Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
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waterpotential.bsky.social
Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
@waterpotential.bsky.social
5K followers 760 following 370 posts
Lumbee scientist & engaged scholar. North Carolinian. Associate Professor at Duke studying water, climate change, environmental justice & Indigenous rights. Author of ON THE SWAMP, stories of Lumbee survival in a changing world. he/him. www.RyanEmanuel.com
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waterpotential.bsky.social
Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel @waterpotential.bsky.social · Jan 25
Misinformation about the presidential memo on Lumbee recognition is frustrating but not unexpected given the complexity of the issue. Here is a short FAQ followed by suggested readings to help clear the air.
waterpotential.bsky.social
68 years ago today, Lumbee people & their allies routed the KKK at the Battle of Hayes Pond. Read a brief summary in my unrolled 2018 Twitter thread below or a detailed retelling in Malinda Lowery’s 2020 Scalawag piece: scalawagmagazine.org/2020/01/ambu....

#CivilRights
#Indigenous
#Lumbees
waterpotential.bsky.social Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel @waterpotential.bsky.social · Jan 18
Today marks 66 years since the Battle of Hayes Pond - a key moment in Lumbee history and in the intersecting stories of Civil and Indigenous Rights. Read my unrolled thread from the 60th anniversary commemoration (2018) to learn more about it.
threadreaderapp.com/thread/95385...
Lumbees Charlie Warriax (left) and Simeon Oxendine (right) wrapped in a Ku Klux Klan flag seized during the 1958 Battle of Hayes Pond. Both men wink at the camera. Taken at the Charlotte Observer offices and published in Life magazine. (Oxendine is Ryan’s great uncle.)
January 18, 2026 at 2:28 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
Tomorrow at 9am - Live diacussion on WFAE about Lumbee federal recogntition with Jesalyn Keziah, Mary Ann Jacobs, and myself.

www.wfae.org/show/charlot...
The Lumbee Tribe is finally federally recognized. Why it matters and what’s next
After a 137-year struggle, North Carolina’s Lumbee Tribe has received full federal recognition. It fulfills one of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and opens new opportunities for the tribe....
www.wfae.org
January 13, 2026 at 2:56 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
Today (1pm EST) on Native America Calling, “Lumbee Nation secures its sovereign status.”

I look forward to this discussion & call-in show with academics Malinda Lowery, (Emory), David Wilkins (Richmond), and Carrie Schuettpelz( Iowa).
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 – Lumbee Nation secures its sovereign status » Native America Calling
With the stroke of a pen, the U.S. welcomes more than 50,000 new federally recognized tribal citizens. After numerous failed attempts, the Lumbee Nation is the 575th federally recognized tribe — the f...
www.nativeamericacalling.com
December 23, 2025 at 3:48 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
It's official - the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) has renamed itself the Advancing Indigenous Science and Engineering Society (still AISES). Membership voted to change the name earlier this year to better reflect the organization's geographic scope.
aises.org
AISES | Advancing Indigenous People in STEM
AISES is a national nonprofit organization focused on substantially increasing the representation of Indigenous peoples of North America and the Pacific Islands in science, technology, engineering, an...
aises.org
December 22, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
simpsonvos.bsky.social
I am especially overjoyed for my friend Malinda Lowery, who has given so much of her creativity and intellect to telling the Lumbee story with the rigor of a historian and the soul of an artist. You should read her book.
December 21, 2025 at 1:23 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
Great interview with journalist, author, & filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat on Lumbee recognition. I highly recommend clicking through the NativeNews header below and watching the 20-min recorded interview. 1/2
Next on Native Bidaské: Julian Brave NoiseCat on the Lumbee Nation’s 140-Year Fight for Federal Recognition
Native News Online presents a timely and powerful conversation on Native Bidaské between host Levi Rickert and acclaimed author and journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat, focusing on the Lumbee Tribe of No...
nativenewsonline.net
December 20, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
actualkatherine.bsky.social
Also. In celebration of the Lumbees finally receiving federal recognition, here's a taste of Dr Ashley Minner-Jones' EXTRAORDINARY work documenting and telling the stories of Lumbee Baltimore www.baltimorereservation.com
East Baltimore’s Historic American Indian “Reservation”
Learn about places and spaces important to American Indian history and heritage in Baltimore, MD, with a focus on East Baltimore’s 20th-century “Reservation”.
www.baltimorereservation.com
December 19, 2025 at 9:25 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
In other news... promoted to full professor at Duke!
nicholas.duke.edu/news/emanuel... #DukeEnvironment
Emanuel Becomes Full Professor
Ryan Emanuel has been promoted from associate professor to full professor in the Division of Environmental Social Systems. His scholarship sits at the intersection of hydrology, climate change, enviro...
nicholas.duke.edu
December 19, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
ncgovernor.bsky.social
The Lumbee Tribe has been in North Carolina since long before we became a state. The Lumbee were officially recognized by the State of North Carolina in 1885 and have fought for their fair share from the federal government for more than a century.
December 19, 2025 at 1:03 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
The 1956 Lumbee Act was amended this week, concluding a decades-long effort to have Congress strike discriminatory language that subjected Lumbees to nearly 70 years of partial federal recognition. But no longer. The Lumbee Tribe of NC is now *fully* recognized by the US—the 575th Native Nation.
waterpotential.bsky.social Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel @waterpotential.bsky.social · Dec 9
The reconciled NDAA includes a provision to amend the 1956 Lumbee Act by removing a discriminatory, Termination-Era clause & inserting new language to affirm the Tribe's federal status. Here are a few resources to help make sense of what's happening & why. I may post more later.
December 19, 2025 at 3:25 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
15 years ago today (Dec 15, 2010) I published an ope-ed on Lumbee recognition in @newsobserver.com. I hadn't seen this piece in a while & was struck that it foreshadows my work on Indigenous rights & #EnvironmentalJustice... several years before these terms entered my professional lexicon. #ncpol
Page header from Op Ed section of Raleigh News & Observer, December 15, 2010. Header reads "Other Opinion" and subheading reads "Native Americans in North Carolina: The Lumbee Recognition Bill." First section of article reads: It is painful seeing important legislation languish on the House or Senate floor for a year or more only to expire at the end of a congressional session. Multiplying that feeling by 61 sessions of Congress gives a sense of the frustration and looming disappointment felt by North Carolina's Lumbee Tribe, American Indians who have been petitioning Congress for federal recognition since 1888. Numerous recognition bills have been introduced since then, but none has been passed to grant full federal recognition to the tribe. A bill currently in the Senate (co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan) would fully acknowledge the Lumbee Tribe, bringing with it a measure of justice that has been denied for 122 years. Last week, Hagan said she hopes to amend this bill to legislation that will be voted on in the final days of the 111th Congress. The current Lumbee Recognition bill passed the House over 18 months ago and has been awaiting a full Senate vote since October 2009. Since then, six senators have been playing procedural games with the bill - using the so-called secret hold - to prevent a final vote. By their actions, these six lawmakers perpetuate a long-abandoned, failed federal policy toward American Indians known as Termination. Simply put, Termination (which lasted from the late 1940s to the late 1960s) aimed to extinguish government-to- government relationships between the United States and American Indian tribes, "freeing" Indians from "Federal supervision and control," in the words of Congress. The implication was that American Indians, deprived of tribal sovereignty, would assimilate once and for all into mainstream society. First half of scanned two-column Op Ed by Ryan Emanuel entitled "A persistent people's long quest for justice." Text continues from previous image: The federal government eventually abandoned Termination, but not before more than 100 American Indian groups were impacted, including the Lumbee Tribe. In 1956, Congress passed legislation acknowledging the Lumbee as American Indians while simultaneously denying them an official relationship with the federal government. This half-measure of recognition also barred the tribe from pursuing full recognition through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Lumbee are the only tribe still subject to this failed and abandoned policy, thanks to the anonymous senators blocking the current bill. The State of North Carolina, on the other hand, has officially recognized the tribe since 1885, albeit under three different names prior to "Lumbee." Some opponents of full Lumbee recognition have attempted to make hay of these name changes, but the historical evidence paints a clear picture that non-Indian policymakers, bent on imposing the racist hierarchy of segregation, heavily influenced the adoption of these names by the tribe. For the tribe, these earlier names served as a survival mechanism to preserve scant resources and maintain their identity in the face of an oppressive and absurd regime. It was no picnic, but in the end the institution of segregation, designed to repress and subjugate non-whites, tested and strengthened the tribe, preparing it to receive a name of its own choosing. That name, Lumbee, comes from the river that meanders through Robeson County, the principal seat of the tribe. The river is sacred to many Lumbee; its dark water and branching swamps represent life, death and mystery all at once. Bottom half of scanned two-column Op Ed by Ryan Emanuel entitled "A persistent people's long quest for justice." Text continues: I know many of these things because they were taught to me in the Lumbee home where I grew up, but I have learned even more from the painstaking research of scholars like UNC history professor and Lumbee Malinda Maynor Lowery and Appalachian State University library professor Glenn Ellen Starr Stilling. They and countless others have worked to assemble a rich body of literature on Lumbee history, culture and society that must be addressed by anyone challenging the tribe's identity and long journey to federal recognition. The tumultuous history of the Lumbee includes a number of events that all North Carolinians should know and care about. Lumbee ancestors led a full-on guerrilla war against corrupt Confederate and Reconstructionist governments in Robeson County during the 1860s and 1870s. They founded the first public college for American Indians in 1887 (now fully integrated into the state system as UNC Pembroke). Today's Lumbee elders delivered an abject drubbing to the Ku Klux Klan in 1958 at the Battle of Hayes Pond. Part of the social justice of federal recognition includes validation of these and other Lumbee achievements, including a refusal to fully assimilate or have our history and ways terminated. I speak only as an individual Lumbee, but I bear enough of our collective memory to discern, faintly, morality's legendary long arc. Its span may be longer than 122 years, but it is bending our way.
December 16, 2025 at 2:09 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
1st paper 👊 by Duke’s Skye-Anne Tschoepe maps North Carolina’s methane gas pipelines, shows racial disparities in routes, & explains how results of #EnvironmentalJustice analyses are sensitive to analyst decisions.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/... #ncpol @geohealthjournal.bsky.social
Fueling Inequity: Geospatial Analyses Reveal Racial Patterns in Vulnerability to Natural Gas Pipeline Impacts in North Carolina
African American and American Indian populations are overrepresented in block groups with high social vulnerability index and high pipeline density Half of the pipeline mileage in North Carolina ...
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 13, 2025 at 5:12 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
Our work is featured in today’s research news from @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social:

“A new study highlights major educational gaps among environmental professionals regarding Indigenous peoples, and shows how those gaps can impact real-world decisions.”

esa.org/blog/2025/12... #GeoSky #OpenAccess
esa.org
December 11, 2025 at 1:46 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
I tell students to mark the language that government agencies use to talk about Indigenous peoples, because it holds information about relationships & power dynamics. I have no insider knowledge, but I'm definitely marking the pivot from "Tribal Nation" to "Indian Tribe."
www.nsf.gov/policies/doc...
Policy Notice: Implementation of Policy Changes to Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) 24-1, Supplement 1
This notice implements several revisions to NSF's Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) 24-1.
www.nsf.gov
December 9, 2025 at 9:59 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
The reconciled NDAA includes a provision to amend the 1956 Lumbee Act by removing a discriminatory, Termination-Era clause & inserting new language to affirm the Tribe's federal status. Here are a few resources to help make sense of what's happening & why. I may post more later.
December 9, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
zoestodd.bsky.social
Other folks have written & spoken powerfully about Thomas King specifically.

What I query here, 9 years into the almost annual winter unveiling of a fraud in Canada, are the metaphysics of white colonial play-acting as native in the arts, literature, politics, academia.

Colonial mirror worlds.
November 27, 2025 at 3:55 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
Re-sharing a 2022 article from the journal Southern Cultures about 100+ years of extractive research on my Tribe. It's well known that extractive research can harm Indigenous peoples; my coauthor & I show how it can also lead to poor results & junk insights.
www.southerncultures.org/article/stor...
Stories We Tell
Telling one’s own story is a way of asserting identity. It is simultaneously a fundamental responsibility and an inherent gift for each human being—and is often one of the first casualties of…
www.southerncultures.org
November 26, 2025 at 3:16 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
⚡️ New Paper ⚡️
“Indigenous invisibility: Gaps in education about Indigenous peoples among environmental decision-makers” led by Dr. Brittany Hunt (Virginia Tech).

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #EnvironmentalJustice #Lumbee #geosky 🌎
Indigenous invisibility: Gaps in education about Indigenous peoples among environmental decision‐makers
Millions of Indigenous people belong to hundreds of Tribal nations and self-determined communities throughout the United States. Many of these groups continue to steward lands and waters that have sh...
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:24 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
Dr. Seth Grooms is an Indigenous archaeology professor whose research puts community first. Check out his recent presentation for the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources on the eve of the state's annual American Indian Heritage Celebration.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB7_... #Lumbee
Archaeology: An American Indian Perspective
YouTube video by N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
www.youtube.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:26 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
I found a timeline of my Interlibrary Loan requests from @ncsulibraries.bsky.social back when I was a professor at @ncstate.bsky.social.

There are inklings of my book as far back as 2010 before the dam broke in 2016-2017.
#Indigenous #EnvironmentalJustice #EnvHist #OnTheSwamp @uncpress.bsky.social
November 21, 2025 at 1:58 AM
Reposted by Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
ncartmuseum.bsky.social
As part of American Indian Heritage Month, we're looking back at the artists featured in last year's exhibition, "To Take Shape and Meaning."

Harlen Chavis Jr., a Lumbee freestyle artist, utilizes natural materials - pottery sherds, glass, copper, and gold to create culturally reflective jewelry.
November 19, 2025 at 7:46 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
New @nybooks.com essay by @robtsullivan.bsky.social interweaves reviews of On the Swamp & Wilkinson's Treaty Justice.

⚡ "If there is hope for the earth, it will depend in part on acknowledging indigenous sovereignty in the face of insatiable resource extraction." ⚡

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
The Third Sovereign | Robert Sullivan
If there is hope for the earth, it will depend in part on acknowledging indigenous sovereignty in the face of insatiable resource extraction.
www.nybooks.com
November 14, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel
drkyliesmith.bsky.social
The wonderful people at @uncpress.bsky.social sent me an advance copy of my book and I think I’ll have a little cry now. You can order it from here and it will arrive soon (use code 01UNCP30) for a discount uncpress.org/978146968920...
My hand holding a book called Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and civil Rights in the American South
November 13, 2025 at 11:33 PM
waterpotential.bsky.social
#OnTheSwamp has been out for ~20 months, and I've traveled quite a bit sharing stories from the book & connections to other research topics. The travel was exciting, a mix of familiar & new. But glad to have a break until spring 2026. 74 total events since last spring, 56 of them in-person.
Graphic showing the cover of Ryan's book with a superimposed list of destinations where he traveled to talk about the book and other research in 2024 and 2025. The list reads: Andover, NH Asheville, NC Atlanta, GA Bellingham, WA Chapel Hill, NC Charlotte, NC Clinton, NC Durham, NC Flagstaff, AZ Greensboro, NC Hillsborough, NC Pembroke, NC Pine Knoll Shores, NC Raleigh, NC Research Triangle Park, NC Salisbury, NC Southern Pines, NC Storrs, CT Vancouver, BC Washington, DC Waterloo, ON Winston-Salem, NC & Online #Indigenous #EnvironmentalJustice #Lumbee
November 13, 2025 at 2:19 AM
waterpotential.bsky.social
This article by @aknewsom.bsky.social is a good summary of last week's Senate Indian Affairs committee hearing on S.107 - a bill that would strike discriminatory language from the 1956 Lumbee Act.
November 13, 2025 at 1:46 AM