Should the Lumbee Tribe Be Federally Recognized?

Ideals and sentiments seem to have begun to migrate further towards sympathy and equality for ethnicities held down in the past from a majority group. It's now popular to support minority groups or even for white Europeans to try to find some identification with a minority group -whether through their Irish grandmother or their Mongolian great- grandfather's step-sister. There are many reasons to oppose and support the federalization of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, but it is not the author's intention to find them pitiable by somehow lumping them in an over-arching category with all American Indians. Their recognition should be brought on by their longevity and cohesiveness as a tribe, their cultural values as they differ from their peers and also why it is they need to be recognized. By keeping these ideas in mind, the author supports the idea of a fully recognized Lumbee tribe, however the tribe is still recreating itself among a culture that folds itself over into their own struggle to remain an American Indian, a Lumbee of Robeson County in North Carolina. That reinvention, along with showing their peers that they can be an American Indian without feathers and tepees, will be slow in coming.

Origin Theories:
There are several theories of how the Lumbee tribe was first created, among those include the idea that in the early 1700's, the Lumbee were actually from Roanoke, Virginia in the 1500's and part of the Cheraw tribe. Over several years a mixture of many different races, from Native American, black and white gradually mixed into the original Cheraw tribe creating the Lumbee. Another theory suggests that the Lumbee were originally a branch of the Cherokee who remained in the East instead of moving westward.

Lumbee History:
By the 1800's, the Lumbee were associated as free persons of color and mainly participated in farm labor and other similar crafts such as masonry and carpentry. During the Civil War, even though they were considered free people of color, the Lumbee were forced to do labor working alongside black slaves. The Indians found this forced labor to be an overwhelming insult to their heritage. In the late 1800's there was great interest in whether Indians were more white or more black, the result, obviously having a huge effect on the lives of those in question. The Indians were then separated subtly from black communities, attempting to get children to attend different schools and for families to go to separate churches. This resulted in a larger mixture of Indian and white, who often attended the same schools and churches, and also "those who had been considered mulattoes had managed, with the help of friendly whites, to become legally recognized as Indians and to obtain separate schools" (Blu1980: 65) -especially from schools that associated them with the black community. By 1885, the Lumbee were recognized by the state of North Carolina as being Indian. The Lumbee Act (1956) passed by Congress almost one hundred years later also acknowledged that the Lumbee were Indian, however the Lumbee Act withheld the full benefits with being formally and fully recognized by the government.

To many who object to giving full recognition to the Lumbee, a point could be made on the lack of historical evidence of the Lumbee before the 1700's. While there is a great hole of information, this isn't necessarily because the Lumbee simply "appeared" in the 1700's. As with many, many Native groups during those early years of colonization, their histories and stories were wiped out as millions of Indians died of diseases and wars during the years European settlers began colonizing and reforming the way of life in North America. The truth of their history and richness of their backgrounds were lost just as countless of other tribes we have never heard of, histories demolished not unlike those of many African slaves brought to North America whose histories were also left in the dust under the white feet of the European settlers.

The 20th Century:
For almost the entire 20^th Century, the Lumbee have been attempting to be fully recognized by their peers. One of the largest problems with the Lumbee being acknowledged as a Native American tribe is that throughout their history from the 1700's to the present, the Lumbee are extremely mixed with European and non-European ancestry. The "dilution" of their Indian ancestry adds a huge problem to the supposed authenticity of the Lumbee tribe. The idea of how much "blood" given from you ancestors' race has always been extremely important on deciding how black, Jewish, or Indian a person is. This idea of racial blood also plays a huge role in the U.S. Government concerning the American Indians in the past and still in the present. Laws stipulate that after a person's "racial blood level" goes beneath a certain percentage they are no longer considered an Indian, even if they are part of the social community and share equal cultural values.

Should the Lumbee be Considered as a Sovereign Tribe?
The Lumbee have a history full of the "blending of races", this raises questionable concerns to their claims. However, all races have some type of mix in them. It's almost impossible to look at a group or culture while looking primarily at a biological background. If one even tries to culturally compare the Lumbee to another tribe, you still do not reach the same scope and picture of who the Lumbee are. A tribe in the West, for example, was not irrevocably changed or even in some ways, destroyed until the 1800's when settlers began their "manifest destiny" to new lands. The Lumbee, located in North Carolina were influenced up to three hundred years before that if in fact they were once part of the Roanoke Indians. For the Lumbee, physical appearance doesn't influence who is considered to be part of the tribe. Possibly because of their history of a mixed heritage, community plays a large part on who is Lumbee which include lifestyle and a shared history.

That they don't necessarily "act like Indians", or at least like the more well-known Indians, such as the Lakota or Navajo, are irrelevant to the Lumbee. Often the "actions" of how Native Americans should act fall into what one could refer to as "reservation Indians", which the Lumbee obviously are not. They pride themselves on their progressiveness away from reservation Indians, who often live in extremely severe poverty with limited or, as seen in the past, a monochromatic education bent of absorbing Native Americans into the larger American culture. Blu asserts that "better educational opportunities have enabled a segment of the Lumbee to become solidly middle class. By obtaining a separate school system, the Indians established themselves visibly and firmly as separate people and at the same time were able to institute some local controls" (138). The educational system of the Lumbee tribe plays a large role in their community, seeing their educational achievements as their identity as Indians.

Besides looking at the Lumbee as a behavioral study on whether or not they appear to be Indian enough, one the of the greatest things to take into account is how the Lumbee explain themselves as Indians, how they define themselves. "It is essentially a constellation of behavioral characteristics that gives potent meaning to the term "Indian" when they apply it to themselves. The constellation provides a moral and emotional blueprint of "who we are'" (142). Their behavioral and cultural traits form their own distinguishable culture that they define as Indian, through what is perceived to be a "real Indian" and along with being "created and maintained through the complex interaction of Indian ideas and activities with those of their neighbors over a period of time" (143). Their unity as a tribe and Indian group keeps their ideas and cultural values intact, along with the pride of being a Lumbee, has kept the tribe cohesive with the common goal of knowing that they are Lumbee and knowing that, to the Lumbee, means that they are Indian.

The Benefits of Recognition:
For the Lumbee, full federal recognition will allow their tribe to become more well-known, to be accepted fully as a group of Native Americans who are able to obtain government control for their own people along with receiving many other forms of services for the betterment of the Lumbee. To be judged on whether they "act Indian enough" or how much pure Indian blood runs through the veins of a Lumbee is completely pointless in distinguishing themselves as an Indian group fully deserving recognition. They are a unified group with membership spanning over 40,000 who have their own cultural identity with or without a rich history dating back hundreds of years. They have had to recreate themselves alongside their neighbors, knowing who they are, but struggling against losing the last of their identity. With federal recognition they will be able to finally assert themselves as they've always wanted to do: with as interesting a past as any other, along with a stable and positive present and future, but in their own way, different from the tribes of their peers.

Source:
Blu, Karen I. 1980 The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press