Two articles shed light on NC's Tuscaroras' plight. One from Eastern Cherokee Chief Sneed and one from Donnie Red Hawk McDowell
With elections come the issues needing to be addressed, but issues without proper representation do not even get inside the debate. According to NC Tuscarora Donnie Red Hawk McDowell, that makes them "invisible."
North Carolina's Tuscaroras are the most oppressed marginalized group of Natives in America today. I know, because, for one thing, I have lived near them for over 30 years and did not know of their plight until I recently met them during an investigation.
There are only four to five thousand verified NC Tuscaroras and there are over 60,000 people claiming to be Lumbee "Indians" in the same area. The large group dominates the area and keeps the people oppressed.
Many nearby attorneys and social justice advocacy groups will not assist the NC Tuscaroras because the Lumbee are too large and have either used their services prior or have intimidated them.
The only chance NC Tuscaroras have at becoming widely known is for plain ordinary people to share their story and speak up. The more who know, the more likely it is for them to get assistance.
North Carolina's Eastern Band of Cherokee's Chief Richard Sneed recently shared that the Lumbee need to be quieted once and for all:
Tis the season when politicians of all stripes make desperate promises to get votes, but the pandering has reached new levels with the embrace of legislation to extend federal recognition to the Lumbee in North Carolina. The Lumbee have failed to attain federal acknowledgment as a tribe for over a century for good reason--they fail to meet the standards for federal recognition at every level. Despite false claims of association with four different tribes over the years, they have no language, no provable connection with any historic tribe and have opposed measures to genealogically verify Native ancestry of the group of people they call “members.” Yet, they’ve continued to cloak themselves in tribal identities that don’t belong to them, including Cherokee, and appropriated cultural practices from other tribes to seem more ‘Indian.’
It’s time to put an end to this charade. History and facts must guide the process, not politics. The purpose of federal recognition is to empower authentic Native peoples to protect and preserve their culture and identity, not to grant federal endorsement to large-scale cultural identity theft. Doing so would open the floodgates for hundreds of other groups of people claiming to be tribes to follow the same corrupt political path blazed by the Lumbee.
Before the Congress spends a billion dollars to allow the Lumbee to circumvent the federal acknowledgment process at the Department of the Interior, it should listen to the voices of legitimate tribes that understand these issues. - Chief Richard Sneed
North Carolina Tuscarora Donnie Red Hawk McDowell shared his view:
Are the members of the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina invisible to the presidential candidates of the United States?
Recent discussions on the acknowledgment of Native American Tribes in NC have made their way into the 2020 presidential election. However, this discussion did not include the broken treaties of the Tuscarora Nation or the Tuscarora People. The Tuscarora Nation is an aboriginal Carolina tribe that has inhabited the Southeast for thousands of years.
The permanent settlement of English colonists in the early 1700s led to the Tuscarora Wars, which resulted in the signing of multiple Tuscarora treaties. The treaties of 1711 with Virginia and the treaties of 1712 and 1714 with North Carolina formally acknowledged the Tuscarora Nation as a sovereign and separate government.
While the colonial wars fractionalized the Tuscarora Nation, bands of the Nation remain and thrive in Robeson County. Although the treaties have been broken for over three centuries, the Tuscarora Nation stands resilient in the face of endless paper and historical genocide. Many political and presidential candidates seem unaware of the presence of the Tuscarora Nation and their place in NC history.
The Tuscarora Nation has received no assistance from local or national departments during the onset of the natural disasters and the world-wide pandemic we are currently experiencing. The reaffirmation of these treaty rights by local and national leaders would help the Tuscarora recover from COVID-19 and address centuries of injustice. - Donnie “Red Hawk” McDowell
Read the good, the bad and the ugly facts in a fast-paced storyline in The Exsanguination of the Second Society: Scholarly Historical Fiction Relating to Robeson County, North Carolina's Tuscaroras.
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