Update: This story has been updated to include Senate passage of separate bills related to tribal issues.
Mary Annette Pember
ICT
A sweeping defense policy bill passed the U.S. House Wednesday but without some of the key provisions sought by Indian Country.
The National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, includes long-sought federal recognition for the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina but leaves out a provision to create a Truth and Healing Commission to further investigate the nation’s history with Indian boarding schools.
Also pulled from the bill was authorization to hand over land to be preserved as a Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site, but a separate measure for the memorial passed the House and Senate and has been sent to President Donald Trump to sign.
The NDAA now moves to the Senate, which is expected to approve the measure.
Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe and board president of the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, said the final version of the bill overlooked provisions supported by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
“I’m really disappointed that a host of bills from the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs did not make their way onto the NDAA,” he told ICT.
Lumbee leaders, however, praised the inclusion as an “historic day” in a statement posted on Facebook.
Tribal Chairman John Lowery, who watched the House proceedings along with other members of the Lumbee administration, issued a statement praising God “for his blessings on our people,” and leadership in the U.S. House and from the North Carolina delegation. He also had special praise for the Trump administration.
“I want to thank President Trump and his White House Team for ensuring that our bill stayed a priority during the NDAA negotiations,” Lowery said in a statement. “We now look forward to the next step, which is passage in the United States Senate.”
‘Rectify the injustice’
The Lumbee, a state-recognized tribe headquartered in Robeson County with about 60,000 members, has long sought recognition from the federal government.
Although the Lumbee were recognized by Congress in 1956, the legislation denied them access to the same federal resources as tribal nations. As a result, their application for recognition was denied for consideration in the 1980s, and the Lumbee Tribe has tried to get Congress to acknowledge them in the decades since.
The Office of Federal Acknowledgement is the federal agency that typically vets such applications, although dozens of tribes have also gained recognition through legislation.
“Only Congress can for all time and for all purposes resolve this uncertainty,” Lowery said in testimony last month before the Senate Committee for Indian Affairs. “It is long past time to rectify the injustice it has inflicted on our tribe and our people.”
The application has put them at odds with some other tribal leaders, who have questioned their historic claims.
“A national defense bill is not the appropriate place to consider federal recognition, particularly for a group that has not met the historical and legal standards required of sovereign tribal nations,” said Michell Hicks, chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, in a press release.
“Every sovereign tribal nation in this country has been required to prove its identity, lineage, history and continuous governance. The Lumbee have not met any of these standards and their repeated refusal to undergo federal verification threatens the credibility of the entire process, “ Hicks said in the statement.
Lowery disagreed sharply in a prepared statement.
“Our roughly 60,000 enrolled members all directly descend from historical lists of tribal members that date back to the early 1900s,” Lowery said.
Lowery said the Lumbee community and history have been the subject of extensive research and are well-documented. He cites a 1934 Senate report in which anthropologist John Swanton states that the Lumbee are descended from the Cheraw Indians along with remnants of other Siouan-speaking tribes.
Federal recognition would give the Lumbees access to federal funding, including such resources as the Indian Health Service, and would give them the ability to take land into trust. Trump has championed their cause, promising on the campaign trail in 2024 to acknowledge the Lumbee as a tribal nation.
The Lumbee have represented an important presidential voting bloc in North Carolina. In the past, politicians including Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and now Trump, have dangled the possibility of federal recognition in exchange for the tribe’s support.
Although voter turnout was low in Robeson County, more than 63 percent of voters supported Trump in the 2024 election. In January, as he assumed his second term in office, Trump issued a presidential memorandum instructing the Secretary of the Interior to consult with the Lumbee and submit a plan for federal recognition.
The tribe’s support for Trump may have at last pushed it over the finish line for the long-sought federal recognition, according to Kevin Washburn, former assistant secretary of Indian affairs at the Interior Department and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
It’s the first time either the White House or the candidates for president have been so engaged in a federal recognition case, Washburn noted.
The economic impact for the Lumbee will be significant.
An estimate in 2022 by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal recognition would cost the U.S. more than $360 million, with federal funding based in part on population. Using information from the tribe, the CBO estimates that about 44,000 of the tribe’s members live in a service area covered by Indian Health Service, with costs for providing health services about $1,700 per person annually.
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawai’i and vice chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said the cost of granting federal recognition to the Lumbee is a valid concern but did not change his mind.
“Cost is not a valid reason to deny the Lumbee recognition,” he said during a November hearing.
As a federally recognized tribe, the Lumbee would also have the authority to open gaming enterprises, which could put it in competition with the Eastern Band of Cherokee and the Catawba Indian Nation, both federally recognized tribes that operate casinos in the state.
Saying no to truth and healing
Other provisions impacting Indian Country that had received bipartisan support did not make it into the final version of the NDAA, including recent versions of a bill to create a Truth and Healing Commission that could further examine the nation’s ugly history with Indian boarding schools.
The bill would establish a federal commission to investigate the history and trauma of Indian boarding schools and would document impacts, collect survivor testimony and recommend actions for justice and healing. Until late 2024, the bill also would have given the commission power to subpoena records from religious organizations that operated schools, which would have landed heavily with the Catholic Church.
The language authorizing subpoena power was struck from the bill last year, according to Barnes.
“We were led to believe that striking that power would remove obstacles from passing the bill at the end of the 2024 Congressional session,” Barnes said.
But the legislation failed to pass.
“Survivors have waited long enough for truth, justice and reconciliation,” Barnes said. “How disappointing it is for elderly survivors and their descendants to learn that they will have to wait longer if this Congress can’t come together and pass a bill that it seemingly has no opposition to.“
The Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act was also cut from the NDAA just days before going before Congress but a separate measure approved by the House won approval in the U.S. Senate, along with several 11 other bills impacting Indian Country.
The Wounded Knee site marks the tragic 1890 event where U.S. Army troops killed hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children, a pivotal moment in Native American history.
The bipartisan bill was unanimously passed by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in February 2025, and includes a review of 20 Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers for participation in the massacre. In September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declined to revoke Medals of Honor awarded to the soldiers.
The bill directs the Department of the Interior to complete all actions necessary to place approximately 40 acres of land in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, into restricted fee status for the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. The land would be held and maintained as a memorial and sacred site, prohibited from commercial development.
The Senate also approved a measure already passed by the House to expand the reserved area for the Miccosukee Tribe in Florida to include portions of Everglades National Park. It will require the government to take actions to protect structures within an area known as Osceola Camp from flooding, according to a statement from Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Brian Schatz of Hawai’i.
“I’m proud of our committee’s strong bipartisan work on legislation important to Native peoples,” Murkowski, the Republican chair of the Senate committee, said in a statement. “Moving these bills forward is an important step toward enhancing public safety, promoting public health, expanding access to tribal homeownership, empowering tribes to better manage their own resources and helping tribes complete critical water projects. I welcome this progress for Native communities and look forward to working with my House colleagues to get these bills to the President’s desk.”
Schatz, a Democrat who is vice chairman of the committee, cited the bipartisan nature of the legislation.
“The bills we advanced out of the Senate on a unanimous, bipartisan basis – including on the complete of water rights settlements, tribal public health, or public safety – will help support and strengthen Native communities all across the country,” he said in the statement. “I’m proud to have worked with Chairman Murkowski to deliver for Native communities and look forward to help getting them across the finish line in the House.”
Several other provisions that include tribes have also been included in the NDAA, although the actual impacts are not yet clear. They include a separate funding request for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, HBCUs, and for Tribal Colleges and Universities, TCUs, under the Defense Research and Capacity Building Program.
The NDAA also includes establishment of a special advisor in the Coast Guard for tribal and Native Hawaiian issues, and provisions for financial assistance and grants for tribal fisheries under Treatment of Minor Construction and Improvement Project Management.
It also calls for consultation with affected tribes for environmental cleanup activities at the Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities, and with tribes for Bering Strait Vessel Traffic Projections and Emergency Response at U.S. ports.
The NDAA would also establish a national strategy for child exploitation prevention with tribal consultation, introduction of the Native American Seeds Act of 2025 to assist tribes in protecting Native seeds, and a provision amending the American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Culture and Art Development Act to modify the program for culture and arts development.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.