{"id":21404,"date":"2025-07-16T16:48:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T22:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/native-american-radio-stations-at-risk-as-congress-looks-to-cut-1b-in-public-broadcasting-funding\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T22:48:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T22:48:39","slug":"native-american-radio-stations-at-risk-as-congress-looks-to-cut-1b-in-public-broadcasting-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/native-american-radio-stations-at-risk-as-congress-looks-to-cut-1b-in-public-broadcasting-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"Native American radio stations at risk as Congress looks to cut $1B in public broadcasting funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tribal
Tribal media stations in New Mexico could receive about $430,000 as soon as this summer if the legislature embraces Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham\u2019s recommendation. Pictured is Elayna Cunningham on July 10, 2025, at the Anchorage, Alaska, studios of KNBA, the flagship station for National Native News. Mark Thiessen\/AP File Photo<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

OMAHA, Nebraska \u2013 Dozens of Native American radio stations across the country vital to tribal communities will be at risk of going off the air if Congress cuts more than $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to industry leaders.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Senate voted to approve the Department of Government Efficiency\u2019s plan to rescind previously approved public broadcasting funding for 2026 and 2027. Fear is growing that most of the 59 tribal radio stations that receive the funding will go dark, depriving isolated populations of news, local events and critical weather alerts. The House already approved the cuts last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Indian Country in general, 80% of the communities are rural, and their only access to national news, native story sharing, community news, whatever it is, is through PBS stations or public radio,\u201d said Francene Blythe-Lewis, CEO of the Lincoln, Nebraska-based Native American video programming producer Vision Maker Media. \u201cIf the claw back happens, I would say a good 90% of those stations will cease to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Native American communities rely on local radio stations<\/div>\n

Local radio plays an outsize role in the lives of many who live in Indigenous communities, where cable television and broadband internet access are spotty, at best, and nonexistent for many. That leaves over-the-air TV stations \u2013 usually a PBS station \u2013 and more often local radio to provide local news, community event details and music by Indigenous artists. Sometimes the news is delivered in Indigenous languages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means we\u2019re not going to hear our language on the radio,\u201d Blythe-Lewis said.<\/p>\n

Flagstaff, Arizona-based Native Public Media, which supports the network of 59 radio stations and three television stations serving tribal nations across the country, said about three dozen of those radio stations that rely heavily on Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding will be the first to go dark if funding is cut for the coming fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.<\/p>\n

Loris Taylor, CEO of Native Public Media, said in an op-ed that the tribal stations reach more than 1.5 million people and \u201cmay be the only source of locally relevant news, emergency alerts, public safety announcements, language preservation, health information and election coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans face pressure to pass the cuts<\/div>\n

GOP senators are under pressure from President Donald Trump, who promised last week on his Truth Social platform that any Republican who votes against the cuts \u201cwill not have my support or Endorsement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Republicans say the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, recently defended the cuts as necessary to hack away at the nearly $37 trillion national debt, adding, \u201cIt is critical in restoring trust in government.\u201d<\/p>\n

But some Republicans have pushed back, such as Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who questioned the proposed cuts last month during a Senate committee hearing. She said that while some of the federal money is assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, most of it goes to locally owned public radio and television stations.<\/p>\n

Tribal stations provide lifesaving alerts<\/div>\n

Jaclyn Sallee is president and CEO of Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and KNBA, its radio station in Anchorage, Alaska. Koahnic produces National Native News, a five-minute daily newscast that features headline news from across Indian Country, and Native America Calling, a daily hourlong call-in program, for about 190 stations across the nation. It also produces Indigefi, a music program in Indigenous languages.<\/p>\n

KNBA is on Native Public Media\u2019s list of those stations that would be most affected by the federal funding cuts \u2013 a concern Sallee confirmed, as 40% of the station\u2019s funding comes from CPB.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re really worried about are the rural stations in Alaska where they may be the only station in the community,\u201d she said. \u201cThe people that live there depend on the station for vital weather alerts, emergency alerts; it\u2019s the local hub of the community where people share information. So that is very troublesome because people\u2019s lives are at risk without this service.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s currently fishing season in Alaska, she said, \u201cwhich means getting out in the ocean or in rivers and going long distances to subsist, and so they really rely on weather reports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having the news reported in a tribe\u2019s language isn\u2019t just about preserving that language, she said. Sallee spent summers in Nome with her mother\u2019s family. Her grandmother, she said, spoke only Inupiaq.<\/p>\n

Loss of small stations could hurt the larger system<\/div>\n

New Mexico PBS\u2019s signal reaches all but one of the more than 20 tribes and pueblos in the state. It also has signed an agreement with the Navajo Nation, which has the largest reservation of any tribe in the U.S., that allows the tribe to carry the PBS signal and programming on the Navajo Nation Television network, New Mexico PBS general manger Franz Joachim said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no question in my mind that, you know, immediately some stations will pretty much go dark,\u201d Joachim said.<\/p>\n

When those first stations fail, it won\u2019t take long for others to follow, Joachim said. And as they do, it will mean fewer and fewer stations left to pay membership dues that also help fund all of the stations.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now the whole system starts to fracture,\u201d he said. \u201cSo for me, the federal funding is really about the system as a whole that keeps us in place.\u201d<\/p>\n

That funding also helps produce national content that groups like Vision Maker Media produce. Those include Native American documentaries shown on PBS like \u201cMankiller,\u201d the story of Wilma Mankiller who became the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.<\/p>\n

Blythe-Lewis compared the potential loss of tribal stations to the country\u2019s past attempts to erase Native American cultures, such as through federal boarding schools where Indigenous children were sent for generations to assimilate them into white society and where systemic abuse of Indigenous children was carried out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re erased from public media and therefore invisible and therefore become unknown and unheard of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PBS reaches all but one of the more than 20 tribes and pueblos in the state<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,561,138,29,2196],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-native-american","tag-new-mexico","tag-newsletter","tag-radio"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21404"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}