{"id":14950,"date":"2011-07-17T17:51:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-17T17:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14950"},"modified":"2011-07-17T23:29:20","modified_gmt":"2011-07-17T23:29:20","slug":"robeson-county-native-writes-book-on-lumbee-indians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14950","title":{"rendered":"Robeson County Native Writes Book on Lumbee Indians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robeson County Native Writes Book on Lumbee Indians<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Pilot
\nSouthern Pines, North Carolina
\n2010-06-16<\/p>\n

Kay Grismer<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Native Americans who have lived along the Lumber River<\/a> in Robeson County<\/a> for generations may have been given names to identify their \u201ctribe\u201d\u2014 \u201cCroatan<\/a>,\u201d \u201cCherokee<\/a>,\u201d \u201cSiouan<\/a>\u201d and \u201cLumbee<\/a>\u201d \u2014 but their collective identity as a \u201cPeople\u201d does not come from the \u201coutside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word \u2018People\u2019 acknowledges that Indians have a history and a sense of self that goes back to before the colonial relationships that labeled us as Indian, Native American or Indigenous,\u201d says Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery<\/a>, assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and a Lumbee Indian. \u201cGrowing up, I knew first and foremost that I was part of a People, that I had a family and that my family connected to other families; and that all of these families lived in a place, what for us was a sacred homeland: the land along the Lumber River in Robeson County. Kinship and place are the foundational layer of Indian identity in Robeson County.\u201d<\/p>\n

This identity as a People has been tested repeatedly over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndian people are burdened with defending their identity more often and more extensively than any other ethnic group in America,\u201d says historian Alexandra Harmon.<\/p>\n

This is especially true for the 50,000 Lumbees, the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River<\/a>, who have had to struggle for recognition and acceptance.<\/p>\n

During the years between 1885 and 1956, Robeson County Indians adopted different names, \u201cnot because they didn\u2019t know who they were or what constituted their identity,\u201d Lowery says, \u201cbut because federal and state officials kept changing their criteria for authenticity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowery will discuss the evolution of the Lumbee Indians Thursday, June 17, at 4 p.m. at The Country Bookshop in downtown Southern Pines, when she presents her book, \u201cLumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity and the Making of a Nation<\/a>.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…In a segregated society where white supremacists had the power to reclassify Indians as \u201ccolored,\u201d Indians began to distance themselves from both blacks and whites. White supremacy demanded that Indians avoid blacks both politically and socially and deny inclusion to community members who might possess African ancestry.<\/p>\n

\u201cExcluding blacks from their community may have preserved some autonomy, but it sometimes required Indian leaders to forswear their own kin ties and the value they placed on family,\u201d Lowery adds. \u201cThis process of adopting segregation to affirm their distinctiveness results in an additional layer of identity for Indians who had previously thought of themselves as a People. They began to express their intentions as a race and as a tribe.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robeson County Native Writes Book on Lumbee Indians The Pilot Southern Pines, North Carolina 2010-06-16 Kay Grismer \u201cWhat\u2019s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.\u201d The Native Americans who have lived along the Lumber River in Robeson County for generations may have been given names […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,3015,20],"tags":[6900,5029,5030,1616,879],"class_list":["post-14950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-kay-grismer","tag-malinda-lowery","tag-malinda-m-lowery","tag-malinda-maynor-lowery","tag-north-carolina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}