By Adhrit Tiwari

The Trump administration’s push for expanded domestic drilling has raised questions about its effects on tribal communities.

The rise of the second Trump Administration has been marked by a decisive shift in American energy policy. From an emphasis on renewable sources of power under the Biden Administration through targeted federal subsidies, Trump’s second administration aims to put non-renewable oil and gas front and center. Declaring that the U.S. would “drill, baby, drill,” President Trump promised on the first day of his presidency to cut back oil and gas regulations in an effort to ramp up production. 

This shift in energy policy comes with a host of benefits and concerns for Native American tribes, the lands of many of which possess substantial energy reserves. As the Wilson Center quantified in 2025, Tribal lands constitute just 2% of America’s land area, yet hold nearly 35% of America’s fossil fuel resources. Major oil deposits are held by the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikaara Nation in North Dakota, the Osage in Oklahoma and various Native corporations in Alaska, while the Navajo in the Southwest possess substantial deposits of uranium. As it stands Any effort to expand energy development nationwide would undoubtedly have to work through Native officials and native land. 

Historically, the development of energy resources on Native American land has been highly controversial. During the 1970s, the United States federal government deliberately obscured the risks of uranium mining on Navajo land, leaching contaminants into the air and water and passing on to tribes a risk of lung cancer nearly 28 times higher than the national average. In terms of its impact on local communities, oil drilling has had similar effects. In the Southwest, abandoned oil wells built on Native lands spew toxic water into their surrounding communities, exacerbating an existing water shortage in those areas. 

More recently, the Trump administration has moved to ease regulations on new energy development projects. In October of 2025, Congress passed Senate Joint Resolution 80, triggering a Congressional review to reverse restrictions on natural gas and oil projects within the nearly 1.56-million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge implemented by the Biden Administration. The environmental restrictions in question effectively stalled most new oil developments. Along with the regulatory rollback, a budget reconciliation bill passed later by Congress mandated the sell-off of at least 9 tracts of land at least 400,000 acres in size to private corporations.

Drilling may bring economic development, but it comes with undeniable environmental harm for local communities

When examining energy development on Native lands, two distinct perspectives emerged. On one hand, new energy development employs thousands of workers–many of whom, due to location, end up being Native Americans–and brings economic activity to regions which are otherwise scarcely populated and devoid of major commercial activity. This is the view shared by the Iñupiat Community of the North Slope, which strongly supported the legislation. 

Yet many other Alaska Native groups and environmental advocates strongly oppose the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) Coastal Plain and expanded drilling in the NPR-A. Culturally, the refuge’s coastal plain has long been recognized as a rich ecosystem and landscape for the Gwich’in people, who refer to it as “the Sacred Place Where Life Begins.” In a lawsuit filed in collaboration with the National Resources Defense Council , the group alleges that expanded oil drilling within the refuge would risk fragmenting habitats for caribou, polar bears, and waterfowl and pollute a Native ancestral land. 

Ultimately, the dispute reflects a tension between economic self-determination and environmental protection. Some tribal governments view expanded drilling as a pragmatic tool to generate jobs, revenue, and long-overdue investment in infrastructure. Others warn that weakened safeguards and accelerated leasing risk repeating a history of pollution, habitat loss, and cultural disruption that disproportionately burdens Indigenous communities. As federal deregulation ensues., many Native nations beyond the Arctic may be left to balance economic gains from energy developments with the long-term harm ecological damage and deregulation could pose to their communities.