian Tribes based on their political classification.
Full text of the letter can be found here.
Editors Notes about DEI: Our experience with DEI as a Native American Woman Owned Business is that it is "Fake News". We and many others classified as "DEI" are in fact operating a Merit Based Business.
After being encouraged to certify as a DEI Business by government agencies that needed the classification for their government contracts and spending thousands to attend DEI Focused Media Events with the promise of new business the only result is that we now have a thousandfold increase in junk emails, continuous on-line hacking attempts, and loss of thousands of dollars spent on travel. No business has ever been awarded to Native American Broadcasting Company or Red Hawk as a result of these efforts. DEI was all a "SALES PITCH" we were sucked into believing and apparently there are a lot of white guys that believe we were getting business that we never received at their expense.
In our view the only people that benefited from DEI Programs were the government employees, corporate employees hired for DEI programs, and the trade associations collecting millions of dollars from corporations claiming they were executing growth in DEI programs such as minority media purchases, but in fact were just paying themselves to conduct busy-work that had very limited results for the businesses sucked into believing their promises.
An Independent Thinking Person with the facts may conclude the U.S. Government will save money when they stop employing staff engaged in DEI Programs without any loss to those they claimed to be helping.
To assume the Secretary of the Interior does not know tribes are governed by treaties appears to be a false narrative. The Executive Order Section 6 (d) states that tribes are not included in this order.
