Lumbees Appropriated a Cherokee Identity and Possibly Funds to Attend Indian Boarding Schools
At a session of the 2024 NCAI's Mid Year Convention & Marketplace that was held on the
reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Chief Legal Officer of Lumbee Tribe
Holdings, Inc. Heather McMillan Nakai, who is herself a Lumbee, made an impassioned speech
to an audience that was largely skeptical of the Lumbees' claims to being Indian. McMillan's
goal was to persuade the audience that the Lumbees are Indians. The core of her argument was that, like real Indians, the Lumbees were forced to attend federal Indian boarding schools.
The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) investigated McMillan's claims about Lumbees
attending Indian boarding schools by analyzing the records of Carlisle Indian Industrial School,
the flagship federal Indian boarding school that operated from 1879 to 1918. This Indian
boarding school's digital records1 show that none of its students were ever designated as Lumbee. This is unsurprising given that the Lumbees did not exist during the above time period. Yet in these digital records, TAAF researchers did find nine Carlisle students who were from the
Lumbees' present-day geographic area of Robeson County, North Carolina. TAAF then
researched the family trees of these nine students. This genealogical research revealed that none of these nine students, all of whom are now deceased, had any Indian ancestry. Today the descendants of these individuals identify as Lumbees.
TAAF's analysis of Carlisle school records further reveal that all nine of the Lumbee students
and their families begged for their children to attend Carlisle. They were not forced to attend this boarding school as the Lumbees claim. In addition, all nine students were admitted to Carlisle only because they and their families falsely claimed to be Cherokee. Just because these nine Lumbee students were admitted to a federal Indian boarding school under false claims to being Cherokee does not mean, as the Lumbees claim, that the federal government considered them to be Indian. Importantly, the false claims on the part of Lumbees to being Cherokee, which are well-documented in the archival record, wholly invalidate a current claim of Lumbees: the false claim that they themselves never identified as Cherokee. Today Lumbees falsely claim that historically, it has been only others, not they themselves, who have misidentified Lumbees as Cherokees. Archival evidence reveals this Lumbee claim to be untrue.
TAAF's investigation into Lumbees who attended Carlisle raises questions about the use of
Cherokee tribal trust funds. The allegations in the landmark lawsuit2 filed in May 2025 by the
Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and the Washoe Tribe suggest that it is quite possible, even likely,
that the federal government misappropriated Cherokee tribal trust funds to finance the education at Carlisle of the Lumbee children who, together with their families and community, falsely claimed to be Cherokee. In other words, the false claims of these Lumbees that they were Cherokees may have stripped the Cherokees of a portion of their tribal trust funds. TAAF
strongly suggests that an investigation be undertaken to determine whether and in what amount
Cherokee tribal trust funds were siphoned from Cherokee accounts to educate Lumbees.
The nine Lumbees who attended Carlisle by falsely claiming to be Cherokee were Charles and
George Locklear, Garfield Lowrie, James Oxendine, Lacy Oxendine, Luther Jacobs, Ernest Bell, John Clark, and Margaret Woodell. All were from the area that is now the geographic center of the Lumbees: Robeson County, North Carolina. All attended between 1910 and 1916, and there is no evidence that any of them claimed affiliation with any Indian group or tribe other than Cherokee. For example, Lumbee student Luther Jacobs sent Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells a telegram that began "I am a Cherokee Indian North Carolina," an assertion that was untrue. Typical of the Carlisle student records of Lumbees is a letter from prospective Carlisle student W. H. Oxendine (Lumbee), to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on November 5, 1914:
"Dear Sir, I am an Indian of the Cherokee tribe of eastern N.C. in Robeson County [sic]. I want
to enroll in the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle PA. The [Carlisle] Superintendent . . . wants a
recommendation before he will enroll me. I can get a recommendation from the state
superintendent of public instruction. . . I want to go [to Carlisle] for industrial training. If a
recommendation from the state Superintendent of education will do, let me hear from you at
once. Yours truly, W. H. Oxendine."
Also insistent upon receiving educational services from Carlisle based on his unsubstantiated and false claim to being Cherokee was Lacy Oxendine, a Lumbee young man who penned a letter to the school on July 14, 1916. "I am simply beging [sic] for a chance, as I think I ought to have," he wrote, "from the History of Robinson [sic] County Cherokee Indians [sic]." In a different communication, Lacy's parents wrote, "I want you to take him and do the best you can." The record of John Clark, a Lumbee from Lumberton, likewise attests to Lumbees' vigorous pursuit of a Carlisle education. Indeed, there is no evidence that federal officials forced Lumbees to attend boarding schools, as the Lumbees claim. In 1911, then 18-year-old John told the school that he wished to attend Carlisle instead of public school "because thire [sic] is nothing to study but Books" in public school, and at Carlisle "i [sic] want to learn to be a plumer [sic]."
Importantly, all of these Lumbee students and their parent(s) or guardian(s) submitted sworn,
notarized statements in the presence of "officers who were authorized to administer oaths"
promising that "the statements [they] made in [their] application[s to Carlisle were] true." Indeed, Lumbees sent affidavits to this effect with their applications to the school. Among the many false claims these students and their families made were that they possessed Cherokee blood quanta. Luther Jacobs's father, William Jacobs, claimed in writing that he was 4/4 Cherokee. Charity Oxendine, the mother of James Oxendine, asserted in writing that her child's father was "a 3/4 Indian of the Cherokee Tribe located in Robeson Co., NC." Charles and George Locklear wrote on their applications that they were 3/8 Cherokee, while John Clark, Garfield Lowrie, and Lacy Oxendine all swore under oath that they were 1/2 Cherokee. In every one of their applications to Carlisle, the nine Lumbee students chose to appropriate both a Cherokee identity and Cherokee blood quantum.
At times, the falsity of these claims must have been patent even to those unfamiliar with the
history of the Lumbees' spurious claims to being Cherokee. The records of Lumbee student
Ernest Bell, for example, reveal a genealogical impossibility: "2/3 Cherokee." Also blatantly
false based on Carlisle school records alone are the claims of William Jacobs and his son, Luther. In an application to the school for Luther that was dated August 3, 1911, William self-identified as "3/4 Indian of the Cherokee tribe located in Robeson Co," while also falsely claiming that his wife Mary was "1/2 Indian of the Cherokee tribe located in Robeson Co." More than four years later on February 2, 1916, Luther reported for his father a higher Cherokee blood quantum, specifically "4/4 Indian of the Cherokee tribe." On that date, Luther correctly identified his mother Mary as a non-Indian even though four years earlier his father had identified her as 1/2 Cherokee. Lumbees used other Lumbees living in Robeson County -- including, for example, a Lumbee named B. W. Lowrie -- to certify that the claims they made to Carlisle about being Cherokee were true. Given the extensive set of untruths told by these nine Lumbee students, their families, and their community, it is quite striking that on May 7, 1917, Mr. Lacy Oxendine threatened an authority figure at Carlisle in writing for making false statements. Mr. Oxendine demanded that what he described as the "false reports" the school was making about his "reputation" cease "or else there will be further steps taken."
As Mr. Oxendine's threat to Carlisle administrators suggests, the Carlisle school records are
highly revealing of tensions between Lumbees, on the one hand, and Carlisle administrators and the Indian students, on the other. On Garfield Lowrie's Student Information Card, one Carlisle administrator expressed doubt about this student's "Blood 1/2" claim. Then, on February 12, 1916, Carlisle Superintendent O.H. Lipps decried what he termed the "Robeson Co. Croatans"-- a term that, to our knowledge, no Lumbee ever used in the documents preserved in the school's files. Superintendent Lipps wrote that the "Robeson County Croatans" should not be enrolled "in any Indian school." He explained, "I want real Indians and those from reservations . . . [those whom] the Government schools [were] intended to reach." Earlier in this communication, Lipps wrote that "there is considerable prejudice against [the Robeson County Croatans] in our Indian schools." This statement of Lipps indicates that the Indian students who attended Carlisle with the Lumbee students may also have been aware that the Lumbees were not Indian. Mr. Lipps added that since he began serving as Carlisle superintendent in July 1915, "I have sent out of Carlisle almost one hundred students, since I have been here, who were frankly speaking ineligible [to attend an Indian school]." Among them were students, he said, who "have never been affiliated with any Indian tribe." Superintendent Lipps's letter strongly suggests that, like others, he did not believe the false claims of the Lumbee students, their families, and their community that these students were, as they claimed, Cherokees.
In an interview in 2020, Lumbee Chief Legal Officer Heather McMillan Nakai revealed: "I
always say, 'A good lawyer can argue anything and make you believe -- it'll sound good, even if
what they're arguing is utter nonsense.'"3 At the June 2024 NCAI meeting, McMillan's argument
that the Lumbees are Indian because, like real Indians, they were forced to attend federal Indian boarding schools is an example of a slick, deceitful argument. McMillan's claims at an NCAI session were misleading, mostly untruthful, and could even be construed as "utter nonsense." Archival and genealogical records show that nine Lumbees -- revealed as possessing no Indian ancestry -- begged to attend Carlisle and were admitted only because they falsely claimed to be Cherokee. Furthermore, the federal government may have financed the Carlisle education of these Lumbee students with Cherokee tribal trust funds. Given the disconnect between Lumbees' current claims and the historical realities, it should perhaps come as no surprise that in the early 2010s, McMillan chose to take a page out of the playbook of the nine Lumbees who attended Carlisle. In Nakai v. Jewell et al., McMillan unsuccessfully sought Indian Preference for employment at the BIA and IHS. Specifically, she claimed to be 1/2 Indian of Croatan and Cherokee descent.4 Genealogical records reveal that, like the Lumbees who attended Carlisle, McMillan has zero Indian ancestry. Moreover, TAAF found documentation of one of McMillan's ancestors who even claimed to be Choctaw, a claim the federal government rejected.
1 Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson College. In this searchable database can be found all quotes from Carlisle school records that appear in this write-up of TAAF's investigation into Lumbee attendance at Carlisle. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/
2 Dicello Levitt, "Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, Washoe File Landmark Lawsuit Against U.S. Government Over Indian Boarding School Program," May 22, 2025. https://dicellolevitt.com/wichita-and-affiliated-tribes-washoe-filelandmark-
lawsuit-against-u-s-government-over-indian-boarding-school-program/
3 "Heather McMillan Nakai Interview Transcript," 2020-01-31 [SHE.OH.019] NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Office of Archives and History. https://digital ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/heather-mcmillannakai-interview-2020-01-31-she.oh.019/1941375
4 Nakai v. Jewell et al., No. 1: 2016 cv 01500 - Document 24 (D.D.C. 2017), 1-2.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/district-of-columbia/dcdce/1:2016cv01500/180609/24/