The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), the only four-year school devoted to contemporary Indigenous arts, could lose all of its federal funding beginning October 1 if President Trump’s proposed federal budget is passed.
Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal suggests completely eliminating funding for the IAIA, which received approximately $13 million in the prior two fiscal years. The institution relies on federal funding for 75% of its operating expenses, IAIA President Robert Martin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, said in a statement shared with Hyperallergic. Without federal dollars, he said, student mental health services, housing, scholarship programs, and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts would cease operations.
Martin said the institution’s 850 enrolled students predominantly come from rural reservations. A spokesperson for IAIA told Hyperallergic that 92 federally recognized tribes are represented in the student body.
“In one budget, nearly 63 years of progress in Indigenous higher education and artistic expression is at risk,” Martin said. “We are the only institution of our kind in the world, and our mission is more vital than ever.”
IAIA, which describes itself as the “birthplace of contemporary Indigenous art,” opened in 1962 as a high school on the Santa Fe Indian School campus, one of the two federal boarding schools established in New Mexico during the late 19th century with the aim of forcibly assimilating Native children. A decade later, IAIA opened its now-renowned contemporary arts museum.
The United States chartered the institution in 1986 as the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development, its official government name. In 2001, IAIA began offering four-year degrees. Today, the institution offers several undergraduate degrees across the visual, literary, and performing arts; certificates in broadcast journalism and business; Master of Fine Arts degrees; and lifelong learning courses.
“Our campus is a living laboratory where Pueblo potters test 3D printers, Cherokee coders build virtual-reality worlds, and Sámi composers score films for Sundance,” Martin said. “More than 4,000 graduates have carried forward our cultures, stories, and leadership — this is what’s at stake.”
A spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the institution receives some funds from the private sector and other grantmakers, but that those funds are directed toward scholarship programs.
The Trump administration proposed cuts of more than half a billion dollars to the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), which supports the 37 Tribal colleges in the United States, including IAIA. In recent years, BIE has distributed approximately $127.4 million to post-secondary institutions, including Tribal universities and technical colleges. Trump seeks to reduce that pool of funding to $22.1 million.
Martin called for lawmakers to defend funding for all 37 Tribal colleges and universities impacted by Trump’s budget proposal. Democratic New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich told Hyperallergic that he has prioritized funding for the IAIA in a request he sent to Congress, and said he would “keep fighting for continued investment” in the institution.
“Defunding IAIA will not balance the ledger or advance unity,” Martin said in his statement. “It will silence voices this country desperately needs to hear, voices that sing in Lakota, paint in Diné, and write about what it means to belong to the First Peoples of this land.”
