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The shutdown isn’t big for Utah’s tribes yet. If it drags on, that’s the problem

The U.S. Capitol is reflected in the doors of the Library of Congress, which is closed due to a partial government shutdown, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025, in Washington.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson
/
AP
The U.S. Capitol is reflected in the doors of the Library of Congress, which is closed due to a partial government shutdown, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025, in Washington.

There are eight federally recognized Native American tribes across Utah. Each relies, to varying degrees, on the federal government for things like infrastructure, health care and law enforcement.

As the sun sets on the first week of the government shutdown, Director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs Dustin Jansen said tribal governments seem to be weathering it so far.

“It's happened a few times in the past, and the tribes that it does affect they figured out how to offset that and get through it,” he said. “So I think they're just relying on their own governance for right now.”

According to a September 2025 contingency plan from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, at least 1,154 agency employees have been furloughed, or roughly 37% of employees.

Essential functions such as law enforcement and detention centers, social services for child and adult protection and infrastructure like irrigation, power and dam safety have remained in operation. Almost all of the essential functions remaining online are for the “protection of life and property.”

In a statement, the National Congress of American Indians expressed its deep “concerns about the immediate and disproportionate harm” the federal government shutdown will have on Tribal Nations.

As it stands, the federally recognized tribes of Utah seem to be taking the government shutdown in stride. Jansen said they secured funding for their government structures before Oct. 1. This isn’t the case everywhere in the U.S., or even in the West. The Pyramid Lakes Paiute Tribe outside Reno, Nevada, furloughed roughly 25 workers at the beginning of the month, but has since reinstated most of them.

And while Utah tribes seem to be in a good spot, much depends on how long the government stays shuttered.

The federal government has treaty and trust obligations that have been in place for more than a century. Should the government shutdown outlast the budgets currently in place that keep Native tribes afloat, Jansen is concerned that some key diplomatic infrastructure, like education benefits, could come under fire.

“If a tribe has students in college or going to a school that requires tuition, you know, sometimes the federal government has programs in place to help cover those costs. And you know, if those aren't available, it could, could affect someone continuing with their education and moving forward,” he said.

Mohan Sudabattula is the CEO and founder of Project Embrace, a Utah-based nonprofit that supplies health care amenities to some of the most remote communities in the world. They have been working with the Navajo Nation since 2017.

Sudabattula recently spent eight days on the reservation and was there when the shutdown was announced. He said the community reaction could only be described as an “eye roll.”

“It feels kind of like the ripple hasn't quite reached,” he said. “The general sentiment has always been skeptical of the government, especially the federal government, but what we're starting to kind of see is OK, people are handling themselves just fine.”

But according to Sudabattula, things like sanitary products for girls and women, as well as hygiene supplies, are often price-gouged when things get shaken up in Washington.

“Things get really expensive, and it's all a bigger reflection of the status quo. The gap in access is already pretty great, and it ends up being exacerbated in a much larger kind of aftershock, of things like a government shutdown,” he reflected.

Project Embrace’s motto is “dignity is a right,” and Sudabattula is concerned that with a prolonged shuttered government, that right will get further and further from his clients’ grasp.

“A lot of the social issues that we think about every day that affect our own families are just they become much bigger in rural settings, and then you add a government shutdown on top of it, and it becomes not just a problem, but it starts to underwrite itself as a real tragedy,” he said.

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