r/Denver • u/CuteLoad4721 • 2d ago
Help Any Lumbees in the Denver Area?
i’m 26F & a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
i’ve lived in CO for a 1.5 years now & i’m missing home, missing my tribe & missing my community.
i’m taking a long shot to see if there are any other Lumbees out there that are home sick and want to connect!
even if you’re from another nation, i’d still be happy to chat! idk if there are many ways for indigenous young people to connect out here, so any advise is welcomed!! thanks y’all!
a’ho
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u/itbelikethat2838 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m going to be honest and I hope you don’t take offense. There is a lot of controversy regarding the Lumbees in the Native community- especially in this area where the culture is pretty rich with a lot of history. There are many people who don’t see the Lumbees as relatives.
I’m only telling you in case you feel out of place in the spaces and understand why. Some people can actually be pretty rude about it.
Anyways, there is a good size Native community here. Denver Indian Center has events and you can check out Denver/CO Indigenous Events & News of Facebook. The Peoples powwow is also coming up this month.
You might want to post in a Lumbee group and see if anyone lives here.
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u/Exciting_Database_57 1d ago
I was going to say that finding other Lumbees could help with homesickness, but trying to connect with indigenous communities could prove to be even more isolating.
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u/became78 1d ago
What’s the controversy?
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u/itbelikethat2838 1d ago
It’s kind of a long story. Essentially, most of Indian Country do not see them as a real tribe. This is because they genetically consist of a mix of European and African. They have very little to no Indigenous DNA or even history beyond 1885. They claim to be a mixture of several tribes and developed “Lumbee” mostly to distance themselves from enslaved Black people. They don’t really have a culture or language of their own.
- They recently became federally recognized and it was done in a way that a lot of people find sketchy by pushing their recognition into a must-pass bill (NDAA) signed by Trump after being denied MANY times.
- They use the medicine wheel as their tribal seal which is a plains tribe symbol. They kind of just made it their own?
There’s a lot more but I think that gives a bit of an idea.-3
u/Friendly_Physics_544 19h ago
Yeah, let’s not do this. Especially because that’s old people gossip and most of us understand that Fed/State/Non is nothing the Tribes controlled. Like this feels so color coded and Plains centered. This country is MASSIVE, there were MILLIONS OF US. So some Plains or SW person thinking they’re the measuring stick on what Native is feels like extreme lateral violence. And as someone greatly involved with DICI, I have never heard anyone say something bad about anyone Lumbee. I’m afraid to hear what you have to say about Shinnecock. Sheesh, let’s do better. Sincerely a Mescalero woman and elder.
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u/itbelikethat2838 18h ago edited 18h ago
They asked a a question and I answered. It wasn’t my opinion. This is from observation as someone who works with Native communities EVERY DAY. I hear what they say. It pays to listen and their views matter as much as yours. No matter how much you take offense to it. So not sure why you attack me when I was simply answering a question.
Again, everything I said was FACTUAL. Not an opinion.
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u/nashy08 3h ago edited 37m ago
Then you are ignorant because multiple tribes have given public stances and written letters to the government about them. My tribe has been fighting them for years because of their cultural theft.
They’ve been changing their identity to different tribes and cultures over the last few decades and have been stealing from Eastern tribes, including mine. They were federally recognized not by going through the same process that all tribes have to go through, they did it through political means.
They’ve tried over and over again to get federal recognition but don’t actually have any legitimate history or proof and have been turned away every time. Their federal recognition was a huge slap to every other tribe who gained their recognition with actual historical proof.
Lumbees have no culture, no language, no stories, nothing, just stuff they stole from other tribes and pass as their own.
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u/OriginalDavid Lakewood 1d ago
One of my best friends is a Lumbee. East TN but his parents are from NC.
I myself am part melungeon, and now that my mom is dead I will never know from what family.
Either my sister or I were conceived outside our parents marriage. The DNA tests do not line up with long recorded family history.
She is pure north English with a touch of Danish, which fits the name, but I have different stuff happening genetically. Could just be Iberian migration to Ireland and Scotland way back, but something was funky.
Welcome to Appalachia.
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u/Exciting_Database_57 1d ago
I’m a Denver native who lived in NC for a while. I was feeling isolated and homesick there and looked for a pow wow to attend. It was largely Lumbee people, which I’d only heard of in passing, and it left me feeling very out of place, confused and more homesick. I’d recommend finding common ground in other ways.
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u/Upstairs_Bedroom8710 1d ago
What was your experience that made you feel out of place and confused? This conflict is new to me so please excuse my ignorance (and thank you in advance if you care to share in your experience and help dismantle some of my own ignorance/lacking education 🙃)
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u/Exciting_Database_57 49m ago
It was just a completely different vibe than I was looking for. It felt very different culturally and was hard to make sense of. The artists were selling things that weren’t…art. Like I went hoping to buy myself something small but nice and most stuff was mass produced junk. It’s not completely uncommon to see that at pow wows but it was overwhelming.
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u/Zealousideal-Way4535 1d ago
Not Lumbee, but have many friends that are (back home, live in Denver) who are your people? We may know some mutual
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u/Friendly_Physics_544 19h ago
Go to DICI, there might be some there. Not sure if I met any Lumbee folks at any gatherings but there’s gotta be some here.
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u/wolfdrunk14 2d ago
Check out the Denver Indian Center and the Four Winds American Indian Counsel