Warren rejects DNA test to settle Native American heritage claim
In interview, senator stands by family lore as justification.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is rejecting a Massachusetts newspaper’s suggestion that she take a DNA test to prove her Native American heritage.
“I know who I am and never used it for anything,” Warren said Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Never got any benefit from it anywhere.”
The senator, a potential 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has faced public questions over her citing of family stories to claim Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage since her first bid for office, in 2012. President Donald Trump has turned it into a racially tinged attack line, frequently referring to her as “Pocahontas” since May 2016, including at a Saturday night rally in western Pennsylvania. Last week, the Berkshire Eagle, a newspaper published in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, called the issue an “Achilles’ heel” for Warren and urged her to “take the spit test” to put it to rest.
On Sunday, Warren stood by family lore as justification for her claim. Her parents, she said, fell in love as teenagers in Oklahoma and eloped because her mother’s Native American heritage made her father’s family “bitterly opposed” to the union.
“That’s the story that my brothers and I all learned from our mom and our dad, from our grandparents, from all of our aunts and uncles,” she said. “It’s a part of me, and nobody’s going to take that part of me away.”