President Donald Trump’s move toward federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina fulfills a repeated promise he made on the campaign trail, but it has sparked concern from other Native American tribes about the precedent set by the different process used in this instance.
During the first days of his second term in office, Trump signed an executive order urging the Department of the Interior to create a plan that would identify a pathway for the federal recognition of the Lumbees.
To be federally recognized, tribes must meet a specific set of criteria, including: proving their nation existed before the founding of the United States, that the tribe has been recognized as Native since 1900 or before, that the tribe has operated as an “autonomous entity” and that members have genealogies that demonstrate both Native heritage and distinct ancestry from previously recognized tribes.
The Lumbee Tribe claims to be “the amalgamation of various Siouan, Algonquian, and Iroquoian speaking tribes” and to have a recorded existence since 1725. Currently, the Lumbees boast over 55,000 members who are spread across multiple counties in their home state of North Carolina. Although they were recognized by the state over a century ago, the Lumbee Tribe has not been recognized by the United States as a sovereign tribe.
“The fact that we are still here centuries after colonial expansion, centuries after war and disease … should be celebrated,” Lumbee Chairman John L. Lowery told The Robesonian, a local newspaper. Lowery declined an interview request from NBC News but said in a statement that he looks “forward to the White House formalizing the document and sending it over to congressional leadership.”
The Lumbees were denied the full benefits of recognition by the Lumbee Act of 1956, a law that prohibits the U.S. from having a federal relationship with the group. This blocks the tribe’s outright recognition along with access to government funding for needs such as health care, education and economic development.
“The more than 60,000 North Carolina members of the Lumbee Tribe have waited decades for federal recognition,” Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., said in a 2023 press release. “They deserve the same rights, privileges, and respect granted to other Native American tribes throughout our country.”
In the past, the Lumbees have looked to other means for recognition, including multiple bills in Congress, most of which never made it off the chamber floor due to backlash from established Native tribes. Now, Trump’s Interior Department is searching for another path forward — and these methods go around the traditional process established in 1978 by the Office of Federal Acknowledgment (OFA), which has granted recognition to more than 500 tribes across the nation.
By circumventing this evaluation, multiple Native groups and tribal leaders worry that this could set the wrong precedent for tribal recognition in the future. Chief Michell Hicks of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians says that a “diligent process” must be in place, and he worries about how this order could erode the current method of recognition.
“We’ve always known who we were and where we came from, and the difficulty with the Lumbee group is they’ve attempted to attach to a number of historical tribal and nontribal names, trying to identify themselves,” Hicks told NBC News. “I think part of it is just the clarity around who they are and are they truly a sovereign nation or are they remnants of something else, and not necessarily Native?”
For some chiefs like Brad KillsCrow of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, this order undermines the efforts that other Native groups have undertaken toward their own recognition.
“There’s a process that has been put in place, a process that we all have gone through and each of the 574 [recognized] tribes were able to prove who they were and their existence,” KillsCrow said. “Don’t try to take a back door and not do what everybody else has and then get federal recognition.”
Broader implications
For KillsCrow, the Lumbee Tribe’s recognition loophole is not a lone issue. The chief says he has interacted with multiple groups claiming to have Delaware ancestry but that haven’t proved their historic roots. He worries that if the Lumbee are able to successfully bypass the OFA standards, other organizations that haven’t met those guidelines will be able to do the same in the future.
KillsCrow also highlights some potential financial ramifications to Lumbee recognition. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cost over $350 million to recognize the Lumbee Tribe and provide it with the allotted benefits. As the leader of a small tribe, he worries this will strip money away from his own budget.
Hicks and KillsCrow believe this push for Lumbee recognition by the executive branch is rooted in the politicization of Native issues. Multiple times during campaign stops in North Carolina, Trump promised the Lumbee Tribe that it would be recognized under his administration. In Robeson County, North Carolina, where the Lumbee Tribe is headquartered, 63.3% of the population voted Republican last November. Previously, Trump carried the county by 51% in 2016 and 59% in 2020.
But making tribal recognition a voting issue risks Native voices going unheard depending on election winners, KillsCrow and Hicks argued.
“I would recommend to President Trump, let this go through the OFA process,” Hicks said. “Let the experts do their job. Whatever that answer is, it is.”
