The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle

FAIN: FZ-231501-15

Malinda Maynor Lowery
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)

A book-length exploration of the importance of Native peoples in American history, and in particular how the history of the largest Indian tribe east of the Mississippi spotlights the struggle to reconcile religious and cultural differences within our own borders and in engagements all over the globe.

"The Lumbee Indians, An American Struggle" explores the integral place of Native people, specifically the Lumbees, to the narratives of American history and how Native stories change the American past that we think we know. The Lumbees are the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi and the ninth largest in the nation. With Lumbees at the center of U.S. and Southern history, those narratives become even more dramatic, intense, and compelling. The Lumbee story is in many ways a microcosm of the Southern United States; its moments of crisis offer constant surprises even to those who are familiar with the region's ambiguous power dynamics. The manuscript is currently under advance contract with the University of North Carolina Press.

Media Coverage

Lumbee Indians and the Wider Native American Experience- Part 2 (Media Coverage)
Publication: Wide Angle, Arlington Community Media
Date: 7/3/2018
Abstract: This video features discussion of the Lumbee and Native American Experience. This video was created in coordination with Arlington Community Media, Inc. in Arlington, MA. ACMi is dedicated to providing an electronic forum for the free exchange of information and ideas which reflect the talents, skills, interests, concerns, and diversity of the Arlington, Massachusetts community.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN16iASA2mM&t=259s

Lumbee Indians and the Wider Native American Experience: Part One with Peter Bermudes (Review)
Publication: Wide Angle: Arlington Community Media
Date: 6/28/2018
Abstract: Joining host Peter Bermudes for a special two-part conversation about the Native American experience is Professor Malinda Maynor Lowery, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as the director of the Center for the Study of the American South.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPqDliU8ggk

Lumbee Scholar And Filmmaker Malinda Maynor Lowery Explores "What Makes A 'Real Indian'" (Review)
Author(s): ANITA RAO & FRANK STASIO
Publication: WUNC
Date: 12/5/2016
Abstract: Malinda Maynor Lowery is a Lumbee Indian whose family goes back more than 10 generations in Robeson County. Lowery was born in Lumberton, N.C. but raised in Durham, where from an early age, she often fielded the question, “what are you?” Although she grew up in a family with a strong sense of Native identity, this question stayed with her much of her life, and eventually became the subject of much of her academic and documentary work.
URL: https://www.wunc.org/post/lumbee-scholar-and-filmmaker-malinda-maynor-lowery-explores-what-makes-real-indian

The Last Word with Abigail Adler (Media Coverage)
Date: 12/11/2021
URL: https://thelastword.libsyn.com/the-last-word-september-5-2018

The Lumbee Tribe's Long Fight for Self-Determination (Media Coverage)
Publication: The State of Things
Date: 12/11/2021
URL: https://www.wunc.org/show/the-state-of-things/2018-09-07/lumbee-scholar-traces-tribes-long-fight-for-self-determination

Associated Products

The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle (Book)
Title: The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle
Author: Malinda Maynor Lowery
Abstract: Jamestown, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and Plymouth Rock are central to America's mythic origin stories. Then, we are told, the main characters--the "friendly" Native Americans who met the settlers--disappeared. But the history of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina demands that we tell a different story. As the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the country, the Lumbees have survived in their original homelands, maintaining a distinct identity as Indians in a biracial South. In this passionately written, sweeping work of history, Malinda Maynor Lowery narrates the Lumbees' extraordinary story as never before. The Lumbees' journey as a people sheds new light on America's defining moments, from the first encounters with Europeans to the present day. How and why did the Lumbees both fight to establish the United States and resist the encroachments of its government? How have they not just survived, but thrived, through Civil War, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and the war on drugs, to ultimately establish their own constitutional government in the twenty-first century? Their fight for full federal acknowledgment continues to this day, while the Lumbee people's struggle for justice and self-determination continues to transform our view of the American experience. Readers of this book will never see Native American history the same way.
Year: 2018
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-1469646374
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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