Cahoon Professor or American History, Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, was recently quoted in The Assembly, a digital magazine launched in 2021 that provides in-depth investigative journalism on North Carolina topics. The piece, “Who’s Your People?,” centers on North Carolina’s Lumbee Tribe and their members’ century-long fight for federal recognition. Dr. Lowery is a member of the Lumbee and author of multiple books on Lumbee history, including The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle (UNC Press, 2018) and Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (UNC Press, 2010). Read an excerpt from the article in The Assembly below, along with the full piece: “Who’s Your People?“

“Despite their prominence in local politics, little seems to be known about the Lumbee’s diverse and mysterious origins. Tribal members trace their ancestry to Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian-speaking nations indigenous to what are now the Carolinas, who were scattered and nearly exterminated by settler colonialism.

“According to Malinda Maynor Lowery, a historian at Emory University, member of the Lumbee tribe, and the author of The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle, refugees of decimated peoples huddled together in the impenetrable Robeson County swamp, where, over time, they intermarried with English- and Gaelic-speaking settlers, as well as Black slaves and freedmen.“