The Lumbee Tribe, or “People of the Dark Water,” as they’re sometimes called in reference to the murky waters of the Lumber River, have embraced a new nickname.
They are “number 575” — the 575th American Indian tribe, and the second in North Carolina, to be fully recognized by the federal government.
The number adorns yard signs in Robeson County — the cultural and governmental center of the Lumbee people — and it appears in bold type on the tribe’s website and outside its giant turtle-shaped headquarters in Pembroke.
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On Dec. 18, President Donald Trump officially made the Lumbee tribe “number 575” when he signed the most recent national defense budget into law. The legislation which granted the Lumbee tribe full recognition was included in the bill as an unrelated measure.
“After decades of waiting, praying, and fighting, our tribe has finally crossed a barrier that once seemed impossible to overcome,” Tribal Chairman John Lowery said in a statement after the bill’s passage.
Since then, Lowery has recorded weekly video updates on what comes next.
The legislation stipulates that federal services may not be administered to the Lumbee tribe until three years from now, providing a long transition period to make necessary administrative changes to meet federal requirements.
The benefits now promised to the more than 56,000 enrolled members include access to specialized grants and health services, increased economic investment and the opportunity to place land into a trust held by the federal government.
The Lumbee people certainly have reason to relish in this moment, even with a long road ahead. The full benefits of recognition are something they’ve advocated for since first being snubbed by the federal government in 1888.
Carolina Public Press spoke with several prominent Lumbee advocates, each unique in their careers but tied together by a shared sense of home, about what achieving federal recognition means to them.
Lumbee attorney’s long fight comes to fruition
In 1988, attorney and tribal law expert Arlinda Locklear testified to Congress in support of federal recognition. She would go on to represent the tribe for decades, suffering failed attempt after failed attempt to get legislation through the Senate.
Seeing that dream become reality was “absolute vindication” for Lumbee authenticity, Locklear told CPP.
“I’ve learned over the years that there’s just a lot of mythology associated with Lumbee, and a lot of ignorance,” she said.
The push for federal recognition faced strong opposition from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who argued that the Lumbee tribe couldn’t prove they were an organized tribe prior to European colonization of North America.
The Lumbee tribe, whose ancestors, historians agree, have had a foothold in Southeastern North Carolina for many years, framed it as an issue of fairness.
“People get distracted, a lot of times, by really unimportant details,” Locklear said, “like how many names the tribe was known by and ‘how did those names come about,’ and ‘what is the aboriginal origin of the tribe?’”
“There are answers to all those questions, but all those questions are also incidental. They’re not core to the Lumbee community or continuity.”
Locklear spent most of her childhood in Charleston, S.C., but spent the summers at her ancestral home in Robeson County. It’s where she’s most comfortable even to this day, she said, long after graduating from Duke Law School and moving to Washington, D.C., to practice law.
“It’s almost a physical reaction, to tell you the truth,” Locklear said when asked what it’s like returning to the land her parents and grandparents were raised on.
“It’s a place where there is a level of caring and a level of protection and a level of space to just be yourself. It doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Legendary coach embraces historical roots
That feeling is certainly relatable to Robeson-native Kelvin Sampson, the University of Houston men’s basketball coach who’s made a Hall-of-Fame-worthy career for himself in 37 seasons of coaching at the Division I level.
“I’m so proud to be a Lumbee,” Sampson told CPP.
He was excited to see federal recognition finally happen, but added that he didn’t need the law to affirm his tribe’s legitimacy.
“The fact is, now we’re recognized for who we’ve always been,” he said.
Sampson gave a subtle tribute to his heritage by wearing custom-made sneakers that featured the Lumbee seal in a recent victory against Central Florida.
Back home, Sampson is a revered athlete who played basketball and baseball at Pembroke State, the college now called UNC Pembroke, which was originally established to serve Lumbee students.
Sampson’s father, a respected basketball coach in his own right, participated in The Battle of Hayes Pond, a 1958 confrontation outside the town of Maxton in which hundreds of armed Lumbee tribe members shut down a Ku Klux Klan rally.
When Sampson thinks back to his childhood, he remembers fondly the stories his parents and other community leaders would tell about those who came before him.
Each year, the tribe stages an outdoor drama about outlaw Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee folk hero famous for waging a years-long conflict against Confederate soldiers and plantation owners before disappearing into the swamp in 1872.
For Sampson, who loved that show as a young man, the story of “The Lowry War” held a greater truth about the generational struggles of his people. In time, The Battle of Hayes Pond was added to the canon of Lumbee history as a proud example of the tribe’s resilience.
“The story of the Lumbee people is about the written history, but also things that, tangibly, we can touch,” Sampson said.
For him, that’s the memories of sitting on an amphitheater lawn to watch the dramatization of the Lowry War. It’s flipping through the pages of the January 1958 edition of LIFE Magazine, which immortalized The Battle of Hayes Pond in which his dad took part.
Professor draws on past to understand present
Mary Ann Jacobs, a professor who chairs the Department of American Indian Studies at UNC Pembroke, said stories such as the ones Sampson grew up with preserve Lumbee identity.
Her parents passed down similar stories to her as a young girl growing up in Chicago. Years later, she’d dedicate her career to educating younger generations of Lumbee students and anyone else interested in the history of American Indians in the Southeastern U.S.
While outsiders might see the push for federal recognition as being about government dollars, political influence or casinos, what’s at the heart of it for Lumbee tribe members, Jacobs said, is a wanting for “legitimacy.”
The ancestors of the Lumbee tribe included refugees from other indigenous tribes who settled in what is now Robeson and surrounding counties, according to Jacobs. That group of outcasts was also known to welcome in non-natives of both African and European descent. Their shared language was English.
Over time, a distinct identity and continuous history grew out of those swamps surrounding the Lumber River.
“I guess it’s troubling to other tribes that we continue to say that we’re Native,” Jacobs said.
“We don’t look like them, our history doesn’t look like theirs, and we don’t speak a language that is wholly different from English.
“But if you don’t want to acknowledge the history that we came out of, then you can’t possibly understand what happened to us — what happened to our ancestors that made the people that we are today.”
Through federal recognition, that history has been acknowledged. However, that is just the beginning, Jacobs said.
What the Lumbee tribe does next to expand its services and fully realize the benefits for enrolled members is what matters most.
Jacobs also emphasized the importance that the federal government, which has a troubled history when it comes to how it’s administered programs like the Indian Health Service, follows through on its obligations.
“It is a starting point,” she said. “It’s getting the door opened.”
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