Guest Speaker Emphasizes That Native Americans Are ‘A People of the Present’

During Exchange special emphasis program Nation’s Network’s Native American Heritage Month lunch-and-learn, guest speaker Milton Hunt had a recurring theme: Native Americans are not a people of the past, they are a people of the present.

“All too often, folks will stereotype my people based upon cinema, books, things maybe they’ve read and learned,” Hunt, a motivational speaker and member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, told an audience of more than 250. “What they fail to realize is: Who are we today? You could go into the annals of history and you could study and you could look, but there’s nothing like me sharing with you my experiences and where we’re at today.”

Pointing out that 78% of Native Americans live off-reservation, Hunt said that his parents left the tribal lands of North Carolina in the 1950s in search of more opportunities and a better way of life.

“If you been to a reservation or tribal lands, you may be familiar with some of the conditions,” Hunt said. “Some say they’re third-world conditions: substandard housing, lack of running water in places. Some people say there’s a lack of health care and education. I know that in my own pilgrimage to the reservation and tribal lands, I didn’t quite see prosperity. I didn’t quite see the American dream.”

Hunt’s parents moved to Baltimore, where he was born. He said he calls himself an urban Native American, but growing up off-reservation still had its challenges—many of them based in stereotypical ideas others had about Native Americans, not to mention other cultures.

“My whole life was a struggle growing up, having to identify,” he said. “Every day, I was asked by people, ‘Are you Hispanic? Are you Greek? Are you Italian? What nationality are you?’ I would answer, ‘Native American.’ ‘But you don’t have a ponytail and you don’t look like what we see on TV.’ And I began to feel a sense in my heart that I was misunderstood.”

Hunt said he had to learn to live, work, play and worship in an environment where people didn’t understand his heritage and who he was. He had to learn other cultures, he said, “because mine wasn’t the one speaking the loudest.”

But he also worked on a deeper understanding of his own culture, tracing his heritage back to the early 1800s and the Lowrie Gang, which some believe to be the founders of the Lumbee Tribe.

“The Lumbee Tribe was residing in a little remote town on the I-95 corridor going south called Lumberton,” Hunt said (Lumberton is roughly 45 miles south of Fort Liberty). “If you’ve ever driven through there, that’s our tribal lands. I knew, growing up, that this tribe was going to be important to me.”

Hunt and other members of the tribe formed a cultural center in downtown Baltimore, “to keep the eagle feather in one hand and the culture in the other as we marched out into the world to plant our flag and to provide for our families.”

Even identifying as a Native American could be a challenge, Hunt said, adding that Native Americans are the only group in the United States that must prove its ethnicity by blood.

“In order for the federal government to recognize you as a tribal member or a Native American, one must have blood of the tribe,” he said. “Most tribes, you need at least a 25% bloodline to be a tribal member. Now, there are 575-plus federally recognized tribes. Those are tribes that have petitioned the federal government, proven land, proven language, proven roles, proven history—and then presented it to nine members of the Indian Senate subcommittee to then have the federal government recognize them as being Native Americans.”

But first, he added, they must be recognized by their state—such as the Lumbee Tribe, which is indigenous to North Carolina.

In Maryland, where he grew up, Hunt has managed the tribal affairs about 42,000 Native Americans, lobbying for them both in the state Legislature and in Congress on behalf of health-care disparity and seeking more funding for the tribes. This, he said, underscored his theme: “I wanted to be a people of the present. I didn’t want to be a people of the past.”

Hunt is literally a card-carrying member of the Lumbee Tribe—his presentation including showing the audience his ID card, which he said can be used as a secondary form of identification. Being a tribe member comes with benefits—but they can be limited.

“We have some dental, some health care, and some vision, and we have housing and food,” he said. “But we don’t have a hospital. I really wish we had the health care to take care of our 50,000 or so tribal members.”

Hunt said that his father didn’t trust the government, which, an aunt told Hunt, had taken more than 100 acres of Lumbee land when his father was 13 years old. But Hunt added that lobbying the government—and speaking to a large group from the Department of Defense’s biggest retailer—was part of his theme.

“Sometimes, the belief systems and the things that we’ve learned, maybe it’s time for us to learn some things and be people of the present,” he said.

Another challenge of being people of the present, though, is getting others to recognize you as people of the present—which can be difficult because of the way Native Americans have been represented in sports, in social settings and in entertainment. He cited the example of the NFL’s Washington team, which went by a derogatory nickname before it changed its name to the Commanders in 2022.

“From an entrepreneurial standpoint, I understand that the guy paid for the team and can call it what he wants,” Hunt said, adding that the derogatory nickname wasn’t what bothered him the most. “What bothered me the most is that I would watch a game or go tot the game because I live in the area, and I would see people dressed in up in regalia, face-painting”—here he let out a “war whoop”—”and I would think to myself, ‘How disrespectful is that? I would never wear my regalia in a public setting. I would only wear it for ceremonial dress.’”

Sometimes, even a familiar cliché can be rooted in unconscious bias. “In social settings, I’ve heard people say things like, ‘Too many chiefs and not enough Indians.’ I know what they’re saying but I’m concerned with the way they said it. We’re people of the present. What are you saying when you’re saying that?”

Hunt concluded with a plea for more inclusivity, not just for Native Americans but for all.

“We have to stop this senseless divide over color, over ethnicity,” he said. “We have to stop this senseless divide based upon people’s education, upon location. Because at the end of the day, we all want the same thing. We all want love. We want to be accepted. We want understanding. We want the ability to provide for our families. We want shelter.”

This was the first lunch-and-learn presented by Nation’s Network, the Exchange’s special emphasis group dedicated to educating Exchange associates on the history of Native American Nations and the Federal Indian Trust Responsibility. Executive Vice President and Chief Logistics Officer Alan French is the group’s executive champion. Environmental Engineer Robert Largent III is program manager and Replenishment Allocation Specialist Tiffany Serrano is assistant program manager.

Associates interested in learning more about Nation’s Network can contact Largent (largentrm@aafes.com) or Serrano (serranoti@aafes.com) for more information.

Associates interested in joining a special emphasis program or who want to know more about the Equal Employment Opportunity, Diversity and Inclusion Office can click here to visit the SharePoint portal.

If you missed the presentation or you’d like to revisit it, you can watch it here.