Anisa Khalifa: In January, President Donald Trump entered office and immediately began signing a deluge of executive documents. There were 200 executive actions, memoranda and proclamations on the first day alone…
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Unidentified Anchor: President Trump was sworn into office earlier today, and has now signed a series…
Unidentified Anchor: …with a barrage of executive actions rolling back the policies…
Unidentified Anchor:…executive order today aimed at scaling back…
Anisa Khalifa: Buried somewhere in one of those stacks was a memo that highlighted a surprising connection between the president and the members of a Native American tribe. And its contents sent shockwaves through their homeland in eastern North Carolina.
John Lowery: This is definitely a giant leap forward for us as a people.
Anisa Khalifa: I’m Anisa Khalifa. This is the Broadside, where we tell stories from our home at the crossroads of the South. This week, how a campaign promise kept is firing up one of the largest tribes in the country… and renewing centuries old questions about who gets to be Native in America.
Sarah Nagem: I am Sarah Nagem, editor of the Border Belt Independent.  We are a digital non profit news organization in southeastern North Carolina.
Anisa Khalifa: We reached out to Sarah to help explain one of the oldest and most complicated political fights in Washington, DC. Well, she did her best…
Sarah Nagem:  If I could explain things that happened in Washington…
Anisa Khalifa: Right? I mean, obviously, we don't know. But if you have any thoughts to share about it.
The issue involves the Lumbee — a Native American tribe with nearly 60,000 members living mostly in eastern North Carolina — and their ongoing push for full federal recognition. So I mean this can be a really opaque process. How does a tribe actually get federal recognition?
Sarah Nagem:  It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of money. The money involved is phenomenal in terms of lobbying Congress. In terms of time, you sort of have to meet this, these criteria. Uh, there's all sorts of paperwork you, you have to submit. It is a very lengthy process that can go on for years and years and years.
Anisa Khalifa: Sarah isn’t exaggerating. The Lumbee Tribe has been trying to gain full recognition for 136 years. But one of the biggest developments in that long struggle comes from North Carolina’s fairly recent status as a battleground political state.
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Unidentified Anchor: The Lumbee Tribe traditionally voted Democrat. Then Donald Trump came along in 2016 and it all changed. He promised full federal recognition but didn't follow through. So did Joe Biden. And now Trump and Kamala Harris are making the promise again this year.
SARAH NAGEM:  The Republican National Convention opened a, an office in Pembroke where the Lumbee headquarters is located in 2022, the, the goal was to sort of build on the momentum of the shift toward Republican candidates.
Anisa Khalifa: And that early outreach worked. The tribe’s home region, which used to be a democratic stronghold, voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2024 — helping his campaign win the state. Now, the story could have ended there. But then, during Trump’s first week in office, came the memo.
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Unidentified Official: …federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina…
Donald Trump: Oh, I love the Lumbee Tribe. So this is the first big step, right?
Unidentified Official: This would be a huge step for them, sir.
Donald Trump: Yeah, they were with me all the way, they were great. North Carolina, Lumbee Tribe.
Anisa Khalifa: President Trump signed a memorandum recommending federal recognition for the Lumbee to the Department of the Interior. What does this actually mean for the tribe?
Sarah Nagem:  It's it's exciting, right? You know, no president had done that before. At its heart, what does it mean? Not a whole lot.  But it does direct the Secretary of the Interior to submit a plan within 90 days outlining the potential paths to full federal recognition for the Lumbee.
Anisa Khalifa: According to Sarah, that could include approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs or a federal court decision. But she says those pathways were abandoned by the Lumbee a long time ago. And that’s because of one small problem.
Sarah Nagem:  Yeah, well, the main barrier is the Lumbee Act of 1956, which says, you know, you cannot have full federal recognition.
Anisa Khalifa: If you’re confused right now, that’s understandable. Because the Lumbee were actually recognized by the federal government in 1956. But that bill — which said they were in fact a tribe — also prohibited them from receiving federal benefits. A sort of partial recognition, you could say. So why would Congress do that? Well, it all comes down to the timing…
John Lowery: The 1950s, Was the era of, uh, Indian termination. So it was actually the policy of the United States government to, as it was stated, to get out of the Indian business.
Anisa Khalifa: This is John Lowery, chairman of the Lumbee Tribe. The termination era he’s referring to was from 1953 to 1968. During this period, the US government encouraged Native Americans to leave reservations and pushed an agenda of assimilation. To speed up that process, many tribes were terminated — which means that they had their federal recognition revoked.
John Lowery: So during this time of upheaval with regards to tribal policy, the Lumbee were recognized. Uh, but at the same time, because it was the era of termination, it said, yes, you are a tribe, we do recognize you, you are who you are, uh, but you're not — ineligible to services and benefits that other tribes are. And since 1956, we've been in this, uh, what we call a legal limbo.
Anisa Khalifa: And this isn’t a small matter for the tribe. At stake are potentially tens of millions of federal dollars for services like education, health care and transportation. And according to Chairman Lowery, there’s likely only one realistic path forward.
John Lowery:  Very little can change without an act of Congress. And the reason being is because Congress passed the Lumbee Act in 1956. And Congress states that we cannot receive any services or benefits. So only Congress can undo what Congress has done.
Anisa Khalifa: Which brings us back to the president’s memorandum.
John Lowery:  We have had other, you know, presidential candidates and presidents to say that they have supported us. And, uh, you know, and have said all the right things. And what we saw with President Trump's memo is a step that no other president has taken. Um, and so this is definitely a giant leap forward for us as a people. And it is now, uh, according to the president of the United States, the United States policy that the Lumbee will receive our full federal recognition.
Anisa Khalifa: And while he acknowledges that the potential windfall of funding could transform his community, Chairman Lowery says that for his people, full recognition has a much deeper meaning.
John Lowery:  You know, I tell people this. As Native people, we are the minority of the minority. And for us just to be here shows just how strong and just how resilient our ancestors were. And, you know, when you're the minority of the minority, uh, in a nation like America, you get overlooked, you, you are forgotten about, you know, what your ancestors went through is forgotten about. And so, this step, uh, is to me is, is the United States acknowledging our ancestors, uh, is the United States saying, you know, you have not been forgotten. It is a way for us to understand that the struggles of those who've come before us were not in vain.
Anisa Khalifa: For now, Chairman John Lowery, like many Lumbee, is cautiously optimistic. But that hope in his voice, hides an ironic reality. One that journalist Sarah Nagem says is at the center of this fight and that of hundreds of other unrecognized tribes in the United States.
Sarah Nagem:  I think it's easy to look at this whole situation and see the design flaws, right? We are a country where Native Americans had been here for thousands of years and pushed out by European colonizers. Um, and now it's the US government where only four members of congress are Native American who are deciding who gets to be Indian enough to get federal benefits. And again, it’s easy to look at that and say hmm, something is wrong here.
Anisa Khalifa: Coming up after a break, we speak to the woman who literally wrote the book on Who Gets to Be Native in America. And find out why this is all so confusing.
Over 9 million people claimed Native identity in the last US census. Only 2 million of those people are enrolled in a tribe. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribes. The other 400 or so are not. But some are recognized by their states. And all of that adds up to a lot of thorny questions around who belongs to a tribe — and who decides who’s Indian enough. I certainly don't know. So I asked an expert.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: My name is Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz. I am an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina. Uh, and I am an associate professor at the university of Iowa, where I also run the Native Policy Lab.
Anisa Khalifa: Carrie is the author of a book called The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America, where she explores the contradictions and complexities of Native identity. She says that all these systems of categorization and membership for Native people are a relatively new concept.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: You know, the idea of becoming a member of a tribe, uh, wasn't a Native construct. Native tribes didn't have membership cards 200 years ago, right?
Anisa Khalifa: The whole thing has its roots in a piece of legislation passed in 1887 called the Dawes Act. In it, Congress said that reservation land, that had been communally held by tribes, should be redistributed into individual allotments. They wanted Native Americans to homestead like white farmers.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: And in order to do that, The federal government had to determine who was eligible for one of these plots. And so the ideas around enrollment, uh, tribal rolls, membership, and that sort of thing really. picked up steam during that phase of policy. The goal really was assimilation, right? And so it was meant to get rid of the power of tribes. The idea was that individual Native people would look to the federal government, the US government.
Anisa Khalifa: But the last hundred years have been… all over the map. Which is partly why there are so many self-identifying Native Americans today and so few with tribal membership.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: One of the things you have to remember is that phases of federal Indian policy almost seem like a ping pong match. They're going back and forth, two ends of an extreme. One of those flip flops that happened was between the early 1960s and into the 1980s, um, the federal government sort of flip flopped between the idea of terminating tribes to this idea of self governance. and as that was happening, you had a lot of tribes that had been terminated from the federal rolls, and the federal government did not just automatically reinstate them.
Anisa Khalifa: You're a member of the Lumbee tribe. Can you tell us about your people? Who are the Lumbee?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: The name Lumbee um, was really sort of codified in the 1950s, but regardless of what people have called us over the years, we have existed for a long, long time. There are archaeological records going back thousands of years, uh, in the Pembroke area, in particular in Robeson County. It was the coming together of different coastal tribes along with white people and Black people. And so we're sort of this amalgamation of people who were escaping colonization in really significant ways. More recently, some of the things that I was always taught growing up that we had a lot of pride around, um, you know, the Lumbee have this storied history of justice thinking about justice. We fought the KKK. I mean, that's one of — the Battle of Hayes Pond, you know, thinking about all of the things you're taught as a Lumbee child growing up about what, uh, what makes us proud.
At the same time, I will say sort of on the more pragmatic side of things. One of the things that. I'm very proud of, uh, as it relates to sort of being Lumbee and what we've managed to do is even without full federal recognition, we have managed to do a lot of things, right? We have a great headquarters building. We do have elements of governance. We have things that have been put into place that have really helped support this idea of sovereignty and really help support this idea of, how do you support your people. Right. Despite not having the same levels of federal support that other recognized tribes do.
Anisa Khalifa: So here in North Carolina, there are 8 state recognized tribes. But only one is fully recognized by the federal government. The Eastern band of Cherokee Indians. They have traditionally been opposed to full federal recognition for the Lumbee. Why is that? And what does it say about the way the system is set up?
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: You know, I think that there have been some other tribes that have been very vocal on their opposition to Lumbee recognition and. Look, it's their right to do that. I do think that the system is not set up for all of us to succeed, right? So one of the biggest challenges with, uh, federal support in Indian country is that the amount of money that the federal government has allocated toward Native tribes has not increased in decades, right. And so one of the things that becomes challenging is that as each newly recognized tribe comes into the fold, the pot of money doesn't grow, other people's slice of the pot just gets smaller. And that's a really difficult reality to face.
Anisa Khalifa: So coming back to this present moment. Last week, President Trump signed a memorandum recommending federal recognition of the Lumbee to the Department of the Interior.  Do you think that the recent developments we've seen might have ramifications beyond the Lumbee tribe? I know there are hundreds of unrecognized tribes in the United States.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz:  The Lumbee are in a very unique position because we have this historical legislation that granted us that first part of the recognition, which is yes, you are an Indian tribe. You know, I, I think that yes, it may have some impact, but probably it won't have much. I think what it has done though, and has the potential to do is point the spotlight at this issue, right? I would say that the vast majority of people who I talk to across the country and, and through my work, they don't understand federal recognition and the effect it has on tribes. And I think that the more that we can start to inform people about sort of what this all means and the injustices surrounding it, and you know why it's important. I think that that does nothing but help.
Anisa Khalifa: And in the same week of this memorandum, Trump also gave an executive order to change the name of the mountain Denali, um, back to Mount McKinley, which reverses that 2015 name change that gave that mountain an indigenous Alaskan name. What do you make of this seemingly contradictory set of, you know, high profile actions by the president that happened so close together.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: It is a little bit of whiplash, right? When you look at if you lined up all of the different memos and executive orders, um, that have a deep and significant impact on Indian country a lot of them contradict each other, right? Um, and so I think that is hard to navigate. And at the same time, it's not unique for us. The idea of thinking that something really positive is happening and then having something negative happen at the same time, um, you know, that's something that we've, we've dealt with for hundreds of years.
Anisa Khalifa: And ultimately, it’s a pretty good metaphor for what it means to be a Native American, where arcane, confusing and often dehumanizing federal policies collide with deeply personal feelings of identity.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: I think that In part, it goes back to this idea of belonging and feeling like you're part of something, right? When I started writing my book, The Indian Card, and thinking about Native identity, one of the things that inspired that book was the idea that I carry this card around in my wallet, right? So my Lumbee enrollment card, it looks just like a driver's license. Um, and it's something that sort of tangibly says, I am a member of this tribe. And I try not to minimize the importance of that because I think that on the one hand, you could say, well, it's just a card and who needs a card to know who they are on the other hand. I do think it actually is important. Right?
And so, you know, I think that some of these federal structures that have been set up around recognition and all that there are absolutely. Challenges with those structures that need to be fixed and should be made sort of more just and equitable. But at the same time, I think that receiving that federal recognition, it sort of does the same thing that receiving your enrollment card does, which is it provides this layer of proof. This deeper sense of I belong. I belong here and we belong here.
Anisa Khalifa: Thank you so much for this. Carrie. This was wonderful.
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Anisa Khalifa: Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz's book The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America is out now and getting rave reviews. If you’d like to follow Sarah Nagem’s work at the Border Belt Independent, we’ve dropped a link to their site in the show notes. Special thanks this week goes out to ¼ª²ÊÍøÍøվ’s Will Michaels who shared tape from his interview with John Lowery.
This episode of The Broadside was produced by me, Anisa Khalifa, and our editor Jerad Walker. Charlie Shelton-Ormond also helps produce the show. Wilson Sayre is our executive producer. The Broadside is a production of ¼ª²ÊÍøÍøվ–North Carolina Public Radio and is part of the NPR Network. If you have feedback or a story idea, you can email us at broadside@wunc.org. And if you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or share it with a friend! Thanks for listening y'all. We'll be back next week.