“If You Are Not at the Table, You Are on the Menu”: Lumbee Government Strategies under State Recognition

State recognition of Indigenous nations is a viable, although often overlooked, tool to assert sovereignty. State-recognized Indigenous peoples have persevered to exercise governing authority despite the inability to establish a direct relationship with the federal government. The strategies of self-governance often require nations to build relationships and institutions necessary to exercise their inherent sovereignty. Analysis of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina illuminates how a state-recognized community has developed successful strategies outside of federal recognition to operate as a nation. Lumbees—individual citizens and formal leadership—have continually contested spatial boundaries, established a seat at the decision-making table, and extended national Indigenous political interest into the state arena to assert their right to self-determine by engaging state (and at certain times federal) politics to address needs within their communities. State-recognized Indigenous peoples are actively shaping significant political relationships with states and other entities (such as local courts, school boards, and governments) to govern outside of the federal acknowledgment framework and to act as sovereigns.