They say timing is everything and for one state-recognized group, the Lumbee Tribe arrived in the nation’s capital amid a record-breaking shutdown of the U.S. government and a major breakdown in the halls of Congress.

The Lumbees, who are based in North Carolina, have been seeking federal recognition as an Indian tribe for more than a century. But with the executive branch of the federal government out of office for more than a month, one of their biggest champions — Republican President Donald Trump — was nowhere to be found at a long-awaited hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

“We did extend an invitation to the Department of Interior, but due to the ongoing government shutdown, the department declined to testify in person,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

Still, a large contingent of Lumbees showed up at the U.S. Capitol to a changed political atmosphere. With Trump in the White House, a political party that once cried foul when Democratic President Barack Obama first embraced legislative recognition for the “People of the Dark Water” more than 15 years ago, is now fully on board with the effort.

“Just three days into a second term, President Trump made it the official policy of the United States government to support full federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe,” observed Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina).

On January 16, Tillis introduced S.107, the Lumbee Fairness Act, in the U.S. Senate. The bill, which boasts support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, would extend federal recognition to a group that claims to be the largest Indian tribe east of the Mississippi.

Yet barely five months later, Tillis announced he wouldn’t be around much longer. He won’t be running for re-election next year, meaning the current session of Congress represents his last shot at achieving any sort of bipartisan victory for the Lumbees.

“The Lumbee people have waited it long enough,” Tillis said at the hearing. “They don’t ask for special treatment, only fair treatment.”

But while Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), the Democratic vice chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, is a co-sponsor of the Lumbee Fairness Act, the hearing was not smooth sailing for the bill. With the Republican-led Senate still unable to pass its way out of the government shutdown after more than 36 days, the chances of S.107 clearing the chamber on its own are rather slim.

Indeed, ever since the Lumbees began pushing for legislative recognition nearly four decades ago, they have never found success in the Senate. An attorney who has been involved in the effort since 1988 highlighted the failure rate in testimony on Wednesday.

“During this period, the bill passed the House of Representative seven times times but failed in the Senate,” Arlinda Locklear, a Lumbee citizen who serves as special counsel on recognition for the tribe, noted in her written statement to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

However, the Lumbee Fairness Act did not clear the U.S. House of Representatives on its own either. Instead, H.R.474 was added to the “must-pass” National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in September without so much as a hearing in the 119th Congress. [H.R.3838, the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act]

But the Senate, just last month, passed its own version of the NDAA [S.2296] that does not include the Lumbee Fairness Act. So in this era of deep uncertainty, the Lumbees are seeking a major concession in hopes of getting recognition into whatever emerges out of Capitol Hill.

“I’m confident that this year Congress will finally amend this law, this flawed law, and extend the full services benefits that Lumbee deserve,” Chairman John Lowery testified on Wednesday.

The “flawed law” in question is known as the Lumbee Act of 1956. Passed by Congress during the termination era of federal Indian policy, the statute prevents the Lumbees from being treated as a federally recognized tribe and is seen as hindering their efforts to establish a government-to-government relationship with the United States.

“There is no bureaucratic process that can amend what Congress has legislated,” Lowery asserted at the hearing.

But Lowery’s case was soon undermined by his own words and by those of Locklear. Following questioning from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), they acknowledged that the Lumbees can follow the process for federal acknowledgement that has been established at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a process that requires an examination of the group’s history and heritage.

The door for the Lumbees to go through the Office of Federal Acknowledgement (OFA) at the BIA was opened by the Democratic Obama administration. The first Native person to serve as Solicitor at the Department of the Interior (DOI) issued a legal opinion in 2016 that ensured the federal agency could consider a Lumbee petition for federal recognition.

The language of the Lumbee Fairness Act further confirms the existence of such a petition by referring to the Lumbees as having been “designated as petitioner number 65 by the Office of Federal Acknowledgment.” The petition was submitted by the Lumbee people themselves in 1987.

“Chairman Lowery, what’s to stop you?” Cortez Masto asked. “It sounds like you have the support of the [Trump] administration. You have the support of the DOI.  What’s to stop you from going through that process now and getting what you’re seeking, but go through an evidence-based process to address some of the concerns that we’ve heard from the other tribes?”

Lowery was unable to dispute that the Lumbees could have been pursuing the bureaucratic process over the last decade or so. But he said the BIA takes too long to review the claims of groups seeking federal recognition.

“Although there has been changes to the BIA process, we still do not know if it’s going to take 20 to 30 years just like it already does,” Lowery testified. “I don’t want my people waiting another 30 years to go through the process.”

Lowery also feared that a decision by the BIA would end up being challenged in court by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, one of the many tribes that opposes legislative recognition for the Lumbees. Locklear too expressed the same concern — while asserting that the Lumbee petition would be reviewed favorably when examined through standard anthropological, genealogical and historical research methods.

“We have been at this for more than a hundred years now, and I guarantee you that were the tribe to go through the acknowledgement process and succeed — as I am confident we would — there would be a lawsuit filed by the Eastern Band of Cherokee to try to set that administrative agency decision aside,” said Locklear.

No one at the hearing directly asked the Eastern Band, the only federally-recognized tribe in North Carolina, if litigation was in the cards sometime in the future. But Principal Chief Michell Hicks was adamant about the Lumbee petition going through the BIA and even agreed that the federal acknowledgement process can take too long.

“We have supported — openly supported — the expedited approach, you know, for this group to go through this process,” Hicks told the committee.

“We still feel that there is an opportunity to not extend this 20 or 30 years, that it’s something well short of that, to do this evaluation properly and to get the answer that that is being sought in a timely manner,” said Hicks.

Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe also supported an expedited approach to the Lumbees. He cited the experience of the Little Shell Band of Chippewa Indians, whose petition was reviewed by the BIA before Congress ended up taking action by extending federal recognition to the Montana-based tribe through the NDAA in 2019 — a path that was supported by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, as well as by Indian Country at large.

“All we ask is they follow the same path as Little Shell — go through the OFA process,” said Barnes, who also serves as chair of the United Indian Nations of Oklahoma, whose members have already initiated an analysis of the Lumbee petition, uncovering what they say are flaws in the group’s evidence.

Copies of the 1987 Lumbee petition are available at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian National Anthropological Archives. The version held by the Smithsonian is an original that was provided by one of the authors, according to staff at the facility in Suitland, Maryland, located just outside of Washington, D.C.

In her written statement, Locklear paid tribute to that author — a prominent Lumbee attorney named Julian Pierce who was murdered in North Carolina not long after the petition was submitted to the BIA. She also cited the work of other historians and experts that she said established “high evidence of tribal existence” for the Lumbee people — something that Chief Hicks said should be examined before Congress moves forward.

“We do not fear another tribe. I want to make that clear,” Hicks told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. “We fear falsehood becoming federal law.”

“If there is evidence, let it be presented,” Hicks said of the Lumbee claims. “If there is a tribal origin, let the OFA confirm it.”

Although Tillis appeared at the onset of the hearing to show support for the Lumbee Fairness Act, he did not stick around for the rest of the proceeding, which was held in a much larger room in the Senate Dirksen Office Building due to the larger than expected crowd. His office happens to be located across the hall from the hearing room, where he returned once the testimony was complete.

Last year, during the prior session of Congress, Tillis was forced to admit that he has been placing holds on Indian Country legislation, thus preventing tribal bills from becoming law in order to punish those who he said were opponents of the Lumbee Fairness Act. He acknowledged doing so only after a fellow Republican confronted him about his tactics on the Senate floor, shortly before the Thanksgiving break of 2024.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Tillis did not indicate whether he will continue to hold Indian Country bills hostage in order to benefit the Lumbees. But he insisted that he did his “homework” in documenting those who oppose the Lumbee Fairness Act — before once again referring to a prominent Indian lobbyist by the wrong name, something he did repeatedly last year.

“The ship has already sailed, and it’s headed full speed towards Lumbee recognition today,” Tillis said.

The shutdown of the federal government began on October 1, following the inability of Congress to pass legislation to provide appropriations to federal agencies like the BIA. As of Friday, the lapse in appropriations for fiscal year 2026 has lasted 38 days — three days longer than the prior shutdown, which at the time was the longest in history. The prior shutdown also occurred under President Trump’s watch.

Although the Senate has continued to do work since the shutdown on October 1, the Republican-led House has not taken any substantive action since September 19. The Republican leadership in the chamber has refused calls to return to session in Washington, D.C.

Legislative Hearing on S.107, the Lumbee Fairness Act (November 5, 2025)