It’s too bad officials at Haskell Indian Nations University are so leery of a federally funded plan to put the school in charge of training workers to preserve millions of American Indian records.

It’s too bad, but given the history of Haskell funding, it’s understandable.

The project to create a repository for American Indian records would be an asset to researchers and a wonderful way to preserve native culture for future generations. But members of the Haskell Board of Regents fear that, after the two years of promised funding for a program to train workers for the archive, Haskell may be left in the lurch by the vagaries of federal funding.

If funds are cut, Haskell doesn’t want to sacrifice other programs to fulfill its obligation to train workers for the archive. Haskell, of course, isn’t the only federally funded institution that is asked to deal with such uncertainty, but given their cultural history — not to mention a pending $137 billion class action lawsuit over alleged government mismanagement of tribal funds — it’s easy to see why they might be more reluctant than most to trust promises of future funding.