Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel

It was transforming the biggest NFL stage in the world into a sugar cane plantation that did it for me.

Like, the multiple layers of turning an American icon into a plantation and highlighting the history of exploitation of Black and Brown bodies by the NFL and American colonialism simultaneously?

68 years ago today, Lumbee people & their allies routed the KKK at the Battle of Hayes Pond. Read a brief summary in my unrolled 2018 Twitter thread below or a detailed retelling in Malinda Lowery’s 2020 Scalawag piece: scalawagmagazine.org/2020/01/ambu....

#CivilRights
#Indigenous
#Lumbees

The Lumbee Tribe is finally federally recognized. Why it matters and what’s next After a 137-year struggle, North Carolina’s Lumbee Tribe has received full federal recognition. It fulfills one of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and opens new opportunities for the tribe....

Tomorrow at 9am - Live diacussion on WFAE about Lumbee federal recogntition with Jesalyn Keziah, Mary Ann Jacobs, and myself.

www.wfae.org/show/charlot...

Tuesday, December 23, 2025 – Lumbee Nation secures its sovereign status » Native America Calling With the stroke of a pen, the U.S. welcomes more than 50,000 new federally recognized tribal citizens. After numerous failed attempts, the Lumbee Nation is the 575th federally recognized tribe — the f...

Today (1pm EST) on Native America Calling, “Lumbee Nation secures its sovereign status.”

I look forward to this discussion & call-in show with academics Malinda Lowery, (Emory), David Wilkins (Richmond), and Carrie Schuettpelz( Iowa).

AISES | Advancing Indigenous People in STEM AISES is a national nonprofit organization focused on substantially increasing the representation of Indigenous peoples of North America and the Pacific Islands in science, technology, engineering, an...

It's official - the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) has renamed itself the Advancing Indigenous Science and Engineering Society (still AISES). Membership voted to change the name earlier this year to better reflect the organization's geographic scope.
aises.org

I am especially overjoyed for my friend Malinda Lowery, who has given so much of her creativity and intellect to telling the Lumbee story with the rigor of a historian and the soul of an artist. You should read her book.

Journalists & pundits from outside our community often flatten Lumbees into political caricatures & cultural stereotypes. But NoiseCat’s broad knowledge of Indian Country & time spent *with* us before writing *about* us translate into insightful reporting here and in his written work. 2/2

#Lumbee

Next on Native Bidaské: Julian Brave NoiseCat on the Lumbee Nation’s 140-Year Fight for Federal Recognition Native News Online presents a timely and powerful conversation on Native Bidaské between host Levi Rickert and acclaimed author and journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat, focusing on the Lumbee Tribe of No...

Great interview with journalist, author, & filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat on Lumbee recognition. I highly recommend clicking through the NativeNews header below and watching the 20-min recorded interview. 1/2

East Baltimore’s Historic American Indian “Reservation” Learn about places and spaces important to American Indian history and heritage in Baltimore, MD, with a focus on East Baltimore’s 20th-century “Reservation”.

Also. In celebration of the Lumbees finally receiving federal recognition, here's a taste of Dr Ashley Minner-Jones' EXTRAORDINARY work documenting and telling the stories of Lumbee Baltimore www.baltimorereservation.com

Emanuel Becomes Full Professor Ryan Emanuel has been promoted from associate professor to full professor in the Division of Environmental Social Systems. His scholarship sits at the intersection of hydrology, climate change, enviro...

In other news... promoted to full professor at Duke!
nicholas.duke.edu/news/emanuel... #DukeEnvironment

The Lumbee Tribe has been in North Carolina since long before we became a state. The Lumbee were officially recognized by the State of North Carolina in 1885 and have fought for their fair share from the federal government for more than a century.

"A relationship with the Federal Government will enable us to build towards achieving justice, it will clarify our status as a people determined to preserve our identity as American Indians.”
(Robert Williams to Virginia Boylan, Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, August 23, 1988)

"Perhaps, it might have made it worse. But as a people, we are concerned with the future, with guaranteeing justice for our children as Lumbee Indians...

Much work ahead, but I'll sit now w/ words by Robert Williams (U. AZ), who in 1988 told the Senate Indian Affairs committee, “It is doubtful whether the history of discrimination experienced by Lumbees would have been altered significantly by federal recognition of their status as an Indian tribe...

I've spent years thinking about the 1956 Lumbee Act both personally & professionally. I cover the law extensively in my book & other research, and I've woken up each day of my life (until today) in the shadow of its Termination-era constraints. The amended law is no panacea, but it is a new day.

The 1956 Lumbee Act was amended this week, concluding a decades-long effort to have Congress strike discriminatory language that subjected Lumbees to nearly 70 years of partial federal recognition. But no longer. The Lumbee Tribe of NC is now *fully* recognized by the US—the 575th Native Nation.

Page header from Op Ed section of Raleigh News & Observer, December 15, 2010. Header reads "Other Opinion" and subheading reads "Native Americans in North Carolina: The Lumbee Recognition Bill." First section of article reads: It is painful seeing important legislation languish on the House or Senate floor for a year or more only to expire at the end of a congressional session. Multiplying that feeling by 61 sessions of Congress gives a sense of the frustration and looming disappointment felt by North Carolina's Lumbee Tribe, American Indians who have been petitioning Congress for federal recognition since 1888. Numerous recognition bills have been introduced since then, but none has been passed to grant full federal recognition to the tribe. A bill currently in the Senate (co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan) would fully acknowledge the Lumbee Tribe, bringing with it a measure of justice that has been denied for 122 years. Last week, Hagan said she hopes to amend this bill to legislation that will be voted on in the final days of the 111th Congress. The current Lumbee Recognition bill passed the House over 18 months ago and has been awaiting a full Senate vote since October 2009. Since then, six senators have been playing procedural games with the bill - using the so-called secret hold - to prevent a final vote. By their actions, these six lawmakers perpetuate a long-abandoned, failed federal policy toward American Indians known as Termination. Simply put, Termination (which lasted from the late 1940s to the late 1960s) aimed to extinguish government-to- government relationships between the United States and American Indian tribes, "freeing" Indians from "Federal supervision and control," in the words of Congress. The implication was that American Indians, deprived of tribal sovereignty, would assimilate once and for all into mainstream society.

First half of scanned two-column Op Ed by Ryan Emanuel entitled "A persistent people's long quest for justice." Text continues from previous image: The federal government eventually abandoned Termination, but not before more than 100 American Indian groups were impacted, including the Lumbee Tribe. In 1956, Congress passed legislation acknowledging the Lumbee as American Indians while simultaneously denying them an official relationship with the federal government. This half-measure of recognition also barred the tribe from pursuing full recognition through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Lumbee are the only tribe still subject to this failed and abandoned policy, thanks to the anonymous senators blocking the current bill. The State of North Carolina, on the other hand, has officially recognized the tribe since 1885, albeit under three different names prior to "Lumbee." Some opponents of full Lumbee recognition have attempted to make hay of these name changes, but the historical evidence paints a clear picture that non-Indian policymakers, bent on imposing the racist hierarchy of segregation, heavily influenced the adoption of these names by the tribe. For the tribe, these earlier names served as a survival mechanism to preserve scant resources and maintain their identity in the face of an oppressive and absurd regime. It was no picnic, but in the end the institution of segregation, designed to repress and subjugate non-whites, tested and strengthened the tribe, preparing it to receive a name of its own choosing. That name, Lumbee, comes from the river that meanders through Robeson County, the principal seat of the tribe. The river is sacred to many Lumbee; its dark water and branching swamps represent life, death and mystery all at once.

Bottom half of scanned two-column Op Ed by Ryan Emanuel entitled "A persistent people's long quest for justice." Text continues: I know many of these things because they were taught to me in the Lumbee home where I grew up, but I have learned even more from the painstaking research of scholars like UNC history professor and Lumbee Malinda Maynor Lowery and Appalachian State University library professor Glenn Ellen Starr Stilling. They and countless others have worked to assemble a rich body of literature on Lumbee history, culture and society that must be addressed by anyone challenging the tribe's identity and long journey to federal recognition. The tumultuous history of the Lumbee includes a number of events that all North Carolinians should know and care about. Lumbee ancestors led a full-on guerrilla war against corrupt Confederate and Reconstructionist governments in Robeson County during the 1860s and 1870s. They founded the first public college for American Indians in 1887 (now fully integrated into the state system as UNC Pembroke). Today's Lumbee elders delivered an abject drubbing to the Ku Klux Klan in 1958 at the Battle of Hayes Pond. Part of the social justice of federal recognition includes validation of these and other Lumbee achievements, including a refusal to fully assimilate or have our history and ways terminated. I speak only as an individual Lumbee, but I bear enough of our collective memory to discern, faintly, morality's legendary long arc. Its span may be longer than 122 years, but it is bending our way.

15 years ago today (Dec 15, 2010) I published an ope-ed on Lumbee recognition in @newsobserver.com. I hadn't seen this piece in a while & was struck that it foreshadows my work on Indigenous rights & #EnvironmentalJustice... several years before these terms entered my professional lexicon. #ncpol

Fueling Inequity: Geospatial Analyses Reveal Racial Patterns in Vulnerability to Natural Gas Pipeline Impacts in North Carolina African American and American Indian populations are overrepresented in block groups with high social vulnerability index and high pipeline density Half of the pipeline mileage in North Carolina ...

1st paper 👊 by Duke’s Skye-Anne Tschoepe maps North Carolina’s methane gas pipelines, shows racial disparities in routes, & explains how results of #EnvironmentalJustice analyses are sensitive to analyst decisions.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/... #ncpol @geohealthjournal.bsky.social

Our work is featured in today’s research news from @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social:

“A new study highlights major educational gaps among environmental professionals regarding Indigenous peoples, and shows how those gaps can impact real-world decisions.”

esa.org/blog/2025/12... #GeoSky #OpenAccess

Policy Notice: Implementation of Policy Changes to Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) 24-1, Supplement 1 This notice implements several revisions to NSF's Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) 24-1.

I tell students to mark the language that government agencies use to talk about Indigenous peoples, because it holds information about relationships & power dynamics. I have no insider knowledge, but I'm definitely marking the pivot from "Tribal Nation" to "Indian Tribe."
www.nsf.gov/policies/doc...

Who’s Your People? North Carolina’s Lumbee have been fighting for federal recognition for over 100 years. Their story reveals a lot about identity and who counts as “Native."

4. Julian Brave NoiseCat's 2022 article in @theassemblync.bsky.social is one of the best journalistic pieces on Lumbee identity that I've read in recent years. (I also loved the longer version included in his new book, WE SURVIVED THE NIGHT.)
www.theassemblync.com/culture/lumb...

3. My chapter in Wilkins & Wilkins book, OF LIVING STONE, recounts the 50-year history of efforts to amend the 1956 Lumbee Act... and the 50-year lobbying campaign to block those efforts. (The publisher allowed me to share the chapter on Duke's #OpenAccess server.)
scholars.duke.edu/publication/...

Trump supports full federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe. What does the path forward look like? On the next Charlotte Talks, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina has asked for federal recognition for decades. Could the Trump administration be the answer?

2. On this May 2025 episode of Charlotte Talks (WFAE), a panel of Lumbee scholars discusses the 2025 presidential memo on Lumbee recognition.
www.wfae.org/show/charlot...

1. After a wave of oversimplified reporting, I wrote this short FAQ in January 2025 to address misconceptions about the administration's stance toward the 1956 Lumbee Act. The thread includes a reading list at the end.
bsky.app/profile/wate...

The reconciled NDAA includes a provision to amend the 1956 Lumbee Act by removing a discriminatory, Termination-Era clause & inserting new language to affirm the Tribe's federal status. Here are a few resources to help make sense of what's happening & why. I may post more later.

Other folks have written & spoken powerfully about Thomas King specifically.

What I query here, 9 years into the almost annual winter unveiling of a fraud in Canada, are the metaphysics of white colonial play-acting as native in the arts, literature, politics, academia.

Colonial mirror worlds.

And so it begins.

Stories We Tell Telling one’s own story is a way of asserting identity. It is simultaneously a fundamental responsibility and an inherent gift for each human being—and is often one of the first casualties of…

Re-sharing a 2022 article from the journal Southern Cultures about 100+ years of extractive research on my Tribe. It's well known that extractive research can harm Indigenous peoples; my coauthor & I show how it can also lead to poor results & junk insights.
www.southerncultures.org/article/stor...

Indigenous invisibility: Gaps in education about Indigenous peoples among environmental decision‐makers Millions of Indigenous people belong to hundreds of Tribal nations and self-determined communities throughout the United States. Many of these groups continue to steward lands and waters that have sh...

⚡️ New Paper ⚡️
“Indigenous invisibility: Gaps in education about Indigenous peoples among environmental decision-makers” led by Dr. Brittany Hunt (Virginia Tech).

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #EnvironmentalJustice #Lumbee #geosky 🌎