Warren’s lessons about sovereignty
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s revelation that she could have Native ancestry has done little to help her cause, and shows that she fundamentally misunderstands what it is to be a Native American. Her misunderstanding has bigger implications than her identity and helps explain the broader debate around what it means to be an American.
Warren, D-Mass., underwent DNA testing and found that she could have had a Native American relative six to 10 generations back. She seems to believe that this finding validates her right to identify herself as a Native American (and Cherokee in particular), as she has done for several years. However, Native American identity lies primarily in citizenship. Warren cannot identify as a Native American because she is not a citizen of the Cherokee Nation or any other Native American tribe and is not eligible to be one.
Growing up in Ardmore, I took my own tribal citizenship for granted. I thought about being Chickasaw in much the same way that I saw myself as being part Scot-Irish or other European heritages. I thought of myself as simply an “American” and did not understand why I should identify as anything else. It was only when I moved to Europe and became an immigrant that I began to appreciate what it really meant to be an American — and a Chickasaw.
I spent nine years on a journey to become a British citizen, moving from one visa to another in constant uncertainty. Wherever I was (I lived in four countries along the way), I knew I was an outsider. Every day, I lived on the cusp of two worlds — who I was and who I could become. Little can describe the relief and joy I felt when I completed my journey, and I am proud to be British as well as American and Chickasaw.
What Warren, and many Americans, seems to miss is that being a citizen of a Native American tribe is like being the citizen of a different country. When the first Europeans came onto what is today American soil, they discovered a range of sovereign nations already there, each with its own language, culture and world views. This was not unlike Europe itself at that time, which helps explain why early Americans agreed to treaties with tribes that recognized the boundaries of several tribes. It also helps explain why wars erupted when successive American governments broke those treaties as their citizens moved onto tribal lands and claimed those lands as their own.
The fundamental issue at hand is sovereignty. Warren cannot claim to be Cherokee and make it so. We see this debate playing out on immigration, whether from early American settlers moving illegally onto tribal lands or with foreign nationals living in the U.S. illegally today. Sovereignty gives Native American tribes — and the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries — the right to determine who can be part of their community and who cannot. People cannot declare their own right to citizenship.
In the end, Warren would fare better by simply embracing her U.S. citizenship. The United States has enough problems to deal with that could benefit from her experience and expertise.