Former President Trump said during a campaign event in North Carolina on Saturday that he would recognize the Lumbee Tribe if he was elected for a second term.
“The Lumbee Tribe has been wrongfully denied federal recognition for more than a century,” Trump said while campaigning in Wilmington, N.C., suggesting 100 years wasn’t “that long.”
Still, Trump vowed, “we’ll take care of it right at the beginning.”
“Today, I’m officially announcing that if I am elected in November, I will sign legislation granting the great Lumbee Tribe the federal recognition that it deserves,” he added.
The Lumbee Tribe has been recognized in North Carolina since 1885, and the Indigenous tribe was formally recognized by Congress in 1956. Yet the Lumbee Act that was passed in Congress failed to extend federal benefits to the Lumbee Tribe akin to those extended to other federally recognized tribes.
Members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation have introduced legislation in an effort to remedy that, though some Indigenous tribes are opposed to recognizing the Lumbee Tribe.
Nine Indigenous tribes issued a letter to senators in 2022 arguing that often “groups seeking federal acknowledgment claim tribal identities that do not belong to them. Even more often, the people claiming to be descendants of known historic tribes cannot demonstrate tribal ancestry, or any Native ancestry at all,” according to The News & Observer.
There are 574 tribes that have been federally recognized, while there are several hundred that are not recognized.
