2025 A Look Back: Quid Pro Quo award
Donald Trump.
File photo
President Donald Trump is not typically seen as a friend to Indian Country. His ICE and border patrol agents have made headlines for targeting Indigenous people in deportation raids and refusing to accept enrollment cards as a valid form of citizenship. He changed Denali National Park — “a word from Alaskan Native Tribes that means ‘the high one’ in the Athabascan language” — back to Mt. McKinley. His cuts to federal programs have harmed tribes receiving Bureau of Indian Affairs funding nationwide.
But on the campaign trail in 2024, Trump pledged to grant the Lumbee — a mixed-race population of over 55,000 that traces its ancestry to intermarried survivors of various tribes and members of the Lost Colony — federal recognition as president. Though then-Vice President Kamala Harris ran with the same promise, the Lumbee thoroughly showed up for now-president Trump, who won the historically Democratic Robeson County with 63.3% of the vote. This unprecedented turnout likely helped Trump win the swing state of North Carolina.
And Trump kept his campaign promise with the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act in mid-December, which included a bill granting the group federal recognition that had previously failed to pass.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, however, have long opposed Lumbee sovereignty due to what Principal Chief Michell Hicks said are “shifting claims” of identity and heritage.
Furthermore, he called Trump’s granting of federal recognition a “political decision,” not one based in genealogy, documentation or evidence of heritage.
Indeed, the Lumbee have most recently pursued federal status through political allyship and connection.
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A Bloomberg article reported that lobbying firm Checkmate Government Relations, headed by Ches McDowell — brother of Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) and “hunting pal of Donald Trump Jr.” — took on the Lumbee’s bid for recognition pro bono.
In September, Lumbee Chief John Lowery claimed that Tiffany Trump had Lumbee heritage through her mother, Marla Maples.
So, while there’s a lot of talk about whether the Lumbee ‘should’ be recognized, one thing is clear: powerful political connections helped secure its win.
