But that she is human. The DNA test was a mistake.

He's down there in the mud, after all, and I don't want to bend over too long - he might look down my shirt.

The test proved she had some Native American background, lore in her own family which proved to be true, and which she'd been challenged on. She's never gone around trying to claim that she was a citizen of a different sovereign nation, nor has she tried to obtain any benefits from it. She's simply detailing a complicated family history that many people share.

If she felt the need to apologize, so be it, but I really don't understand the problem. She's not trying to offend anyone. Aren't we all entitled to know our background?

Way too much is being made of this, IMO, and she keeps stepping in it. Let it go, let it go.....

It shouldn't have become a "thing", except for pResident Stupid's yammering about "Pocahontas".

Her background is about as slightly interesting to me as the fact that my kids have Nanticoke great, great grandparents.

Native Americans were coerced into enrolling on the Dawes rolls as a condition to end the reservation system that had oppressed them for decades. Once the rolls were closed that was the end of the opportunity for establishment of tribal membership. You also had a lot of freedmen and freedwomen who were allowed on the rolls because they associated with various tribes, yet had little to no Native American ancestry. Also there's lots of people who have strong Native American ancestry but because of the way the Dawes rolls worked have no way to establish tribal membership.

DNA and tribal affiliation are two different things. Demanding anyone to submit to such a test to prove identification is damn offensive to many Native Americans, myself included. I'm not bothered so much by Warren's doing so other than it's catering to the demands of a white nationalist who deserves nothing more than disdain for making such a demand in the first place. It's a perversion of what it means to be a Native American.

She was only trying to prove a family story. Because she was being mocked for it.

Why is trying to prove a family story the same as trying to become a member of a nation?How is this leap made?

Thanks

You are basically repeating the RNC, Breitbart and Trump's tweet, which is WRONG on so many levels.

As the Washington Post fact checkers explained:

"This basic error in understanding the test results was compounded by the RNC’s reference to the 2014 New York Times article, which was about a genetic profile of the United States, based on a study of 160,000 people drawn from the customer base of 23andMe, a consumer personal genetics company. With reporters believing that Warren’s genome was only as little as 0.01 percent Native American*, the article’s line that “European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American” made it appear as if Warren’s sample was even smaller than that of the average American. (*Note: an earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to the high end of range, 1.56 percent.)

Not so. Remember we said that the Bustamante study said she had 10 times more than the individuals from Utah? That’s the relevant statistic, indicating that her claim to some Native American heritage is much stronger than most European Americans.

In fact, the 23andMe study used a different methodology, so it cannot be compared to the Bustamante report. Moreover, the reference to an average “European-American” is misleading, because there are wide variations in the genetic makeup, with the vast majority of European Americans having no Native American ancestry. The small percentage of European Americans with more than two percent Native American ancestry are concentrated in a handful of states, such as North Dakota, New Mexico and Louisiana. But the majority of European Americans in the study have zero.
...
Warren’s Native American DNA, as identified in the test, may not be large, but it’s wrong to say it’s as little as 1/1024th or that it’s less than the average European American."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/18/just-about-everything-youve-read-warren-dna-test-is-wrong/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.839e7f0e013a

She was just drawing off family lore, she took a test, she's not claiming cultural identity, and to my knowledge, she's never denigrated Native Americans.


https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/dec/01/facts-behind-elizabeth-warren-and-her-native-ameri/

The fact that she let Trump get under her skin about it, though, shows a political naivete that I don't like.

Qnd honestly don't get the problem, if NAs are not interested in their genetic history fine, but a lot of people are, and that doesn't mean they are in search of "identity". Further, one person quoted in the piece come off as anti-science, stating "...why would we be so interested in where scientists think our genetic ancestors came from?" What a dumb thing to say.

Many NAs see the test as something she took for no other reason than to further her political career.

would dog her like the false claims of Kerry's cowardice dogged him. Candidates need to address these issues forcefully.

When the Cherokee just recently in 2011,tried to expel the descendants of the Cherokee African American slaves if they could not proves they had Cherokee "blood", Obama's attorney general Eric Holder prevented it.

https://www.npr.org/2011/09/19/140594124/u-s-government-opposes-cherokee-nations-decision

I don't think anyone has the right to tell anyone else they can't try to verify stories they have been told about their family history.


https://www.kunc.org/post/us-government-opposes-cherokee-nations-decision#stream/0

Having grown up in OK and being a member of the Cherokee Nation, her family story is one that seems to be shared by every third person you meet in the state. Where the problem comes is the perception (no matter how vague) that a DNA test in any way "proves" your ancestry or tribal affiliation.

The markers in DNA testing have been assigned based on the information available in their databases, i.e. they look at people identified as Southern European and that DNA profile is used to tease out probabilities that an unknown sample might share similar origins.

Native Americans rightly note that the available sample size in the databases for Native Americans is small and that certain group characteristics are shared with Asian populations owing to the likelihood of a migration across a Siberia/Alaska land bridge in the past. These all make definitive attributions speculative at best.

Federally recognized tribal membership is based on verifiable bloodline documents linked back to census records dating to the late 19th and early 20th century. The Bureau of Indian Affairs takes birth documents linking a person back to an individual on a registered census then will issue a Certified Degree of Blood which can then be sent to the individual tribal governments and they will determine whether you are qualified to be registered as a member of that tribe. It's not a simple process, but it's the only way to get recognized by your tribe. My registration was signed by Wilma Mankiller, Principal Chief, in 1990 even though I knew my grandmother was in the 1906 Dawes Rolls and I had received BIA college educational support in the mid 70's.

Now, with that being said, DNA used to verify specific parentage is much more reliable. Don't know that the BIA is accepting this type of evidence currently, but if a person lacks paperwork showing parentage, DNA showing direct descent might be considered, i.e. a child that was adopted and can be matched to a parent that is a tribal member.

Bottom line: It's complicated!

Trump disputed that she had Native ancestry, so she proved she did with her DNA test, just like Obama proved he was born in the U.S. by producing his long form birth certification in response to Trump's birther accusations. Yet nobody gave Obama shit for that. But Warren catches all kind of shit for proving Trump a liar. I don't get it.

Warren didn't claim she was a tribe member, but talked about the Cherokee ancestor family story. Conflation in the media and Trump's blathering with minimal nuance from Warren herself allowed a lot of misinformation and unvarnished racism to swirl.

Many Native Americans gave it a pass, some didn't. Obviously Trump is terrible, Warren could have been better.

I've heard and seen much worse, but won't judge anyone defending their turf.

BTW, there were people on DU that thought Obama did too much in response to Trump.

Last edited Fri Feb 1, 2019, 06:58 PM - Edit history (1)

She stated she was proving that she had Native American ancestor and that is exactly what she did. It is the media and Trump that invented the rest.

...a matter of respect.

I think it shows a grace that is lacking in the current administration.

That is how I read it anyway.

heritage or Native American sovereign nations. It was just to mock a woman, belittle, and sneer.

My husband did DNA testing (he's a white guy, immigrant parents during WWII) and it was very interesting, useful for the family, and connecting some dots. A personal decision.

If you criticize our *president* he will take revenge, and the media has a field day for "entertainment" allowing others to also mock and sneer. Fuck that.

and still do not understand the problem. She never asked to become a tribal member.

What is the issue, really?

I think this whole thing was completely blown out of proportion and the criticism against her is ridiculous. She is not my favorite candidate, although I like her politics, but this is absurd.

This should really be a non-issue.

To resign bothers me as it shows a lack of judgement to be President.

I like her, but things like this prove that she doesn't have the full political skills a president needs. That's why experience in elected office is so important, and hers is somewhat limited. She's more of a professor type.

Should a Trumphumper challenge her, she should tell them that at least she didn't have to produce a birth certificate in a court of law to prove her parentage didn't include an orangutan (Bill Maher case).

Please stop digging, Senator.

apologies show "weakness". expect trump to needle her about it.

trump's bullying works. it baits smart kids into stupid fights.

conversely, NOT taking that test would have led to her defeat in the general. he'll never drop it, he'll never stop the slander. there's no cost he's ever paid for gaslighting.

when he stopped slandering Obama with the birther bullshit, he simply said "I don't talk about that anymore", and that was the end of that. no follow up from the press, no consequences, no apologies.

on to the next target.

Shewasright to take the DNA test and right to apologize in the way she did.

now she's getting attacked on her left flank for it. she will not win the nomination, and I will point squarely at the the-good-is-the-enemy-of-the-perfect progressives as responsible.

meanwhile, trump gleefully welched on a $1,000,000 bet, with zero consequences.

Warren should have ignored Trump.

sure, obama was elected twice despite the birther smear, but trump never paid a price for that slander. in fact, he was rewarded with the presidency.

wait till President Bullshit starts on Sen. Harris. they already have the smear ready to go.

the GOP knows that
1. only Power counts, and money buys power.
2. hypocrisy is meaningless to their voters. stigginit is what matters.
3. they can always count on the Left to form a circular firing squad.

Yet when Warren refutes Trump's lies with documentation, she is accused of bad judgment and "taking the bait." But you know if she didn't prove it, Trump's lie would follow her to the general election. She did the right thing to get a DNA test.

Look at the "Related Coverage" they list underneath this latest:

Elizabeth Warren Has a Native American Ancestor. Does That Make Her Native American?
Oct. 15, 2018

Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Results Draw Rebuke from Trump and Raise Questions
Oct. 15, 2018

Why Many Native Americans Are Angry With Elizabeth Warren
Oct. 17, 2018

Elizabeth Warren Stands by DNA Test. But Around Her, Worries Abound.
Dec. 6, 2018


They just want to make her wrong in every way.

NYT is found to have paid evening ladies to have sex with Hitler.

NYT helped build the hide away caves for North Korea's bombs.

NYT involved in murder of Native America in Oklahoma for oil.

If challenged in a debate on this she should say,

"President Trump accused me of lying about my family heritage. I took the test to prove I told the truth, and that's what it showed. I never claimed to be a member of a tribe.

My opponent, by contrast, has been proven by numerous fact checkers to be the most compulsive liar in the history of the presidency. So if we're going to talk about truthfulness, voters should be far more concerned about a president who has earned Pinnochio award for his many lies than about the amount of Native American ancestry indicated in my DNA test."

To me, this is not much different than the birthers or calling Obama a Muslim or death panels.

It was a smear job by the right.

I do not blame her for trying to clear it up.

I do not understand why she should apologize.

The racist calling her Pocahontas owes the apology.

Why does the media equate an outrageous racist taunt from the President to what she did? He's the one who should be getting hammered. Not her.

but then as soon as she announced test results showing she was justified in claiming some ancestral heritage, she got slammed for that. Perhaps she could have announced her DNA results differently, but seems like regardless of what she did, the issue would have drawn criticism.

proved she has Cherokee ancestry. The people claiming that she is claiming tribal membership need to shut the hell up, because she isn't making any such claim. Likewise the people making fun of her because she claimed Cherokee ancestry, which she does, in fact, have.

She never said anything but the truth, and we are coming up on, what, 10 years of her being pilloried for it?

Who knew there were MAGAt Cherokee people who would pull this shit?

See my other post for more detail.

Such generalities are the crux of the tribal complaints.

Warren, who was able to back up her family lore with a DNA test, they sublimely miss the big picture ie who has their best interests at heart ? Warren or Trump ? Trump has hated Native Americans for decades. Tribal leaders could have stuck one back to Trump, embraced Warren while getting the general point out there, and have an influential Democrat pulling for them.

The only reason I know of is that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat.

rather than the candidate who is proud to have native ancestry and would restore tribal government-to-government relations to their Obama-era level. Just a thought.

the white Europeans settlers concept,,,,,,, not indigenous people!
Trump bait is right on,,,,,
Did Trump buy the NYT?

What she needs to apologize for is throwing Senator Franken under the bus without an ethics hearing.

See: https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/06/politics/senators-al-franken-resignation/index.html

/sarcasm

While the DNA test indicated she did have some Native American ancestry, she "reaffirmed that she is not a Cherokee Nation citizen or a citizen of any tribal nation.”

The fact that she took the DNA test is a private matter. Disclosing the results publicly was her decision.

It is amazing that Trump, a man that refuses to release his tax returns, has scrubbed his current wife's academic resume, and lies about the most trivial of things can demand for others to release their taxes, their college records, their health records, their military records, etc. and gets away with it.

The story doesn't exactly make that clear.

This is going to dog er every bit as hard as "Hillary's emails" and I don't think she'll ever be elected. Shame, I like her a lot. I hope she holds her Senate seat because i would love to have her setting the voting agenda there someday

unbiased media they would stop talking about it and report on really important stuff instead. Controversy drives ratings up but isn't necessarily good for the country.

I understand a bit the history of a controversy on aboriginal rights and benefits being tied to claiming part ancestry etc... but for gawds sake, doesn't anyone use common sense? Obviously Warren wasn't trying to get some kind of monetary benefit out of the claim in the first place. It was an ad hock anecdote in some speech which I'm sure she never thought would blow up as it did.

For me, its the same as someone claiming to have, say, Italian blood, and being mocked about it by an idiot with power, and feeling pressured to produce evidence. Which once done, made it all worse with the Italian community speaking out how they didn't like her using a heritage test like that. And so she apologizes...... for finding out if she had any Italian blood in her. Shocking!!!

I just don't get the hand wringing.

… some Native Americans did not like the DNA test. I think I get that, now... However, I also see Elizabeth Warren's view. I have no Native American ancestry, but I would be proud if I had a little - and I admire her grandparents for keeping that part of her past alive. Apparently, she did not really gain any economic advantage, so this "issue" is really dumbfounding.

Anyone who takes offense is wrong.

She did NOT do it to claim a tribal membership, just to validate family stories of Native American ancestry. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

In this country, lots of people have similar family stories, and sometimes the DNA test confirms them, sometimes it doesn't. No one has any business getting offended at someone else's DNA results.

This area (NW North Carolina, NE Tennessee, SW Virginia is sort of a loose parallel to what was once proposed to be renamed "The State of Franklin." It is not uncommon at all for those people whose families have been here a long time to have this sort of thing handed down to them. These claims existed way before there was DNA testing and most people I know that have made such claims do not seem that interested in nailing it down one way or another. They just trust that Mamaw and Papaw were correct. What difference does it make?


The main problem is that the MSM seems to think Ms. Warren's claim is some sort of misstep that is somehow the equivalent of Trump's constant lying, inept attempts to govern and his outright treason. It's all bullshit and should never have been even the tiniest blip on anyone's radar. Unfortunately, the one thing that Trump seems to do well is manipulate the media.

It was a dumb move on multiple levels.

She should not have apologized because there was nothing for her to apologize for doing. She claimed she thought she had Native American heritage, someone challenged her, and she set out to prove her claim. Did Warren ever claim that her DNA test made her a member of any Native American nation?

to believe that she was part Native American. Like many of us are told stories as kids that we have no way of knowing the trut about until we become and adults and search for the truth. I had been told that my grandmothers on both sides of my family were Native Americans or at least half, having one of their parents a Native American.

So I took a DNA test to learn more about it. Found out that I have only a scant trace of Native American DNA but lots of Irish, German, African, and Chinese. Now, does this mean i was lied to? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the man I was told was my father was not my father or maybe my mother was not my birth mother? Who knows? I am an only child so there is that for not much help.

I can't fault Elizabeth for taking the test or for what she said she had been told and believed.

Unfortunately this whole issue seems more like a political stunt designed to inoculate Sen Warren from Trump’s insults prior to rolling out her campaign. In that light it feels more cynically calculated than any sort of “Gee I wonder what I’ll find.” open inquiry into her family history.

Of course I have no idea what was running through her mind, but as they say, perception is everything. Her apology just adds fuel to that fire.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Senator Warren, but this whole thing seems to have blown up in her face. She is not getting the best political advice for any run at the Oval Office.

some native people for being a bit sensitive about something that might look like this to them.

Maybe anthropologists aren't robbing artifacts and digging up graves anymore but there are still authors, academics, scads of new age charlatans falsely claiming to be native and/or taking some of the spiritual practices and charging non-Indians lots of money for it - it really is a thing.

I honestly don't think she was claiming to BE native American, just noting that there was an ancestor in the distant past. I hope Ms. Warren understands where these folks are coming from though, and can successfully make amends and move beyond this.

My family has black and white pictures of an ancestor who was a Cherokee woman. It's stupid that they're holding the DNA test against Warren. It's genealogy; not a poke at Cherokee culture. Meanwhile Trump calls her Pocahontas but you never hear about him getting shit for it.

is ridiculously scrutinize the leaders with progressive ideas while downplaying the outrages of racist authoritarians.(Oh he's just a symptom not the disease........ It was that identity politics not addressing economic insecurity.....Obaaaama just didn't do nothing, blah,blah,blah) What really infuriates me is seeing the left do this as much as the right. Progressives in the service of the GOP gets really old.

Trump is a piece of garbage who works hard to make others miserable.

No comparison.

And later
identifying herself as a minority in a listing of law professors.

know how it is these days. Im totally open to new info but just need to confirm its veracity.

"Before this controversy arose in 2012, there is no account that Warren spoke publicly of having Native American roots, although she called herself Cherokee in a local Oklahoma cookbook in 1984.

There is no dispute that Warren formally notified officials at the University of Pennsylvania and then Harvard claiming Native American heritage after she was hired."

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/dec/01/facts-behind-elizabeth-warren-and-her-native-ameri/

"US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren - who said Friday she didn’t realize Harvard Law School had been promoting her as a Native American faculty member in the 1990s - was listed as a minority professor in American law school directories for nine years before she landed at Harvard, documents show......

The listings were based on professors reporting that they were members of a minority group, the directory says."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/04/29/elizabeth-warren-was-listed-minority-professor-law-directories-and/yBZTdrH3Qt8xRu6KZkLDlO/story.html

or any other identifiable ethnic entity which may be offended by the implied association (or even perhaps, lack of same).
Cramer Sports Medicine used to make, maybe they still do, a product called Tuf-Skin.

Difference was they didn't announce the results to the MSM

What is wrong about getting a DNA test? It’s commonplace these days. She should not have to apologize. I’m disappointed she doesn’t hit back harder against ridiculous criticisms.