An Open Letter from Arlinda Locklear, Esq., About the Lumbee Recognition Act

Editor’s note: this letter represents the views of Arlinda Locklear. The ratification of the Lewin contract by the tribal council effectively fired her as tribal attorney and lobbyist, along with Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Indian Law Unit, which the tribe had utilized for 30+ years.

December 18, 2010

Three years ago, I discovered that former Lumbee Chairman Jimmy Goins and his Tribal Administrator Leon Jacobs were having secret meetings with folks in the Indian gaming industry, scheming to amend the pending Lumbee recognition bill to allow the Tribe to have a casino. These meetings took place after the Tribal Council had unanimously agreed to a gaming prohibition on the bill. And these meetings took place without knowledge of the Tribal Council or me. I promised the Chairman and Tribal Administrator then that, if their scheming damaged our bill, I’d make sure the Lumbee people knew what had happened. I’m keeping that promise now.

I thought the meetings stopped, but they didn’t. In the meantime, the House passed the Lumbee bill twice with the gaming prohibition in it. And the debate on the bill, both in committee and on the floor, made it very clear that many members were willing to allow the bill to move forward only because they took the Tribe at its word – we said it was about recognition, not gaming. Chairman Goins himself told the committee at a hearing that it was all about recognition, the Tribe had no interest in having a casino. Yet his private negotiations continued.

In December of 2009, Chairman Goins signed a contract with a gaming company, a contract that would make this company the exclusive lobbyist on the Tribe’s recognition bill, commit the Tribe to an effort to get the bill amended to include gaming, and give this company the exclusive right to build and manage the casino for the Tribe. Even then, most of the Tribal Council and I knew nothing about this deal. As far as I can tell, the only other people who knew about this deal were 3 members of the Tribal Council who signed it along with Chairman Goins – Speaker Ricky Burnett, Treasurer Pam Spaulding, and recognition committee chair Sharon Hunt.

Chairman Swett was the first person to tell me about this contract, shortly afer he was sworn in this January. I eventually saw a copy of the contract and was shocked at its terms. I immediately sought and was given a meeting with the full Tribal Council. It was clear at that meeting in February that most Council members knew nothing about this contract. It was also clear that Jimmy Goins and the 3 Council members who signed it were determined to get full Council ratification, at all costs. And they did, at a closed meeting out of the county and out of sight of tribal members. I did everything I could to stop this, but I failed.

Because of internal tribal opposition, the Tribe’s gaming contractor withdrew from the contract after a few weeks. But it took several more weeks for the Tribe to get a new lobbyist. While all this was going on, nothing happened on our bill. It cost us the single most important thing we had in the Senate – 3 months of valuable time. So the Tribe was left scrambling at the end of the Congress when there were very few opportunities to move the bill and the bill died.

It was this loss of time – all due to the Tribe’s dalliance with gaming – that damaged our bill. And for this damage, our former leadership is directly responsible. Did Chairman Goins do this alone? No, he did not. Beside the Tribal Administrator, the power structure in Pembroke also supported Chairman Goins’ efforts on a casino. We all know who those folks are – some are elected but most are not. None is accountable to the Tribe for their interference with the bill. Could Chairman Swett have prevented this damage? I believe so. I believe if he had opposed the contract he could have stopped the Council ratification. For whatever reason, he chose not to do that. Instead, he has continued the unfortunate tradition of conducting tribal business as if it were his own private business – he raises money and signs contracts in the name of the Tribe on the recognition issue but refuses to disclose the details of either to the membership or the Tribal Council. And is the Lumbee Sovereignty Coalition responsible for any damage to our bill? Absolutely not. They had nothing to do with the three month suspension of all activity on the bill. If anything, the fact that tribal membership attempted to hold leadership accountable proved that Lumbees know how to function as a self-governing community. The damage resulted directly from the leadership’s decision to hand over our recognition bill to a gaming company – while the Tribe was making this change, no one in Congress knew what the Tribe wanted, whether there would be an effort to amend the bill, or how to move forward.

Because we lost valuable time, our congressional delegation simply had very little opportunity get the bill enacted in the Senate. Congressman McIntyre managed to get the bill passed by the House, just as he had done last Congress. He did so by arguing the justice of the Lumbee cause to his colleagues in the House, one at a time. And Senators Burr and Hagan attempted to do the same but simply ran out of time and opportunity at the end of Congress. There was not a thing left undone that could have made any difference at the end of this Congress.

Our people deserve federal recognition. And I have kept my peace until the end of the Congress in the hope that our bill would still make it. Now that our bill has died, our people also deserve to know the truth. We cannot get the lost time back or our bill passed this Congress. But perhaps, with the truth, we can get something just as important – an accountable and transparent tribal government.