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When Congress shut off funding this fall for NPR and PBS, many of their member stations were caught in the crossfire. That includes dozens of radio stations that serve Native American communities and rely heavily on federal money. NPR's Frank Langfitt visited one station in Colorado that's piecing together a plan to survive.
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SHEILA NANAETO, BYLINE: Good morning and welcome. You are listening to KSUT Tribal Radio here in Ignacio at 91.3 FM. This is the Wednesday edition of the Native Morning Show. I am your host, Sheila Nanaeto.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Ignacio is a town of about a thousand people on the Southern Ute Reservation, about a six-hour drive from Denver. KSUT carries NPR programming, but its tribal signal also focuses on the local community, carrying everything from high school basketball...
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Oh, my goodness. That was from Nebraska.
LANGFITT: ...To Native American flute music.
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LANGFITT: Sheila Nanaeto, who's also the Tribal Radio station manager, is sitting in a studio, her back to a wall of CDs, most of which you can't find online.
NANAETO: Here on Tribal Radio, we play at least 46 hours a week of traditional Native music. It can be anything from powwow to round dance.
LANGFITT: There's even a Native American heavy metal show.
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LANGFITT: Angela Richards (ph) grew up in the area. She's raising her children in Southern Ute traditions and listens to KSUT while doing the laundry and running errands.
ANGELA RICHARDS: There's just something in the music. It's in the drum. It's healing. It brings you peace. It brings you strength. I listened to it with all my pregnancies. Andres (ph) especially, he would just be in there tapping along to the drum, all happy.
LANGFITT: Andres is now a high school senior. He says reinforcing the tribal identity is crucial in a world where social media dominates.
ANDRES: Many parents don't associate themselves with the traditions. It's kind of sad seeing that.
LANGFITT: KSUT Tribal Radio also covers news about Native Americans that doesn't get much mainstream coverage.
CRYSTAL ASHIKE, BYLINE: Hi. My name is Crystal Ashike. I am KSUT Tribal Radio's digital content editor.
LANGFITT: In 2022, Ashike noticed a social media post about people in a mysterious white van picking up Navajo tribal members, which led to this report.
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ASHIKE: Vulnerable tribal members were lured with false promises of treatment for substance abuse. Instead of receiving the care they were promised, they were caught in a scam that defrauded Arizona's Medicaid program of nearly $3 billion.
LANGFITT: Ashike is one of three employees at the tribal station. KSUT operates on a shoestring, so she had to do all her reporting by phone. Ashike saw the story as a public service and a way to warn others.
ASHIKE: I wish I didn't have to do it because it's sad. You just know that there's cases where people have not come home and are still missing.
LANGFITT: KSUT was busy serving its distinctive mission when it was swept up in national politics this year. Tami Graham has run KSUT for the past decade.
TAMI GRAHAM, BYLINE: This has been the most unreal roller coaster ride that I've been on in my career. Off the charts highs and lows.
LANGFITT: The lows began in February. That's when the Trump administration froze a grant for more than half a million dollars to replace the station's aging radio transmitters. Next, Congress voted to kill funding for public media. Graham says KSUT is losing 20% of its approximately $1.5 million annual budget.
GRAHAM: The fears about staffing cuts and some sleepless nights around that and how we were going to deal. And we came into this year with a fair amount of debt.
LANGFITT: Then things began to turn around. In response to the funding cuts, listeners opened their wallets, as Chris Aaland, KSUT's development director, explained in a recent staff meeting.
CHRIS AALAND, BYLINE: We eclipsed $500,000 in fundraising for the first time ever on general membership.
LANGFITT: And in a one-time deal, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is restoring the federal money lost this year to support emergency alerts. Graham is using this breathing space to begin to build a $6 million endowment, which she says would generate more than $200,000 annually.
GRAHAM: And that would go a long ways towards replacing our loss of federal funding. Do I wish we had started this endowment fund five or 10 years ago? Of course. But this is the moment where people really do deeply understand more than ever the value of their local stations, including ours, and are willing to step up.
LANGFITT: KSUT has $125,000 committed so far for steps to ensure its survival independent of the federal government.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Ignacio, Colorado. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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