The largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi, based in Pembroke, North Carolina. For more than 130 years the Lumbee have sought full federal recognition, and 29 bills to that effect have been introduced in Congress; eight passed the House but failed in the Senate.
There is no record of the Lumbee having spoken any language other than English. The most plausible explanation for their origins is that the tribe descends from members of multiple groups who fled violence and disease in early encounters with English colonists, retreating to the swamplands of North Carolina and using English as a lingua franca. Outsiders branded them the Siouan, the Tuscarora, the Croatan and the Cherokee Indians of Robeson County. It was not until 1953 that most settled on the name Lumbee.
In 1956 President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Lumbee Act, which recognised the tribe as American Indians but excluded them from federal money and other privileges that most tribes enjoy. Without full recognition the Lumbee cannot access federal Indian health care, put land in a reservation-like trust or build a casino.
The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI), North Carolina's only fully recognised tribe, has been the Lumbee's main adversary, repeatedly arguing they are not real Indians. The rivalry goes back decades. In 1974 John Crowe, the EBCI's then principal chief, threatened Vine Deloria, an Indian activist, saying that many Cherokee wanted to "bury your heart and other assorted pieces of anatomy at Wounded Knee" for his support of Lumbee recognition. The Cherokee object partly because a Lumbee casino on tribal land beside Interstate 95, one of America's busiest highways, would siphon off Cherokee gaming revenues.
In 2024 the House of Representatives passed the Lumbee Fairness Act by 311 to 96, but it stalled in the Senate. Donald Trump signed a memorandum on his third full day in office in January 2025 ordering the secretary of the interior to submit a recognition plan within 90 days. As of June 2025 the Department of the Interior had still not issued its report.
John Lowery is the Lumbee tribal chairman. David Wilkins, a Lumbee member and professor at the University of Richmond, is a historian of the tribe.
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