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Anger at Elizabeth Warren spreads to non-Cherokee American Indians

Anger at Elizabeth Warren spreads to non-Cherokee American Indians

The objections of Cherokees to Elizabeth Warren’s false claims of Cherokee ancestry have made the news for weeks, first when genealogist Twila Barnes demanded that Warren tell the truth, and just yesterday with the formation of a new group of Cherokees demanding that Warren stop claiming Cherokee ancestry.

Warren’s response has been to repeat her mantra that she is proud of her Native American heritage, as she did last night to The Boston Globe:

Growing up, my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles often talked about our family’s Native American heritage. As a kid, I never thought to ask them for documentation – what kid would? – but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a part of who I am and part of my family heritage.

Now non-Cherokee American Indians are getting involved.

As detailed by Rob Capriccioso at Indian Country Today Media Network, there is growing discontent not only with Warren’s claims of Cherokee heritage but her refusal to speak with American Indian media outlets, Elizabeth Warren Avoids American Indian Media:

As the controversy continues to swirl around U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth  Warren’s self-reported Cherokee ancestry, she has dodged several interview  requests from the Native American press….

In the meantime, throughout the month of May, Warren continued to do interviews with the mainstream and local press, including national appearances on MSNBC.

On May 25, after several more requests from ICTMN, Harney responded by e-mail, “Thanks for your request(s)! I will keep you posted. Thanks for understanding. Have a wonderful weekend.”

To date, Warren has done no interviews with the American Indian press. There are dozens of tribal papers and national Native news outlets, including well-respected Cherokee outlets, that she could have reached out to in order to help calm the controversy and alleviate Native concerns about both her background and its impact on Indian citizens.

As detailed in the article, the outrage goes beyond the Cherokee community:

“If she really wanted to include her Native heritage in this election, she  should be talking to Native people through our Native media groups, so we can  see what she has to say,” said Rhonda LeValdo-Gayton, president of the Native  American Journalists Association. “It would also open up the communication lines  so she can listen to what issues tribes need help on, get acquainted with the  people, and to learn personal stories. I know personally, I am always willing to  give an interview with our tribal media groups, do stories, whatever is needed  to get those stories out there.”

LeValdo, an Acoma Pueblo citizen, has been taking note of complaints that  Warren has not done interviews with the Native press to date.

“Like others before her and probably after her, she uses Native status for  her own benefit,” added Ronnie Washines, past president of NAJA.

“Tribes can adopt presidents, adopt actors, and even allow people to have  great-great grandparents who are Native, but call upon [the adoptees] to open up  to Native media [and it] only compels them to revert to selective access,” said  Washines, a Yakama Nation reporter and citizen.

Lori Edmo-Suppah, a Shoshone-Bannock tribal citizen and reporter, said that  if Warren is Native, as she claims, “it seems the Native press would be the  first she would want to do interviews with.”

Added Edmo-Suppah, “Mainstream media rarely understands the issue of Native  identity, so it’s no surprise she seeks them first. It’s time she be honest  about her background.”

Capriccioso is an enrolled citizen of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, as are his kids.  Capriccioso sent the following e-mail to Alethea Harney, Warren’s campaign press secretary, demanding an apology from Warren for her misstatements as to her heritage:

Hi Alethea,

In Elizabeth Warren’s latest statement on her ancestry http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2012/senate/specials/elizabeth_warren_statement/ , she says the following:

“Growing up, my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles often talked about our family’s Native American heritage. As a kid, I never thought to ask them for documentation – what kid would? – but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a part of who I am and part of my family heritage.”

However, Native American children often know that to be a tribal citizen, documentation is needed. My own daughter, age 3, knows that for her to be a tribal citizen, she needs an enrollment card, which she received after she was born after our tribe enrolled her.

Why did candidate Warren make this mis-statement? Will she apologize for it?

Rob Capriccioso
Washington D.C. Bureau Chief
Indian Country Today Media Network

Capriccioso issued the following statement to me in response to a question regarding how the American Indian community is reacting:

As a working journalist, I can tell you that many Natives know that Warren has multiple problems with the statements she has made regarding her self-reported Cherokee ancestry, and many want her to correct them. Her high cheekbones recollection, her failed Native networking while in academia and odd explanations of it, the possibility that Harvard promoted her as a Native professor without any documentation perhaps taking a position away from another Native candidate who was more in touch with their roots, and the attempts by her campaign to paint Indian concerns as a non-issues have all been problematic.

An early apology by Warren may have sufficed. My sense is that at multiple levels we are beyond that point.

Update:  Cherokees to protest Warren at convention.  More on the protest from Michael Patrick Leahy.

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Comments

She’s endlessly “proud” of her native American ancestry but won’t even talk to Native Americans. Tom Wolfe couldn’t write fiction this scathingly absurd.

    Ragspierre in reply to raven. | May 31, 2012 at 2:33 pm

    What I find MOST improbable here is that Warren did NOT see this coming…

    the Indians, that is…

No act is too dispicable for a Kommiecrat

Midwest Rhino | May 31, 2012 at 2:01 pm

” … but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a part of who I am and part of my family heritage.”

Using undocumented Native American status to her advantage, and covering with a flurry of lies … is a big part of who Elizabeth is.

She wanted to meet other Native Americans, but never reached out to them, and now won’t talk to them.

NOW she gets all the opportunity to “network” with people “like her”.

This is good, right…???

(Heh! MORE popcorn, please!)

Frank Scarn | May 31, 2012 at 2:09 pm

The ENTIRE superstructure of Affirmative Action spits in the face of individual merit and achievement. Group identity is killing our spirits.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
-MLK

Taxpayer1234 | May 31, 2012 at 2:16 pm

My husband’s paternal grandmother was supposedly part Cherokee. That would make my daughter roughly 1/32 Cherokee, too–well, except for her reddish-blonde hair, hazel eyes, freckles, and fair skin…Dang, I guess all Cherokee have recessive genes!

BTW, I’m part Black Irish, so that makes me 1/32 Hispanic. Where do I sign up for all the minority freebies? It doesn’t matter that there’s no proof that Black Irish are part Hispanic. Gimme!!!

    LukeHandCool in reply to Taxpayer1234. | May 31, 2012 at 2:45 pm

    Taxpayer 1234,

    To kill a few racial-spoils system vultures with one stone,

    … when I was a biology major in school, I was the top student in a class on genetics (I was the top student in all my classes, but I don’t want to go off topic and detract from my point just to make the Professor’s eyes roll this time.)

    One day the professor made an announcement about an upcoming summer internship that sounded fantastic, and I thought, “It’s mine!” until he finished the announcement by saying it was only open to minority students.

    It was open to my two closest friends in the class … an hispanic guy and an hispanic girl, both from upper-middle-class families … but it wasn’t open to me … the white dude with the highest scores on all the exams, who was working seven days a week in addition to going to school.

    Anyway, you speak of recessive genes. It may seem counterintuitive for someone of Cherokee descent to be homozygous “bb” for eye color, as well as having fair-colored hair and skin resulting from a more complicated multichromosonal interplay of myriad hetero- and homozygous genes on both homo- and heterologous chromosonal loci, but that is all trumped by the dominant “on switch” gene, “BB,” known in the common parlance of the world’s leading geneticists as the “Complete Bullsh*t gene.”

      l grew up in So. Dak. l went to school with & knew several N.A.s. l fished & swam in the same rivers as N.A.s. While swimming once , a N.A. pissed on my head. Thats gotta make me at least 1/32 ?

LukeHandCool | May 31, 2012 at 2:18 pm

Bone … meet dog.

Elizabeth … meet honey badger Bill.

theduchessofkitty | May 31, 2012 at 2:21 pm

I don’t think the scriptwriters for “Bonanza” ever dreamed of a story like this!

Popcorn?

(Tom-tom, tom-tom, tom-tom, tom-tom…)

Warren is a lying sack of horse hockey. And yet, 35% to- 40% of the potential voters would probably vote for her.
P. T. Barnum was right.

And then there’s this:
http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1061135629&pos=breaking

She never saw this coming when she told just a little lie to further her career.

“Growing up, my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles often talked about our family’s Native American heritage. As a kid, I never thought to ask them for documentation – what kid would? – but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a part of who I am and part of my family heritage.”?

That one statement sums up the liberal mind for you – because I said so, that makes it true!

“…there is growing discontent not only with Warren’s claims of Cherokee heritage but her refusal to speak with American Indian media outlets..”

Warren played the victim card and claimed Scott Brown was anti-woman, now Native American journalists are doubling down with competition that their group has suffered more than another group…

And if she’d only opened herself up (to publicly hug it out) she would have possibly been welcomed as an adoptee

This is teetering on the psychologically deranged.

    janitor in reply to OcTEApi. | May 31, 2012 at 9:38 pm

    What’s also deranged is that I’d lay money that they family did NOT talk about her so-called Cherokee heritage. First, of course, because it wasn’t. But second, because back in those days, this kind of thing just wasn’t that big of a deal. Remember it was still America the melting pot, not America the celebration of identity politics.

[…] not just Cherokees who take exception, either. Per Legal Insurrection, she’s apparently been dodging American Indian media inquiries — which is curious, […]

[…] » Anger at Elizabeth Warren spreads to non-Cherokee American Indians – Le·gal In·sur·rec·… […]

“Spitting Bull”sh.t!

TrooperJohnSmith | June 1, 2012 at 10:46 am

Shocked? Really?

Warren is an elitist, and as such, doesn’t make brain connections between shame and lies. Remember, in the hot-house of academia, Warren said she was “Native American” and her fellow narcissists looked at her academic credentials and assumed she was honest. (Note: calling herself ‘Native American’ should’ve been a dead giveaway. Indians call themselves Indians!)

Also, one has to think that since the half-baked imposter Ward Churchill “passed” that all kinds of “White Indians” in academia were born. Who knows how many are out here, stealing the fruits of a legacy paid for by others.

Since all of humanity began thousands of years ago in Africa, maybe Warren can claim to be an African-American?