of a tribe that has had to endure this gruesome and awful experience, over 100 years now, the lumbee indians, the largest indian tribe east of the mississippi. recognized by the state of north carolina, 50,000 lumbee indians are not recognize, federally recognized, by the government because of bigotry, racism, and all the problems that these people had to endure. and by the way, they're still there in north carolina. over 50,000 lumbee indians are still not recognize. because the recognition process in my humble opinion, mr. chairman, is broken. i think we all understand historically the current system of recognizing, the process of recognizing native american tribes was never done by any statutory enactment of the congress. it was done administratively by the bureaucrats. with all due respect, i got nothing against the bureaucracy. this was done since 1978, 34 years now. and i would number distinctly years ago, mr. chairman, the very person who wrote the regulations, and bring out these separate criteria that the poor tribes have had to go through in order to the so-called recognized, he ca