The Lumbee Problem

How does a group of people who have American Indian ancestry but no records of treaties, reservations, Native language, or peculiarly "Indian" customs come to be accepted-socially and legally-as Indians? To discover how this unlikely transition has been made by the Lumbee Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina, is Karen I. Blu's object in this book, a penetrating inquiry into the makeup of the Lumbee as a people as well as a revealing look at the shaping of Indian-and group-identity in general.The Lumbee Problem traces the political and legal history of the Indians of Robeson County, arguing that Lumbee political activities have been powerfully affected by the interplay between their own and others' conceptions of who they are. The book offers insights into the workings of racial ideology and practice in both the past and the present South-and particularly into the nature of Indianness as it is widely experienced among nonreservation Southeastern Indians. Race and ethnicity, as concepts and as elements guiding action, are seen to be at the heart of the matter. By exploring these issues and their implications as they are worked out in the United States, Blu brings much-needed clarity to the question of how such concepts are-or should be-applied across real and perceived cultural borders.Karen I. Blu is an associate professor of anthropology at New York University.

Koren I. Blu is an associate professor of anthropology at New York University.