List of famous Lumbees

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is a list of famous members and descendants of the Lumbee tribe.

Chris Chavis is a professional wrestler better known as "Tatanka" and "The War Eagle," and currently performs in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

Delano Cummings is the author of Moon Dash Warrior: The Story of an American Indian in Vietnam, a Marine from the Land of the Lumbee (Livermore, Me.: Signal Tree Pub., 1998). His memoir is a poignant account of his tours of duty as a Marine in Vietnam.

Adolph L. Dial was a historian and advocate for American Indian rights who spent 30 years as a professor of American History and American Indian Studies at Pembroke State University, North Carolina, and served as a North Carolina state senator and spokesperson for full federal recognition of the Lumbee. Dial is the author of The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians and The Lumbee. Toward the end of his life, Dr. Dial was the recipient of the Henry Berry Lowry Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Lumbee community.

Arlinda Locklear is a veteran of Federal Indian law, having practiced in the field for twenty-five years. Locklear has represented tribes across the U.S. in federal and state courts on treaty claims to water and land, taxation disputes, reservation boundary issues and federal recognition of tribes. In the course of her career, she became the first Native American woman to argue a case, Solem v. Bartlett, to the Supreme Court. She successfully challenged the state of South Dakota's authority to prosecute a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe for on-reservation conduct, and as a lawyer for the Native American Rights Fund, Locklear supervised significant litigation of Native American issues, as well as the legislative work of the office. In 1985, Locklear appeared as lead counsel in the Supreme Court again when she represented the Oneida Indian Nation in Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida. In that case, she formulated and argued the theory that tribes have a federal common law right to sue for possession of tribal land taken in violation of federal law. The Supreme Court adopted the argument, and the case became the seminal case in aboriginal land claims litigation, upon which all subsequent claims have been based.

Heather Locklear is purportedly of Lumbee descent, and has appeared in the TV series, Dynasty, T.J. Hooker, Melrose Place, and Spin City. Locklear has family in, and occasionally visits Robeson County, North Carolina.

Sean Locklear is a professional football player with the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League. Was the starting right tackle on the 2005-2006 Seahawks Super Bowl team. Is still currently listed on Depth Chart as starter at right tackle (6/1/05-NFL).

James Lowery (a.k.a. Anybody Killa) was raised in Detroit, Michigan and is one of the few rappers to have a lisp. Many fans say his speech impediment is an important part of his art. Lowery is noted for having Native American themes on his albums, including his hits Mud Face and Hatchet Warrior.

Malinda Maynor Lowery received her A.B. in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1995, an M.A. in Documentary Film and Video Production at Stanford University in 1997, and a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2005. In 2001, she co-produced the documentary, In the Light of Reverence, a film featuring three tribal nations, the Hopi, the Winnemem Wintu, and the Lakota Sioux, and their struggles to protect three sacred sites, Devil's Tower National Monument, the Four Corners in Arizona, and Mount Shasta. All three sacred sites are places of extraordinary beauty as well as impassioned controversy as Natives and non-Natives struggle to co-exist with very different ideas about how the land should be used. In 2006, Lowery became the first American Indian tenure-track professor at Harvard University, and is currently finishing a book about Lumbee identity and federal recognition in the first half of the twentieth century.

Henry Berry Lowrie was the Robeson County American Indian hero of the "Lowrie Wars" that took place during the Reconstruction era of the 1860s and 1870s. Lowrie and his guerilla band appropriated white Revolutionary doctrine to gain rights and freedoms that were being denied to American Indians in Robeson County, North Carolina. Indian perceptions of Reconstruction violence solidified the racial boundaries that had begun to take shape and harden during the Civil War era. The Lowrie gang received considerable support from the American Indian community. Critically, Lowrie and his guerilla band were popular among poor blacks and whites as well, since they believed that he best represented their interests to the elites of a racialized Southern society. Most importantly, the activities of the Lowrie gang radicalized the American Indian community. The post-Reconstruction rearticulation of a separate territory bounded by a web of wetlands that define Robeson County, along with an elaborate network of kinship ties was instrumental in the revitalized expression of Indian community. In an attempt to capture the elusive Lowrie gang, white incursions into Indian territory further highlighted the existence of a territorial and cultural borderland. Lowrie became a culture hero, representing those cultural and political boundaries that marked the Indians of Robeson County as a community of self-determining American Indian people. Henry Berry Lowrie is the protagonist of the outdoor Lumbee drama "Strike at the Wind".

Charly Lowry appeared as a contestant on the TV series "American Idol" in 2004.

John Oxendine is the Commmissioner of Insurance for the State of Georgia and one of the most popular Republican politicians in the state. Oxendine is of Lumbee descent through his father.

Jana (born Jana Sampson) is a Lumbee singer. In 2002, Jana won a Nammy (Native American Music Award) for Best Single for her remix of "Stairway To Heaven", and a Nammy for 2001 Best Pop Artist. In 2000, she was nominated for two Nammy awards and starred in the film Dream Weaver.

Hiram R. Revels was the first African-American member of the U.S. Senate, Mississippi (1870-1871) a preacher, African Methodist Episcopal Church and an American Civil War veteran where he served as a chaplain and helped form two black Union regiments in Maryland & Missouri, and even took part in the Battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi. Revels was born free in Fayetteville ,N.C. of a free father of mixed white, black, and Lumbee indian ancestry.

Kelvin Sampson is the former head coach of the University of Oklahoma and now the new head coach of the Indiana University men's basketball team. Sampson was born in the Lumbee community of Deep Branch, and attended Pembroke High School, Pembroke, North Carolina, and Pembroke State University before guiding the Sooners to an appearance in the Final Four of the men's NCAA basketball tournament in 2002.

Helen Maynor Scheirbeck was appointed by Congress to the (NMAI) Board of Directors, and continues to serve as NMAI’s Assistant Director of Public Programs. Scheirbeck received her B.A. in 1957 from Berea College (Kentucky) and her Ed. D in 1980 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Scheirbeck is the Human Resources Administrator for Save the Children Federation of the American Indian Programs, and has served as Chairwoman of the Indian Education Task Force, American Indian Policy Review Commission, U. S. Congress, as well as Director of the Office of Indian Affairs, U.S. Office of Education, Dept. of HEW, and as professional staff for the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights.

David E. Wilkins is Associate Professor of American Indian Studies, Political Science, and Law at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Wilkins received his PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1990. His publications focus particularly on Federal Indian law, tribal government, and tribal sovereignty. Wilkins is the author of The Navajo Political Experience (2003); American Indian Politics and the American Political System (2002); Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law, co-authored with Tsianina Lomawaima (2001); Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations, co-authored with Vine Deloria, Jr. (1999); American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice (1997); and Dine' Bibeehaz'aanii: A Handbook of Navajo Government (1987).

Robert A. Williams Jr. is Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Williams was named the first Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (2003-2004), having previously served as the Bennet Boskey Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of Law at Harvard. He is the author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest, Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800, and is co-author of Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials. Williams has written numerous articles on Indian Law and indigenous peoples' rights, as well as several books, and is the director of the Tribal Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona. Williams has represented tribal groups before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, and served as co-counsel for Floyd Hicks in the United States Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hicks (2001 term). Williams presently serves as Chief Justice of the Yavapai-Prescott Apache Tribe Court of Appeals and as Chief Justice for the Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation. Williams also serves as judge pro tempore for the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Matthew Thomas Locklear is a famous gamer of the Triangle in North Carolina. He currently resides in Raleigh and frequently helps impoversed children with homework in math and chemistry.