Kevin A. Thompson | Indigenous Network
The Lumbee Tribe may help swing the state of North Carolina to Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
The former president has been gaining ground in Robeson County, where 44% of the total population is Native American.
Many Lumbee people are devout Christians with a socially conservative bent, and their increasing rejection of the Democratic party is not surprising for many in this part of the Bible Belt. What might be surprising is that the White population of Robeson County is declining, losing 17,638 people from 2010 to 2020.
As Robeson County loses its White population, it is gaining support for Donald Trump. Black voters in Robeson, comprising 22% of the population, are also increasing their support for Trump.
Robeson’s state representative is already a Republican: Jarrod Lowry, an ex-Marine who once served on the Lumbee governing council.
Lowry explained many Lumbee people’s Republican leanings: “We are Christians, we’re very socially conservative, but we’re also working class.”
The loss of local factory jobs in the early 2000s, and Trump’s attacks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), attracted many Lumbee voters to Trump in 2016. Meanwhile, North Carolina as a state grew more Democratic overall, as its large cities attracted newcomers from other, blue regions and states.
Of the estimated 55,000 members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, at least 10,000 live in counties neighboring Robeson. The larger, adjacent Cumberland County has enough Native people be included in the Lumbee Indian Statistical Area, as defined by the US Census Bureau.
There is also a Lumbee University — the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, in Robeson County, while the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association, also headquartered in Robeson, has a membership of seventy congregations.
Lumbee people have built these institutions without recognition by the federal government, and federal recognition as an American Indian Tribe is what Donald Trump promised the Lumbee people when he campaigned in the area in 2020.
If federally recognized, the Lumbee Tribe will become the largest American Indian tribe east of the Mississippi River, and the fourth-largest after the Navajo, Cherokee and Choctaw Nations.
