The Newest Federally Recognized Tribe Wants Better Healthcare. It May Be On Its Own.

LUMBERTON, N.C. — Soybean fields surround Angie Lowery’s home in Robeson County, on a plot of rural land in southeastern North Carolina. Dozens of antique gas station signs, 20 feet tall, dominate her front yard. A framed re-creation of The Last Supper, Lone Ranger posters, and a 3-foot-wide tobacco harvesting basket adorn the walls of her home. A collector, Lowery over the years has amassed remnants of her region’s past. But behind the house, the 44-year-old’s backyard garden showcases her goals for the future, one that involves a long, healthy life with her kids: collard greens, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, red and white potatoes, kale. Like Lowery, many in the small towns of Lumberton and nearby Pembroke are citizens of the Lumbee Tribe who have dealt with heart conditions. The mother of four struggled with obesity and had to take insulin pills and shots daily. By when her first grandchild was born, in 2024, Lowery imagined her own life ending the way her biological father’s did: Daily insulin shots for diabetes. Kidney dialysis treatments at home. Dead of a heart attack at 63. She wanted her grandkids to remember her. “If I don’t get this weight off me, if I don’t change my ...