Arvis Boughman is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Indian tribe of North Carolina. His lecture is entitled “Herbal Remedies of the Lumbee Indians.”

He works with adults and children, as an elementary school teacher and a speech/language pathologist. He has worked with children from many different Nations including First Nations children from the Lumbee, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, and the Sioux.

In 2003 he coauthored Herbal Remedies of the Lumbee Indians with Loretta Oxendine. In 2010, he authored, Chicora and the Little People, The Legend of the Indian Corn. This was the first children’s picture book based on the Lumbee Indian culture. Legends of the Lumbee (and some that will be) is a collection of ancestral stories from the Lumbee tribe, that Arvis has also published.

Arvis has been a judge and co-organized the North Carolina Indian Unity Conference Writing Contest for over 7 years and is a founding member of the North Carolina Native American Council on Higher Education (NCNACOHE). He also assisted in translating several Christian hymns, including Amazing Grace, into the traditional language of his ancestors, the Cheraw dialect.

His hobbies include reading the Bible, fishing, woodcarving, riding horses, gardening, learning about his tribe and sister peoples, and studying folklore, participating family activities, attending powwows, advocating for full Lumbee federal recognition and listening to old-time and bluegrass music. Arvis currently lives in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina with his wife Kim, daughter, Clara-Ann, and son, Micah.