Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

The Lumbee Tribal Council accepted the resignation of Chairman Purnell Swett on Thursday May 19, 2011. Sharon Hunt, the tribe's vice chairperson, will become the tribe's leader on Monday, May 23, 2011.

The council voted to accept Swett’s resignation letter of May 13, 2011, a letter in which the chairman cited health reasons for stepping down more than a year before his three-year term would expire. The resignation letter did not address the tribe's trouble with a recent U. S. Housing and Urban Development report.

The tribe decided to ignore Swett's letter telling the council that he had no intention of resigning “until such time as we have had adequate opportunity to respond and initiate corrective action as presented in the federal monitoring report of the Office of Eastern Woodland Native American Program of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.”

The council appointed two new members and several alternates to the tribe's Board of Elections. These appointed members bring the board up to the required five members for a special election to be scheduled.

The council also passed a resolution to reopen the tribal rolls on June 27, 2011. Enrollment for the tribe, which has about 55,000 members, has been closed since Sept. 21, 2006.