Elizabeth Warren Native American / Cherokee Controversy

One of the greatest controversies surrounding Elizabeth Warren is her claim to be Native American, specifically Cherokee and/or Delaware.

The issue of whether Warren falsely claimed to be Native American was raised during her campaign for United States Senate in 2012, and is an important part of her public political persona because of evidence that the claim was unfounded.

Contents
1 Warren initially denies knowing why Harvard touted her as Native American
2 Bloggers and Reporters uncover Warren's history of claiming to be Native American for employment purposes
3 U. Penn and Harvard Made Federal Filings Based On Warren's Represenations
4 The Genealogical Evidence Shows Warren Has No Native American Ancestry
5 Warren Did Not Start Claiming To Be Native American Until She Was In Her 30's
6 Warren Story About Her Parents' Elopement Cast In Doubt
7 Warren's Aunt Bea and High Cheekbones Story Cast In Doubt
8 Warren Never Associated With Native Americans
9 Boston Globe Defense of Warren
10 Elizabeth Warren DNA Test
11 Related Pages At Elizabeth Warren Wiki
12 References

Warren initially denies knowing why Harvard touted her as Native American

The controversy was sparked in late April 2012, when the Boston Herald revealed[1] that in the late 1990s Harvard Law School had promoted Warren as a Native American faculty member, based on a report in The Harvard Crimson in 1996[2]:

“Although the conventional wisdom among  students and faculty is that  the Law School faculty includes no minority women,  Chmura said Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren is Native American.”

The Harvard Crimson reported similar information in 1998[3]:

Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American.

Prior to the Herald report, the public was unaware that Warren claimed to be Cherokee.  In none of the public interviews[4] or testimony she gave prior to that point had Warren revealed that she was Native American.

In the introductory campaign video explaining “Who I Am,”[5]Warren did not mention being Native American.

When confronted by reporters, Warren claimed not to know why Harvard[6] was promoting her as Native American, and said that she only learned of it by reading the newspaper reports.[7]

Bloggers and Reporters uncover Warren's history of claiming to be Native American for employment purposes

Soon after the Boston Herald report, information was uncovered[8] by George Mason University Law School Professor David Bernstein[9] that starting in the mid-1980s, when she was at U.  Penn. Law School, Warren had put herself on the “Minority Law Teacher” list in the faculty directory of the Association of American Law Schools but dropped from that list when she gain tenure at Harvard in 1995.

Warren had not previously revealed these law directory entries.  The AALS directory was used as a recruiting tool[10] by law schools in that time period in order to identify, among other things, minority law professors.

According to Professor David Bernstein[11]:

“In the old days before the Internet, you’d pull out the AALS directory and look up people. There are schools that if they were looking for a minority faculty member, would go to that list and might say, ‘I didn’t know Elizabeth Warren was a minority,’ ” said George Mason University Law professor David Bernstein, a former chairman of the American Association of Law Schools.

Warren aides clammed up yesterday and refused to answer questions about why she stopped listing herself in the AALS directory after 1995. Around that time, Harvard Law School started boasting that Warren was their first minority female professor.

“That appendix strikes me as obviously allowing people to announce themselves as being members of minority groups in case people are looking for such members for whatever reason,” Bernstein said.

When confronted with this information, Warren admitted[12] she had filled out forms listing herself as Native American, claiming she wanted to meet other Native Americans:[13]

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, fending off questions about whether she used her Native American heritage to advance her career, said today she enrolled herself as a minority in law school directories for nearly a decade because she hoped to meet other people with tribal roots.

“I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it and so I stopped checking it off,” said Warren….

“Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born,” said Warren, who never mentioned her Native American heritage on the campaign trail even as she detailed much of her personal history to voters in speeches, statements and a video. “These are my family stories, I have lived in a family that has talked about Native American and talked about tribes since I was a little girl.”[14]

That explanation did not make sense[15] because the AALS faculty directory only listed Warren as “minority,” not as “Native American,” so putting herself on that list was not a way to meet other Native Americans. In fact, when Warren was a Harvard Law School faculty member, she was invited three times to speak to Harvard’s Native American student group and never accepted [16].

Later, reporters uncovered that Warren had represented herself to both U. Penn[17] and Harvard for federal reporting purposes[18] as Native American.  Warren herself never disclosed that she had represented herself to U. Penn and Harvard as Native American, that information was discovered by reporters.

The Boston Globe[19] reported that Warren received recognition as a “minority” law professor while at U. Penn Law School:

“The University of Pennsylvania, where Warren  taught at the law school  from 1987 through 1995, listed her as a minority in a “Minority Equity  Report” posted on its website. The report, published in 2005,  well after her departure, included her as the winner of a faculty award in 1994.  Her name was highlighted in bold, the designation used for minorities in the  report.”

Investigative reporter Michael Patrick Leahy of Breitbart.com uncovered that in 1993, when Warren was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Women’s Law Journal included Warren on a list of Women of Color in Legal Academia.[20]  It was the policy of the Law Journal to check with the persons on the list before they were listed.

Politico[21] uncovered that in 1997 The Fordham Law Journal listed Warren as Harvard Law School’s first “woman of color” on the faculty:

“There are few women of color who hold important  positions in the  academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or  industries,” the piece says. “This is not inconsequential. Diversifying  these  arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains  important for many reasons. For one, there are scant women of  color as role  models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there  were no professors who  were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color,  Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.””

Despite the listing of Warren as minority in the AALS Faculty Directly, the knowledge at U. Penn. Law that she was Native American and/or minority, the listing of Warren as a Woman of Color in Legal Academia in 1993, and Warren’s own self-reporting to U.Penn and Havard Law Schools that she was Native American, Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, a member of the hiring committee at the time, has asserted that he was not aware that Warren claimed to be Native American until after she was hired.[22]

Havard Law School has not released[23] the original hiring records to confirm Fried’s recollection.

U. Penn and Harvard Made Federal Filings Based On Warren's Represenations

Warren, did not meet the two part test[24] under Harvard and EEOC definitions of Native American, a definition which likely was on the page[25] when she checked the box.  That definition requires both actual Native American ancestry and cultural identification through tribal affiliation or comunity recognition.

Warren did not meet either part of the test, and even if she believed her alleged family lore, Warren should have known that she could not show cultural identification.  Warren has refused to release[26] her personnel records which would contain the forms she signed.

Warren admitted that she did not meet the legal qualifications to be considered a racial minority[27]

Q.  But you would not call yourself a racial minority?

A.  The legal qualifications, no.

Harvard and U. Penn also refuse to release[28] these employment records.

As reported by The Boston Globe,[29] Warren’s self-identification as Native American may have caused U. Penn. [30] and Harvard Law Schools to make false federal filings[31] with regard to faculty diversity.  Neither organization will release the records.

The Genealogical Evidence Shows Warren Has No Native American Ancestry

Detailed genealogical investigation by a group of Cherokee genealogists[32] showed that Warren had no Cherokee or other Native American ancestry.  The findings are set forth at the blog Thoughts From Polly’s Grandaughter[33] which based the research on over one hundred primary sources,[34] and detailed the findings:

The  team and I have done an exhaustive search on the genealogy of Elizabeth Warren.  We have researched ALL of her ancestral lines, but have only posted those she  claimed were Indian here in the blog. None of her direct line ancestors are ever  shown to be anything other than white, dating back to long before the Trail of  Tears.

The findings were detailed in the following posts, among others:

Warren herself represented that both her mother[35] and her Aunt Bea[36] were white on death certificates filed with the State of Oklahoma.

Initial claims by a genealogist in Boston that Warren was 1/32 Cherokee were withdrawn[37] as lacking evidence.[38] The Boston Globe had promoted the news that Warren was 1/32 Cherokee, but when the lack of evidence was discovered, The Boston Globe printed the correction in a section of the paper[39] unlikely to be noticed by the public.

All known evidence shows that Warren’s family always self-identified as white, and her great grandfather even was identified in local newspapers as white when it was reported that he shot an Indian.[40]

Warren Did Not Start Claiming To Be Native American Until She Was In Her 30's

Time and again Warren says she never asked[41] her parents for documentation, and even made that argument part of her campaign.[42]

Yet Warren did not identify as Native American as a child or when applying to college or law school.  Instead Warren waited until her late 30’s, around the time she joined the U. Penn. Law School, and then used that identification only in connection with establishing herself for employment purposes as a minority.

Warren’s explanation has been criticized[43](emphasis in original):

What does being a kid have to  do with getting documentation? Ms. Warren’s parents didn’t die until the 1990s.  She was an adult longer than she was a child during their lives. Are we to  assume being Indian was such an important part of their lives[44]it was never mentioned during  her adulthood?

So she didn’t ask for documentation as a child  because children don’t think to do those things. Ok, we will give her that, but what is her excuse for not asking for documentation in 1986 when she was 37  years old BEFORE she started listing herself as a minority in the legal  directories?  Her mother was still alive.  Ms. Warren’s mother, Pauline Reed Herring, the purported Indian, died in 1995.[45] At that time, Ms. Warren was 46 years old. She wasn’t a child any longer and she had already claimed to be a minority in legal directories for nine years, starting in 1986….[46]

Elizabeth Warren listed  herself as a minority without proof  for 9 years while her mother was  alive.  Asking for documentation as a child had nothing to do with it.

Warren Story About Her Parents' Elopement Cast In Doubt

Warren asserted that her parents had to elope because of hostility from her father’s family to her mother’s Cherokee and Delaware ancestry.  This anti-Indian sentiment from her father’s family was so severe that it lasted, according to Warren, throughout the marriage and “it was an issue still raised at my mother’s funeral.”[47]

This lore, according to Warren, was a fundamental part[48] of her family experience.  “I’m not backing off from my family,”[49] Warren has declared.

The is no evidence of Warren telling that elopement story in public, even when she discussed her childhood in great detail,[50] prior to The Boston Herald report and subsequent disclosures that she reported herself as Native American for various law professor employment-related purposes.

This story of elopement was cast into doubt[51] when research from Cherokee genealogists[52] uncovered that Warren’s parents were married in 1932 in a church not far from their home town by a respected and prominent pastor, who was unlikely to have performed ceremonies for runaways seeking to elope.  The witness on the marriage certificate[53] was a family friend.

Additionally, records were recovered indicating that Warren’s parents then immediately returned home where their marriage was announced in the local paper in a celebratory fashion,[54] with extensive descriptions of the prominence of the two families in the local business community.  The announcement mentions that the marriage was a surprise to many of the young couple’s friends, but said nothing about it being a surprise to family.

The marriage of Donald Herring and Miss Pauline Reed, two of Wetumka’s most popular young people, came as a surprise to many of their friend when they returned from Holdenville late Saturday afternoon and announced their marriage.

Both of the young people were reared in Wetumka and are popular members of the younger set.

Specifically as to Warren’s mother, the announcement detailed:

Mrs. Herring is the daughter of H.G. Reed, building contractor of this city, and has always been prominent in the social and church activities of the younger people and being a gifted singer has identified herself with the music lovers of the community.

The announcement then indicated that the couple are returning separately to their respective colleges for the next semester, and concluded:

The Gazette joins a host of friends in wishing for these young people a long and happy life together.

Warren’s own adult nephew, Mark Herring, when documenting family genealogy in 2002, called claims of Native American ancestry a rumor.[55]

Historical evidence also indicates that Warren’s ancestors were afraid of Indians[56] and her great grandfather even shot an Indian, which was announced in the local paper.[57]

The Washington Times reported[58] that “Elizabeth Warren’s story of racist grandparents disputed by Cherokee genealogist.”

While Ms. Warren may genuinely believe the story of her star-crossed parents, Ms. Barnes has argued that the documentation doesn’t back it up.

She cited the friendship between Grant Herring, Ms. Warren’s paternal grandfather, and Carnall Wheeler, who was listed on the Cherokee Nation roll and mocked in his Virginia Military Institute yearbook as an “aboriginal.”

Documents show that the two played golf together and that Mr. Wheeler attended a 25th anniversary party for the Herrings in 1936.

“Clearly, Wheeler experienced some degree of racism in his life due to his being Indian,” said Ms. Barnes. “Despite this, there is one person we know who did not have a problem associating with him — Grant Herring, the grandfather of Elizabeth Warren, the same grandfather she claims was racist against Indians.”

Warren's Aunt Bea and High Cheekbones Story Cast In Doubt

Warren asserted that her Aunt Bea told stories about the family having high cheekbones:[59]

Yet records uncovered by Cherokee genealogists[60] showed that Warren herself represented Aunt Bee[61] to be white on her death certificate:

Warren Never Associated With Native Americans

Warren asserted on numerous occasions during the campaign that being Native American was a fundamental and important part of who she was and that she would not walk away from her family’s heritage.  Yet at no point during her life did Warren affiliate with any Native American tribe, join any Native American organizations on campus or elsewhere, or in any way interact with any Native American community.

Even when asked repeatedly to meet with Harvard’s Native American Law Student Association (NALSA), Warren deliberately rejected the opportunity to interact with Harvard’s Native American student community [62].

Dr. Gavin Clarkson, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation who received both a doctorate and a law degree from Harvard while Warren was a professor, says he “personally invited” her three times to visit with Harvard’s Native American Law Student Association (NALSA), which he headed while attaining his dual degree. Warren, who had identified as a minority in law professor directories and was touted by Harvard as a Native American hire, never accepted his invites.

“I was on campus at Harvard for five years, from 1998 to 2003,” Clarkson said. “Warren was identified in the AALS law teacher directory as an American Indian faculty member.”

“Hi, we’re the Native American students on campus and it would be nice to meet the only Native American professor on the faculty,” was the message Clarkson was attempting to get across, but he says he was dismissed by Warren every time.

“I personally invited Elizabeth Warren, face to face, three separate times,” Clarkson said.

“I did it at least once per year for three straight years,” he said. “She basically dismissed me all three times.”

Warren only represented herself as Native American for employment purposes starting in the mid-1980s, then dropped that representation after gaining tenure at Harvard Law School in the mid-1990s.

Nonetheless, Warren insisted during the campaign that believed that she was Cherokee based on family lore,[63] but that family lore (including the story of her parents’ elopement)[64] was substantially[65] did not hold up to scrutiny by Cherokee genealogists[66]:

Boston Globe Defense of Warren

On September 15, 2012, The Boston Globe ran a 3,000 word lead article[67] regarding Warren’s supposed Native American ancestry.  This article is a primary source to which Warren defenders turn to support Warren’s claim of Native American ancestry and family lore.

Warren’s extended family has mixed opinions on the Native American question. The stories shared by Mapes, as well as Warren’s brothers and a number of her cousins, echo Warren’s assertion. But other cousins, some of whom also do not know Warren, say they know nothing of Native American blood in the family. According to one family biography, on file at the California State University at Fullerton, one of Warren’s relatives once shot at an Indian.

Months after the political flare-up, Warren and some of her family members remain unwilling to provide details on the subject. In a lengthy interview, Warren referred to stories about her roots that she says were frequently told at family gatherings in her native Oklahoma, but declined to share virtually any of them. “I knew it was part of our family,” Warren said. “It was part of what we talked about. . . . It was just part of who we were.”

The story was written with the cooperation of the Warren campaign, which made certain people from Warren’s background available to The Globe, and came just days before the first debate in Massachusetts’ Senate race.

A detailed analysis of The Globe article actually called Warren’s family lore stories into question, because among other things, Warren’s claim in the article was focused on a different family line than originally claimed.[68]:

Yet when one digs down into the actual facts in the Globe story, it actually is quite devastating to Warren, proving that contrary to her many recent accounts, Native American ancestry was not central to her life at any time prior to the mid-1980s when she claimed “Minority Law Teacher” status in a national law faculty directory….

Elizabeth Warren DNA Test

In October 2018,Elizabeth Warren released DNA results [69] purportedly showing that she can trace her Native American ancestry to a single ancestor “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” [70]

The results show that Warren is 1/1,024 Native American, or .09%. For context, the average European-American is reportedly.18% Native American [71].

As part of the DNA tests release effort, Warren released the following video [72]:

[Note – In August 2019 the Warren campaign removed the video above from YouTube. You can view the video here.]
.

.

The Boston Globe ran a headline in the print edition (unlike the online edition) suggesting the results proved Warren’s purported Native American ancestry.
.

https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/1051820933982359553

The Globe online edition was more circumspect in its commentary. [73]

Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test that provides “strong evidence’’ she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations, an unprecedented move by one of the top possible contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president….

Warren, whose claims to Native American blood have been mocked by President Trump and other Republicans, provided the test results to the Globe on Sunday in an effort to defuse questions about her ancestry that have persisted for years. She planned an elaborate rollout Monday of the results as she aimed for widespread attention.

The analysis of Warren’s DNA was done by Carlos D. Bustamante, a Stanford University professor and expert in the field who won a 2010 MacArthur fellowship, also known as a genius grant, for his work on tracking population migration via DNA analysis.

He concluded that “the vast majority” of Warren’s ancestry is European, but he added that “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor.”

Bustamante calculated that Warren’s pure Native American ancestor appears in her family tree “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” That timing fits Warren’s family lore, passed down during her Oklahoma upbringing, that her great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was at least partially Native American.

The Globe [74] acknowledged how weak the DNA findings were:

The inherent imprecision of the six-page DNA analysis could provide fodder for Warren’s critics. If her great-great-great-grandmother was Native American, that puts her at 1/32nd American Indian. But the report includes the possibility that she’s just 1/512th Native American if the ancestor is 10 generations back….

Warren provided a sample of her DNA to a private lab in Georgia in August, according to one of the senator’s aides. The data from that test was sent to Bustamante and his team for analysis. Warren received the report last week.

Warren didn’t use a commercial service, but Bustamante is on the scientific advisory board for Ancestry, which provides commercial DNA tests. He’s also consulted on a project for 23andMe, another major DNA testing company.

Warren said she was committed to releasing the report regardless of the results. However, Warren’s aides would not say whether she or any of her three siblings had previously done a commercial DNA test that would have provided them with some assurance about Bustamante’s analysis.

There were five parts of Warren’s DNA that signaled she had a Native American ancestor, according to the report. The largest piece of Native American DNA was found on her 10th chromosome, according to the report. Each human has 23 pairs of chromosomes.

“It really stood out,” said Bustamante in an interview. “We found five segments, and that long segment was pretty significant. It tells us about one ancestor, and we can’t rule out more ancestors.”

He added: “We are confident it is not an error.”

Detecting DNA for Native Americans is particularly tricky because there is an absence of Native American DNA available for comparison. This is in part because Native American leaders have asked tribal members not to participate in genetic databases.

“The tribes have felt they have been exploited,” explained Lawrence Brody, a senior investigator with the Medical Genomics and Metabolic Genetics Branch at the National Institutes of Health. “The amount of genetic data that is available from Native Americans is sparse.”

To make up for the dearth of Native American DNA, Bustamante used samples from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia to stand in for Native American. That’s because scientists believe that the groups Americans refer to as Native American came to this land via the Bering Straight about 12,000 years ago and settled in what’s now America but also migrated further south. His report explained that the use of reference populations whose genetic material has been fully sequenced was designed “for maximal accuracy.”

Bustamante said he can tease out the markers that these South Americans would have in common with Native Americans on the North American continent.

Bustamante also compared Warren’s DNA to white populations in Utah and Great Britain to determine if the amounts of Native American markers in Warren’s sample were significant or just background noise.

Warren has 12 times more Native American blood than a white person from Great Britain and 10 times more than a white person from Utah, the report found.

After the story was published and widely shared on social media, The Globe issued to its math[75]:

Correction: Due to a math error, a story about Elizabeth Warren misstated the ancestry percentage of a potential 10th generation relative. It should be 1/1,024.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181015141642/https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/10/15/warren-addresses-native-american-issue/YEUaGzsefB0gPBe2AbmSVO/story.html

The Globe then issued a second correction to the same article, in effect correcting their correction[76]:

Correction: Due to a math error, a story about Elizabeth Warren misstated the ancestry percentage of a potential 6th to 10th generation relative. The generational range based on the ancestor that the report identified suggests she’s between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American.


https://twitter.com/amber_athey/status/1051913331836096512

The DNA test shows that Warren may be less Native American than the average American of European ancestry[77]:

On average, the scientists found, people who identified as African-American had genes that were only 73.2 percent African. European genes accounted for 24 percent of their DNA, while .8 percent came from Native Americans.

Latinos, on the other hand, had genes that were on average 65.1 percent European, 18 percent Native American, and 6.2 percent African. The researchers found that European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American.

Ultimately, the Boston Globe concluded that “Warren’s DNA test was a long-term strategy based on 2020 politics.”[78]

If that was her goal, it didn’t go to plan.[79]

The Cherokee Nation has issued a statement[80] rejecting Warren’s attempt to use DNA evidence to prove she’s Native American:

“A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America,” Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin, Jr. said. “Sovereign tribal national set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for trial affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

https://twitter.com/JustinWingerter/status/1051943041576169476

Warren cannot declare herself Native American, for this is not something one can simply declare, as noted by Musa al-Gharbi[81].

Rather than acknowledging she has no meaningful claim to Cherokee / Native American heritage or identity, Warren has doubled down. She claims to have “won” the bet, and has demanded Trump donate $1 million to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. The president has refused, insisting he won the wager. Unfortunately, he is correct: although Warren did take the test it did not prove she is “an Indian.”

Genes, race and ethnicity are non-identical and the relationship between them is complicated. Warren is phenotypically white. She has no identifiable Native American ancestor, no clan affiliation, and no meaningful connection to Cherokee language, customs or culture. As a result, even if the DNA test had suggested she could meet the 1/16 blood quantum required by Cherokee for a federally recognized Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood(she was nowhere near this) — it would still not have established Warren is “an Indian.”

It was actually impossible for Warren to actually win Trump’s bet: Cherokee do not decide who is (or is not) one of them the basis of DNA; what matters are clan ancestry, tracing one’s genealogy to an ancestor on the “Dawes Rolls,” or being adopted into a clan by a Clan Mother. Elizabeth Warren fails to meet any of these criteria. As a result, she is simply not Cherokee — not even a little. DNA is irrelevant.

This point was powerfully driven home by the Cherokee Nation’s Secretary of State, who described Warren’s attempt as wrong-headed and insulting. He went on to say that Warren is “undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage” (neither Warren nor her team consulted with Cherokee leadership before conducting the test or releasing the results).

And so, rather than neutralizing Trump’s attacks, it is now has made it far easier to portray Warren as a phony: She appropriated Native American heritage for years in both private and professional settings.
Confronted with evidence that her claims were illegitimate (her DNA is comparable to the average white; she has no other empirical proof of heritage) — Warren nonetheless claimed vindication, emulating Trump’s “post-truth politics.”

Ultimately, Warren’s DNA reveal fell flat and underscored her problematic history of falsely claiming to be Native American by doubling down on her misappropriation of “the identity of one of the most victimized people in history, or at least in recent history, which is Native Americans.”[82]

Warren defended her decision to release the results in the manner and at the time she did, and according to the Boston Globe, expressed regret at misidentifying herself as a Native American but did not admit making an error[83].

Some Democrats have also criticized Warren’s timing on releasing the report — just weeks before the midterm elections on Nov. 6, when the party hopes to capitalize on a backlash against Trump to make inroads into the GOP’s majorities in Congress.

When asked whether, based on the results, she made a mistake identifying herself as Native American as a law professor, Warren expressed regret but stopped short of admitting error.

“There’s a distinction between citizenship and ancestry. I wish I had been more mindful of that distinction. The tribes and only the tribes determine citizenship,” said Warren in the Globe interview. “It’s their right as a matter of sovereignty, and they exercise that in the ways they choose to exercise it. I respect that distinction.”

Pressed again on whether she made a mistake decades ago in listing herself in directories of minorities in academia, Warren emphasized she was thinking about her Native American ancestry, not any sort of claims to tribal citizenship, when she made those decisions.

“The distinction is: I’m not a citizen, never have claimed to be, and I wish I had been more mindful of that 30 years ago,” Warren said, noting that she has cousins who are tribal citizens. “I wish I had been clearer about that — been more mindful, is the word.”

Whether she was attempting to score political points against Trump in anticipation of a 2020 presidential run or not, Warren has arguably weakened her position and, in the words of CNN’s Chris Cillizza[84], “might have actually made things worse.”

What Warren was trying to do with this video and DNA test then is show fellow Democrats that she was ready to fight back and had the firepower to rebut any attacks by Trump. A good idea — in theory! But, in practice, things are working out less well. Because Warren is not able to provide an answer on her Native American background that seems to totally and completely pass the smell test.
Prior to her big Monday rollout, we knew that she had told people she was part Native American because her mother and her mother’s family had told her that. Now, we have a geneticist saying “the facts suggest” that she has some Native American ancestry and the estimates of how much Indian blood Warren actually has range wildly — and could be as little as 1/1024th.

That’s not certainty. Not close. And the uncertainty remains something that can and will be exploited — by Trump publicly and by her likely Democratic opponents in more hushed conversations with key donors and party activists.

That fact means Warren’s strategy amounts to a swing and a miss.

This is born out in an October, 2018 poll: “24% say Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test exercise made them think less favorably of her. Just 16% say it made them view her more favorably.”[85]

Related Pages At Elizabeth Warren Wiki

In addition to the information above, the following pages at this Wiki contain additional information regarding the Native American / Cherokee Controversy:

References

  1. ^ William A. Jacobson, Elizabeth Warren is what?, Legal Insurrection, Apr. 27, 2012
  2. ^ Theresa J. Chung, Survey: Diversity Lacking At HLS, The Harvard Crimson, Oct. 22, 1996
  3. ^ Crimson Staff, Welcome Guinier, The Harvard Crimson, Feb. 4, 1998
  4. ^ Harry Kreisler, Elizabeth Warren Interview: Conversations with History, UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies, Oct. 4, 2012
  5. ^ Elizabeth Warren Campaign, Elizabeth Warren - First Ad: Who I Am, YouTube, Nov. 13, 2011
  6. ^ Fred Thys, Warren Doesn’t Know How Harvard Came To List Her As Native American, WBUR, May 9, 2012
  7. ^ Mary Carmichael and Stephanie Ebbert, Warren says she told schools of heritage, The Boston Globe, May 31, 2012
  8. ^ David Bernstein, Elizabeth Warren Herself Claimed Minority Status, The Volokh Conspiracy, Apr. 28, 2012
  9. ^ George Mason Univ. School of Law, David Bernstein Bio, George Mason Univ. School of Law, 2013
  10. ^ Noah Bierman, Records shed more light on Elizabeth Warren’s minority status, The Boston Globe, May 10, 2012
  11. ^ Hillary Chabot and Chris Cassidy, Law prof: Elizabeth Warren’s boast an edge, The Boston Herald, May 2, 2012
  12. ^ William A. Jacobson, Confirmed - Elizabeth Warren knowingly self-identified as Native American on law association forms, Legal Insurrection, Apr. 30, 2012
  13. ^ Hillary Chabot, Warren: I used minority listing to share heritage, The Boston Herald, May 2, 2012
  14. ^ Hillary Chabot, Warren: I used minority listing to share heritage, The Boston Herald, May 2, 2012
  15. ^ William A. Jacobson, Elizabeth Warren claims listed herself as minority to meet people but story doesn't hold up, Legal Insurrection, May 2, 2012
  16. ^ Brent Scher, Warren Neglected Harvard Native American Group As Faculty Member, The Washington Free Beacon, February 22, 2018
  17. ^ William A. Jacobson, Univ. Penn. Law also identified Elizabeth Warren as minority, Legal Insurrection, May 10, 2012
  18. ^ William A. Jacobson, It's Elizabeth Warren's and Harvard's federal filings, stupid, Legal Insurrection, May 31, 2012
  19. ^ Noah Bierman, Records shed more light on Elizabeth Warren’s minority status, The Boston Globe, May 10, 2012
  20. ^ Michael Patrick Leahy, Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren Listed as 'Woman of Color' by Harvard Journal in 1993, Breitbart, May 25, 2012
  21. ^ Maggie Haberman, Fordham piece called Warren Harvard Law's 'first woman of color', Politico, May 15, 2012
  22. ^ Michael Patrick Leahy, What Did Harvard Know About Elizabeth 'Woman of Color' Warren, and When Did They Know It?, Breitbart, May 30, 2012
  23. ^ Noah Bierman, Records shed more light on Elizabeth Warren’s minority status, The Boston Globe, May 10, 2012
  24. ^ William A. Jacobson, Elizabeth Warren dare not show the box she checked, Legal Insurrection, Oct. 10, 2012
  25. ^ William A. Jacobson, Elizabeth Warren dare not show the box she checked, Legal Insurrection, Oct. 10, 2012
  26. ^ Hillary Chabot, Brown camp pressing Warren for law school records, Boston Herald, Jul. 17, 2012
  27. ^ WCVBtv, Warren Says She's Not Legal Minority , YouTube, June 1, 2012
  28. ^ Noah Bierman, Records shed more light on Elizabeth Warren’s minority status, The Boston Globe, May 10, 2012
  29. ^ Mary Carmichael, Filings raise more questions on Warren’s ethnic claims, The Boston Globe, May 25, 2012
  30. ^ Noah Bierman, Records shed more light on Elizabeth Warren’s minority status, The Boston Globe, May 10, 2012
  31. ^ William A. Jacobson, Univ. Penn. Law also identified Elizabeth Warren as minority, Legal Insurrection, May 10, 2012
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  35. ^ Thoughts From Polly's Granddaughter, Elizabeth Warren's Mother Listed as White on Death Certificate, Thoughts From Polly's Granddaughter, Jul. 5, 2012
  36. ^ Thoughts From Polly's Granddaughter, Elizabeth Warren Said Aunt Bea Was White, Thoughts From Polly's Granddaughter, Jul. 2, 2012
  37. ^ William A. Jacobson, Boston Globe buries correction of Elizabeth Warren 1/32 Cherokee claim, Legal Insurrection, May 15, 2012
  38. ^ William A. Jacobson, Is prestigious genealogical society throwing media under the bus on Warren 1/32 Cherokee claim, Legal Insurrection, May 14, 2012
  39. ^ William A. Jacobson, Boston Globe buries correction of Elizabeth Warren 1/32 Cherokee claim, Legal Insurrection, May 15, 2012
  40. ^ William A. Jacobson, Elizabeth Warren's white great grandfather shot an Indian, Legal Insurrection, Oct. 4, 2012
  41. ^ CBS Boston, More Questions About Warren’s Native American Heritage Claims, CBS Boston, Jul. 3, 2012
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  44. ^ Brian McGrory, Warren: I won’t deny who I am, The Boston Globe, Jun. 1, 2012
  45. ^ Danny Chancellor, Pauline Reed Herring, Find a grave, Feb. 20, 2011
  46. ^ Hillary Chabot, Warren: I used minority listing to share heritage, Boston Herald, May 2, 2012
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  55. ^ William A. Jacobson, Exclusive - Elizabeth Warren relative researched ancestry, called Indian claim a rumor, Legal Insurrection, Jul. 11, 2012
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  58. ^ Valerie Richardson, Elizabeth Warren’s story of racist grandparents disputed by Cherokee genealogist, The Washington Times, March 11, 2018
  59. ^ Rob Capriccioso, Cherokee Women Try To Meet With Elizabeth Warren; Campaign Offends Them, Indian Country Today Media Network, Jun. 20, 2012
  60. ^ Thoughts From Polly's Granddaughter, Elizabeth Warren Said Aunt Bea Was White, Thoughts From Polly's Granddaughter, Jul. 2, 2012
  61. ^ William A. Jacobson, Serious doubt cast on Elizabeth Warren's Aunt Bea high cheekbones story, Legal Insurrection, Jul. 2, 2012
  62. ^ Brent Scher, Warren Neglected Harvard Native American Group As Faculty Member, The Washington Free Beacon, February 22, 2018
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  69. ^ Rebecca Berg and Eric Bradner, Elizabeth Warren releases DNA test with 'strong evidence' of Native American ancestry , CNN, Oct. 15, 2018
  70. ^ Annie Linskey , Warren releases results of DNA test, The Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 2018
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  78. ^ Annie Linskey, Warren’s DNA test was a long-term strategy based on 2020 politics, Boston Globe, Oct. 18, 2018
  79. ^ William Jacobson, DNA Disaster: Elizabeth Warren proved she doesn’t have what it takes to take on Trump, Legal Insurrection, Oct. 18, 2018
  80. ^ Sarah Dewberry, Cherokee Nation issues statement on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's DNA test results, KJRH, Oct. 15, 2018
  81. ^ Musa al-Gharbi, DNA is irrelevant — Elizabeth Warren is simply not Cherokee , The Hill, Oct. 19, 2018
  82. ^ William Jacobson, Elizabeth Warren misappropriated “the identity of one of the most victimized people in history”, Legal Insurrection, Oct. 15, 2018
  83. ^ Victoria McGrane, Elizabeth Warren defends decision to release DNA test, Boston Globe, Oct. 17, 2018
  84. ^ Chris Cillizza, Elizabeth Warren might have actually made things worse with her DNA gambit, CNN, Oct. 17, 2018
  85. ^ William Jacobson, Poll Confirms Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test backfired on her, big league, Legal Insurrection, Oct. 24, 2018
Last Updated: October 29th, 2019