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The Signature
Back Down Home: Lumbe By Megan Mills, NAS Sigonella Public Affairs
W
ith his sandy hair and blue eyes, Engineman 2nd Class Jason Rogers is aware you may not recognize his Native American ancestry at first glance. In fact, he only learned of his Lumbee heritage when he was about four years old, but it has been an integral part of his life and military service ever since. “I look more like my dad. When I was a kid, I didn’t even know what a Lumbee was until my mom told me,” he said. “When we would come back down home, we wouldn’t really go out in town when I was younger. It wasn’t till I got older that I talked to strangers and realized they talked just like my Aunt Nelly, and I can’t understand a word she’s saying.” “Come back down home” is a phrase Rogers uses frequently when describing Robeson County and the town of Pembroke, North Carolina, which is where a majority of the Lumbee Tribe still reside. In fact, Lumbee members make up over 40% of Robeson County’s population. Rogers was born there, and though he moved across the state to Concord as a child, he returned frequently with his mother, who was also a member of the Lumbee Tribe. It’s also not the only phrase that stands out when you listen to Rogers speak. The Lumbee dialect includes some unique vocabulary; for example, to “make a mummuck of things” means to make a mess of things, and an “ellick” means coffee with sugar. Rogers acquired it during his frequent trips to Robeson. “The more I went down to home, I actually developed the dialect,” said Rogers. “Then I’d go back to school in Concord and my English teachers would get mad at me because I’m talking all types of medicine and they’d be like, ‘that’s not how you say things.’”
This language barrier has even occasionally caused issues during Rogers’s service in the Navy. “When I was in Japan, I was talking with a Haitian second class and a Filipino first class, and they’re yelling at me because they couldn’t understand a word I was trying to tell them, and then I had to break my own dialect,” he said. However, he has not broken his connection to his culture. Historians debate the roots of the Lumbee tribe; while some originally thought they descended from the lost tribe of Roanoke, now many believe they are related to Siouan or Cheraw tribes. Though the origins of the Lumbee remain uncertain, it is now the ninth largest tribe in the United States and the largest east of the Mississippi River. Today, its members are racially diverse, but they share both a dialect and a culture. Rogers learned about Lumbee culture mostly from his mother, Sherry Taylor Rogers, and grandfather, James Taylor, both of whom have passed away. However, it took him a while to fully embrace it. “I was proud of it, but I wasn’t really proud of it till I got the medicine wheel tattoo when I was 18,” said Rogers. “I didn’t really know what it meant until my grandfather passed away.” The medicine wheel, a circle divided into four different colored quarters, represents the cycle of life. According to Rogers, “red is birth, yellow is growth, then maturity is black, and white is obviously death.” Rogers also learned about his heritage through cultural events in Robeson County, including the play “Strike at the Wind,” which tells the story of the Lowrie War, and the annual Lumbee Homecoming. Homecoming is a large annual celebration that includes traditional dances
