Donald Trump Makes New Promise to Native American Tribe

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee, made a bold campaign promise to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina during a rally on Saturday, vowing to grant them federal recognition if he’s reelected in November.

Speaking at the Aero Center near Wilmington International Airport in North Carolina, the former president addressed a crowd of supporters, including John Cummings, a Lumbee Tribe member and Robeson County board commissioner.

“The Lumbee Tribe has been wrongfully denied federal recognition for more than a century,” Trump declared. “But now we’re going to take care of it. We’ll take care of it right at the beginning.”

The Lumbee Tribe, with a rich history dating back hundreds of years, has long sought federal recognition, according to its official site. In 1956, Congress acknowledged the Lumbee as a Native American tribe but denied them the federal benefits typically associated with such recognition. The tribe’s ancestral homeland lies in southeastern North Carolina, along the Lumbee River.

Federal recognition would potentially open doors to various benefits and protections for the tribe, including access to federal funding for education, health care, and economic development.

Trump criticized the Biden administration’s handling of Native American issues, saying, “They have not been treated properly by this administration as we know.” The former president also accused former President Barack Obama of not providing solutions for issues faced by the Lumbee Tribe.

“[President Joe] Biden and Obama promised to remedy that,” Trump said. “They wanted to remedy the injustice, but they never did it. They broke their promise.”

Newsweek contacted a Biden spokesperson via email and the Lumbee Tribe via online form on Saturday for comment.

However, Trump’s promise comes against a backdrop of criticism from Native American advocates and Democratic lawmakers regarding his administration’s past actions towards tribal communities.

Former Senator Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat who was vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, previously accused the Trump administration in 2020 of “actively undermining Tribal sovereignty” and “mishandling a once-in-a-century pandemic that is disproportionately hurting Native communities,” in a released memo, fact-checking “the Trump administration attempt to re-write its Native American Record, False Promises to Tribes.”

The memo pointed to the Trump administration’s past attempts to exclude tribal businesses from COVID-19 relief funds, proposals to cut funding for Native education programs, and efforts to open sacred lands to resource exploitation. The Trump administration has also faced backlash for its stance on the Affordable Care Act, which tribal leaders have described as a critical lifeline for Native communities to access health care.

Further scrutiny of the Trump administration’s record on Native American issues reveals additional controversies. In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, the Bureau of Indian Affairs informed the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe that its reservation would be disestablished and its lands taken out of trust, a move reminiscent of the widely criticized Termination Era policies in the ’50s and ’60s. The Trump administration was also accused of making it more difficult for tribes to rebuild their homelands through new guidance on taking land into trust.

Environmental concerns have also been at the forefront of criticisms. Despite protests from the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Trump administration proceeded with the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, reportedly destroying sacred and burial sites on tribal ancestral homelands. Similarly, attempts to open land surrounding Chaco Canyon, a World Heritage Site and ancestral home to Southwest tribes, to oil and natural gas exploration have met with strong opposition from Native communities and their allies in Congress.

The Trump administration’s handling of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis has also been a point of contention. While Trump signed executive orders addressing the issue in his third year in office, critics say these actions came years after bipartisan efforts in the Senate had already been working to address the crisis.

Newsweek has also contacted Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung via email on Saturday for comment.

Despite these sharp criticisms, Trump’s promise of federal recognition resonates with many Lumbee tribal members who attended his rally and have long awaited this status from the government.

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