Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

This article explores how Lumbees can have their own culture when they enjoy southern cuisine and other aspects of southern culture, such as celebrating Thanksgiving and singing gospel music.

Lowery goes on to explain that the Lumbee people are not a stereotype. They are a combination of Indian, southerner and American. She explains that after Europeans set foot on America, they took the ways of the Indians, called them their own, and then questioned why the Indians tried to replicate “their” culture and cuisine.

Lowery gives examples of how Indians are southern outside of food, including the use of “y’all,” but she also states how that doesn’t take away from the fact that they are still proud Lumbee Indians.

She ends with this thought: “To understand food, as to understand music, or religion, one must not focus only on origins, but on exchange.”