Warren’s Cherokee heritage is a joke
Her claim is an insult to Native Americans like me
The day after a CNN public opinion poll ranked Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren fourth among possible Democratic 2020 hopefuls, she released the results of a DNA test along with a campaign-style ad defending her family’s story of Cherokee heritage.
Warren’s decision to cave to President Donald Trump’s demands was an affront to many Native Americans, who have long stated that DNA tests cannot be used to claim Native heritage or relationship to a tribe. Cherokee Nation agrees. The tribe, the largest in the U.S., called Warren’s use of a DNA test “inappropriate and wrong,” and said she “is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”
Warren’s position presents Democrats with two options: Ignore concerns raised by Native Americans, or hold a politician accountable for behavior that a marginalized group has labeled harmful. As a Democrat, Cherokee Nation citizen and Native woman, I hope both party leaders and average blue-voting citizens will choose the latter.
As Cherokee genealogists have researched, and I have repeatedly written, Warren descends from a long line of well-documented white people. While Warren no longer identifies herself as Native American, she still publicly claims that her family is “part” Cherokee. There is nothing innocent about a white woman claiming her ancestors experienced genocide and ethnic cleansing — an inescapable fact for Cherokee families — when they did not. Why is this so hard to understand?
For the average American, the barrier is lack of exposure to real information about Native identity, Cherokee history and tribal sovereignty. Rather than providing much needed education, the news coverage over the Warren debate perpetuates harmful myths about Native identity — such as blood quantum, DNA tests and family lore — while real information about one of the most invisible and underrepresented groups in America is rarely published.
Rather than correcting harmful misconceptions about Native identity, Warren perpetuates them. She argued in 2012 that her family knew they were Native because some relatives had high cheekbones, “like all of the Indians do.” In publishing this DNA test, she spreads a dangerous myth that Native identity is determined by racial biology — a position the right uses to attack tribal sovereignty and Native rights.
The DNA test Warren took only shows (and not conclusively) that she may have an ancestor who was indigenous to Mexico, Colombia or Peru. Using this to support her claim of Cherokee heritage is false based on the science, and keeps alive a common and racist stereotype that Native Americans are a homogeneous group.
In the USA alone, there are 573 distinct and sovereign tribes that are federally recognized. Native Americans are not a racial category. They are a political group whose rights as citizens of indigenous nations are based on our treaty relationship to the United States.
This long established political status is under an existential legal threat. Earlier this month, a Republican-appointed judge in Texas struck down the landmark Indian Child Welfare Act, calling it a race-based statute that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. The Trump administration has similarly ruled that Native Americans are not exempt from Medicaid work requirements because — even though our access to health care is guaranteed by our treaty rights — they can’t receive special treatment based on race.
The legal structure defending Native rights is on fire. Warren, in a tone deaf and politically motivated move, just poured gasoline on the flames. What is at stake for Warren and Democrats is who will be the next president of the United States. What is at stake for the Cherokee Nation is the future of our tribe, which generations of our ancestors have fought to keep intact.
I have said in the past that if Warren renounced her claims of Cherokee ancestry, I would support her. At this point, I can’t. This debate has done enough harm to Native Americans that it simply needs to stop. I have voted blue in every election since casting a ballot for John Kerry when I was 18, but I cannot back a candidacy that comes at the expense of my people. Democrats who support Native rights need to get behind a different candidate.