Donald Trump starts federal recognition process for North Carolina Lumbee Tribe
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order instructing the Department of the Interior to "promote" federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
The executive order gives the Interior Department 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 Interior Department under the Office of Federal Acknowledgement, which evaluates claims to Native American history and sovereignty.
"This is a great step for the new administration and we encourage Congress to move forward with codifying this policy of President Trump toward full federal recognition of the Lumbee People,” Tribal Chairman John L. Lowery said in a statement.
Though recognized in North Carolina as a tribe in 1885, the federal government stopped short 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 health care.
Trump said during the 2024 campaign the tribe should be federally recognized. Trump won the once traditionally Democratic stronghold of Robeson County, NC, where the tribal headquarters is located, with 59% of the vote.
"They were with me all the way, they were great," Trump said before signing the order.
Going through Congress
Tribal nations typically receive federal recognition through an application with the Interior Department. The Lumbee Tribe applied in 1987, but was denied based on the Department's interpretation of the 1956 Lumbee Act. Interior reversed that decision in 2016, but the Lumbee have not applied, instead choosing 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 granted the Lumbee Tribe full federal recognition. The legislation was not considered by the Senate and died when the congressional term ended.
Origin story
The Lumbee Tribe says it is made up of survivors of multiple eastern tribal nations who settled in a geographically isolated area of North Carolina while Native Americans were being driven to the west, according to the tribe's website. Since those tribes each had their own language, the Lumbee used English as their common language. Over generations they have intermarried with both white and Black North Carolinians. They agreed upon the name Lumbee in the 1950s and passed a tribal constitution in 2000.
Representatives for the Cherokee nation and other tribes have opposed the repeated attempts to recognize the Lumbee through Congress rather than the official process through the Interior Department like the country's more than 500 federally recognized tribes.
"For decades, federally recognized tribes have fought to uphold the integrity of this process. The Lumbee group has not met these standards. They cannot identify which historical tribe they descend from, and recent genealogical and historical research has exposed significant flaws in their claims. Federal recognition is not an entitlement. It is a status earned through evidence, not politics," Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Michell Hicks said in a statement when the House bill passed in December.