U.S. Must Fulfill Obligations by Protecting Programs

Details

By Native American Rights Fund

January 06, 2026

On December 24, 2025, NARF filed an amicus brief supporting an injunction that has blocked the destructive, broad-based freeze of federal funding that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed in January 2025. The injunction blocks the January directive, as well as similar policies the Administration may seek to implement. NARF filed the brief on behalf of the National Congress of American Indians, the United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund, the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center,  the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, the California Tribal Chairman’s Association, and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.  

Funding freezes directly impact the federal government’s ability to fulfill its trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations and Native people. The United States incurred a debt to Tribal Nations in taking nearly two billion acres of resource-rich land through war, treaty-making, and other coercive means. This debt is owed as long as the United States holds our lands and resources, and it carries with it trust and treaty obligations.  One way the United States delivers on its debt-based trust and treaty obligations is by providing services and associated funding to Indian Country—precisely the types of services and funding that the federal funding freeze disrupted. 

The funding freeze not only breaches the United States’ trust and treaty obligations; it also threatens the well-being of Tribal communities.  In addition to seizing the land and resources Tribal Nations would otherwise use to support our communities, the United States also limited Tribal Nations’ inherent sovereign rights and ability to generate revenue to provide for our communities. As a result of these and other injustices, a disproportionate share of Native people face challenging socioeconomic circumstances and persistent health disparities.   

Tribal Nations and Native-serving organizations make creative use of every federal dollar to provide for Native communities, not only out of efficiency but because of persistent underfunding and outsized need.  Every federal dollar is delivered in furtherance of the United States’ trust and treaty obligations, and any disruption is noticed. Native lives are not a bargaining chip, and these uniquely severe harms to Indian Country make it even more important that the funding freeze remain blocked.   

A coalition of nonprofit groups filed the suit, National Council of Nonprofits v. Office of Management and Budget, in January 2025. They sought and obtained a temporary restraining order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, quickly blocking the OMB’s funding freeze directive. Plaintiffs subsequently secured a preliminary injunction from the district court extending the block on the funding freeze and similar policies.  

In her decision, United States District Judge Loren L. AliKhan said, “Defendants cannot pretend that the nationwide chaos and paralysis from two weeks ago is some distant memory with no bearing on this case… Plaintiffs have marshalled significant evidence indicating that the funding freeze would be economically catastrophic—and in some circumstances, fatal— to their members.”     

The Trump administration appealed the injunction. The Tribal amicus brief, filed on December 24, 2025, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit supports upholding the injunction and ensuring that the U.S. government meets its financial obligations and promises it made to Tribal Nations and Native people.