With a new bill, North Carolina’s Lumbee Tribe continues to push for federal recognition
By Katie Reilly
The Lumbee Tribe — which includes 55,000 members — is the largest American Indian tribe in North Carolina, and its members have been trying for more than a century to be recognized as such by the federal government.
In January, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) introduced the Lumbee Recognition Act — making it the sixth time such a bill has been introduced in the U.S. House since 2003.
“I introduced this bill to end the discriminatory policy against the Lumbee Tribe and bring forward equal treatment so the Lumbees can receive the same services as every other federal tribe,” Hudson said in a statement. “Beyond basic fairness, granting the Lumbees federal recognition has the potential to spur job creation and open the door to further economic growth in southeastern North Carolina.”
If it passes, the bill would grant federal recognition to the tribe and render it eligible for all services and benefits afforded to tribes with that status. But the Lumbee Tribe’s lengthy, obstacle-ridden quest to obtain recognition offers proof that the process is far from simple.
“One of the things about colonialism is it always puts the natives on the defensive. It’s a position of having to justify ourselves and prove our identity in a way that other natives — well, other Americans are almost never asked to do,” said Malinda Maynor Lowery, an associate professor of history at UNC and a member of the Lumbee Tribe.
“They act like there’s a pie that needs to be divided up among all the native nations of the country who have a relationship to the (Bureau of Indian Affairs) and, the fact is, there is no pie.”
The Lumbee’s complex history with recognition dates back to 1885, when the tribe was recognized by the state of North Carolina as an Indian tribe. In 1888, the tribe petitioned Congress for federal education funding but was denied.
“The secretary of the interior wrote back to the tribe in 1890 saying that there are too many of you, and it would cost too much money,” said Arlinda Locklear, a lawyer who has represented the Lumbee Tribe in its efforts to obtain full federal recognition. “And it was after that, the tribe started looking at special legislation.”
Leaders of the Lumbee Tribe declined to comment for this story.
In 1956, Congress acknowledged the tribe as Indian but withheld the benefits associated with full federal recognition.
Recognition today would give the tribe access to the benefits and support services included within the Indian Child Welfare Act, the Indian Health Service and Indian education funds. It would also establish the tribe as an independent political entity.
Keith Richotte, assistant professor of American studies at UNC and an expert on tribal law, emphasized that recognition is really about establishing that political relationship.
“It would have a whole host of changes — both governmental and social —that would have an impact on the tribe’s welfare,” Locklear said.
Roadblocks to recognition
Native American tribes can obtain federal recognition through either an administrative or legislative process, the latter of which the Lumbee Tribe is now pursuing. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has jurisdiction over the former, and eligibility is determined by seven mandatory criteria — including a membership that descends from historic tribes and the comprisal of a distinct tribal community from historical times until present.
“The federal government and the tribal nations, themselves, have an interest in making sure that you’re dealing with bona fide groups,” Richotte said.
“The process began because it was decided that there needed to be a principled way to figure out who should and shouldn’t be recognized. It began as a slow and laborious process, and it got even worse once tribal gaming entered the picture.”
There are currently 566 federally recognized tribes in the U.S. In North Carolina, the only tribe with such status is the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, though seven other tribes, including the Lumbee, are recognized by the state.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has historically opposed federal recognition for the Lumbee Tribe.
“The Lumbee recognition bill is an attempt, once again, for the Lumbee to circumvent the Bureau of Indian Affairs process for federal recognition,” said Principal Chief Michell Hicks in a January interview with Cherokee One Feather, the official newspaper of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
“The Lumbee have failed to meet the criteria to prove their claim of being a legitimate Native Nation and are relying on the sympathy of legislators to gain federal recognition.”
Terri Henry, chairwoman of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council, declined to comment for this story.
From Locklear’s perspective, the roadblocks to Lumbee recognition have varied. Part of the problem, she says, is resistance in Congress to special legislation for tribal recognition. Another obstacle includes the claims made by other tribes that the Lumbee is not legitimate.
Hudson’s bill — which identifies the Lumbee Tribe as a distinct community of descendants of the Cheraw Tribe of North Carolina — aims to refute that argument.
“Everything about the Lumbee community, culturally, is in tact,” Lowery said. “Now, that’s not to say we haven’t lost things. Our ancestors spoke a variety of indigenous languages that we no longer remember. Along with the disappearance of those indigenous languages has gone a lot of knowledge of plants, of medicines, of the land itself, of stories, of ways of seeing the world. Nevertheless, we’re extremely adept at surviving.”
In arguing the tribe’s illegitimacy, some critics highlight that loss of a Native American language, said Walt Wolfram, a linguistics professor at N.C. State University.
“So what if it was an amalgam of groups that came together and formed a community?” Wolfram said. “That’s how life happens in all kinds of communities. It happened to the English-speaking community, it happens to all kinds of groups and out of these contacts, communities are formed. But, to me, one of the most evident symbolic indications of Indian status is the dialect.”
And based on Wolfram’s research about language and dialect in Robeson County, he says he’s found strong evidence of a distinct, unique dialect among members of the tribe.
“It’s not like a group of Indians got together in a longhouse and were like, ‘Hey, let’s talk differently so that they can recognize who we are,’” he said. “These things that just sort of evolve out of the community, out of network and out of self identification. So that is something, to me, that is a prominent indication of their independent status.”
Locklear said the detrimental assumptions that followed the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act have also posed a problem.
“Ever since Congress passed that statute, a lot of people — every time they see a recognition bill — assume it’s all about trying to set up a casino,” she said.
As written, though, the bill prohibits the Lumbee Tribe from conducting gaming activities.
‘A human dignity issue’
The Lumbee Recognition Act now has seven bipartisan cosponsors, including Rep. G.K. Butterfield and Rep. David Price from North Carolina. On March 2, it was referred to the Subcommittee on Indians, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs.
Before Hudson, Rep. Mike McIntyre represented Robeson County from 1997 to 2015, during which time he shepherded legislation for Lumbee recognition through the U.S. House. Two bills introduced by McIntyre passed the House — in 2007 and 2009 — before dying in the U.S. Senate.
“I was very grateful to be able to win the support of liberals, moderates and conservatives and both Republicans and Democrats because they saw that this is not a political, partisan issue,” McIntyre said. “It’s a human dignity issue.”
The 2009 bill passed the House by a vote of 240 to 179. Democrats made up 88 percent of the yea vote, and Republicans made up 80 percent of the nay vote.
“Nearly all of the elected officials in my home county — for major offices — were Lumbees, and yet they still did not have the dignity of being recognized by the federal government,” McIntyre said. “From a human dignity standpoint, it is appalling.”
Lack of recognition has become a reality and a frustration for many Lumbee members.
“There are a lot of us who work in Indian affairs, and we are perceived by the rest of Indian country as basically second-class Indians because we’re not federally recognized,” Locklear said.
Chelsea Barnes, a UNC senior and Lumbee member, wrote her honors thesis about the process of obtaining federal recognition for the Lumbee Tribe.
“I don’t think that recognition has anything to do with how we view ourselves as native people. We know we’re native, and we don’t need someone else to tell us that. But I think logistically, things could be a lot different if the tribe were recognized,” Barnes said. “I think the community gets to see that tribal sovereignty exercised in a really unique way.”
But in some ways, she said, it’s seen as a good thing that the tribe isn’t dependent on the government, while others see recognition as something that would necessarily acknowledge historical injustice.
“As a tribal member, I think our contributions to the state of North Carolina and to the United States have gone unacknowledged for so long,” Lowery said.
“Federal recognition for me is like a form of reparations. It’s a way for the nation as a whole to recognize that our land was stolen, our ancestors’ lives were lost, and we’ve never been compensated for that.”
Lumbee path to federal recognition
Interactive by Josie Hollingsworth and Mckenzie Coey
Feature photo by North Carolina Collection, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
