Should one group have to follow a different set of rules than all the others? The United States Senate is wrestling with that very question. Is this a question of fairness?
The US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing. Again. This one was about the Lumbee Fairness Act.
The question seemed simple enough. Should Congress grant federal recognition to the Lumbee group in North Carolina, and let them skip the same grueling, evidence-based process every Native Nation has faced?
Well, cue the senators.
James Lankford said it plain. “Why would we create a different standard for one group than we have for every other tribe?” It’s a fair point. There is, after all, a process.
Lisa Murkowski sounded the same note. Going around the established system, she said, undermines the whole thing.
And that system? It’s the Department of the Interior’s minefield. It means years of documenting a continuous community and political authority. It’s brutal, but it’s the rulebook they made up. Those rules may or may not be a way to make Indigenous peoples prove a history older than the government that is making them prove it. Did I write prove too much? I wrote prove too much.
Then leaders from Nations who actually ran that gauntlet spoke up. Michell Hicks of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians said there’s a “proper way to do this.” Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe said it’s about protecting a process all recognized Native Nations had to meet.
Lumbee Chairman John Lowery had a different view. He pointed to the 1956 Lumbee Act. That’s the law, he argued, that locked the administrative door in the first place. It recognized them in name but blocked them from benefits. His line was clear: “Only Congress can fix what Congress broke.”
The bill’s sponsor, Thom Tillis, took another tack. He suggested it was all about money for the opposing tribes. A bold claim. He didn’t offer any evidence for it, which is something, especially when you consider the well-documented underfunding that plagues every Indigenous Nation already in the system.
So in the end, there was no vote. Just the same old question hanging in the air. Do the rules apply to everyone, or is the United States just writing exceptions now?
Like The RZA says the saga, as always, continues. Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang…
