The Trump Order could help the North Carolina tribe gain official recognition

On By Littum

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President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to “promote” federal recognition of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina.

The executive order Gives the Department of the Interior 90 days to work with Lumbee Leadership to determine and submit to the President the best path forward toward federal recognition, whether through Congress, the courts, or the Department of the Interior under the Office of Federal Recognition, which evaluates claims of Native American history and sovereignty.

“This is a good step for the new administration, and we urge Congress to move forward with codifying this policy for President Trump toward full federal recognition of the Lumbee people,” tribal chairman John L. Lowery said in a statement.

Although recognized in North Carolina as a tribe in 1885, the federal government briefly stopped in 1956 under the Lumbee Act, which recognized the Lumbee as the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina, but denied them benefits associated with federal recognition as a tribe, including funding for housing, schools and healthcare.

Trump said during the 2024 campaign that the tribe should be federally recognized. Trump won the once traditionally Democratic stronghold of Robeson County, NC, home to the tribe’s headquarters, with 59% of the vote.

“They were with me all the way, they were great,” Trump said before signing the order.

Passes through Congress

Tribal nations typically receive federal recognition through an application with the Department of the Interior. The Lumbee tribe applied in 1987 but was denied based on the department’s interpretation of the Lumbee Act of 1956. Interior reversed that decision in 2016, but the Lumbee have not applied, choosing instead to go through Congress.

Legislation giving the tribe official recognition has repeatedly passed the House. Just before Congress went home in December, the House of Representatives voted 311-96 to pass the Lumbee Fairness Act, which would have given the Lumbee tribe full federal recognition. The legislation was not considered by the Senate and died when the congressional term ended.

History of origin

The Lumbee tribe says it is made up of the survivors of several eastern tribal nations who settled in a geographically isolated area in North Carolina while Native Americans were driven west, according to to the tribe’s website. Since these tribes each had their own language, the Lumbee used English as their common language. Over generations they have intermarried Both white and black North Carolinians. They agreed on the name Lumbee in the 1950s and adopted a tribal constitution in 2000.

Representatives of the Cherokee Nation and other tribes have opposed the repeated attempts to recognize the Lummee through Congress rather than the official process through the Interior Department like the nation’s more than 500 federally recognized tribes.

“For decades, federally recognized tribes have struggled to maintain the integrity of this process. The Lumbee group has not met these standards. They cannot identify which historic tribe they are descended from, and recent genealogical and historical research has exposed significant deficiencies in their claims.Federal recognition is not a right.