Senate bill would give Lumbees full recognition and millions of dollars

The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is trying again to persuade Congress to give its people millions of dollars in federal benefits that other American Indian tribes receive.

Similar efforts have failed for decades, in part because of opposition from other tribes that fear their benefits would be reduced in order to provide for the Lumbees. But U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina introduced a new Lumbee recognition bill and, with Lumbee Tribal Chairman Harvey Godwin, presented it Wednesday to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

“We will use full federal recognition to create an atmosphere for economic development in rural southeastern North Carolina,” Godwin testified to the committee.

“Your support of this bill is a strategic investment in the Lumbee people and our neighbors,” Godwin said. “It will become an example of how bringing justice also empowers our tribe to develop a sovereign, self-determined, broad-based economy that will improve our quality of life and that of the region in which we reside.”

The committee did not vote the bill. It could at a later date.

U.S. Reps. Robert Pittenger, Richard Hudson and G.K Butterfield have also signed a letter in support of the Lumbees’ request.

American Indian tribes receive various federal benefits. But they can’t get these benefits unless the federal government formally recognizes their status as a Native American tribe. Congress recognized the Lumbees with a federal law in 1956. However, that law has a clause that specifically prohibits the Lumbees from receiving the benefits given to other recognized tribes.

Burr’s bill would delete that prohibition and grant the Lumbees recognition as is provided to other tribes. The benefits would be channeled to Robeson, Scotland, Hoke and Cumberland counties, where tens of thousands of Lumbees live. Further, Burr’s bill would allow the tribe to have gambling from bingo-type games to casinos, which have been lucrative for other tribes such as the Cherokees in the North Carolina mountains.

The Lumbees, whose tribal government is based in Robeson County, are the largest American Indian tribe east of the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 Census the tribe had nearly 74,000 members nationwide.

Although the Lumbees have been denied traditional benefits given to Native American tribes, they have qualified for other federal money, such as Department of Housing and Urban Development grants to help low-income residents obtain housing or repair their homes.

But the tribe has gotten in trouble over the years with HUD for misusing the grant money, and those missteps have been seen as obstacles to the tribe’s efforts to get full federal recognition.