As reported in The Boston Herald, four Cherokee women, including genealogist Twila Barnes, are traveling to Massachusetts this week requesting a meeting with Elizabeth Warren personally to express their concerns about Warren’s false claim to be Cherokee:
Four outraged Cherokee activists who say Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has ignored their emails and phone calls will trek to Boston this week in hopes they can force a meeting with the Democratic Senate candidate over her “offensive” Native American heritage claims.“It’s almost becoming extremely offensive to us,” said Twila Barnes, a Cherokee genealogist who has researched Warren’s family tree. “We’re trying to get in contact and explain why her behavior hurts us and is offensive, and she totally ignores that. Like we don’t exist.” …What they want, Barnes said, is for Warren to sit down with them and to stop claiming she’s a Native American.“We would like to see her look at the documentation and admit there’s no Indian ancestry there and then apologize,” Barnes saud. “Hear us. Acknowledge us. Know that she’s brought us into this. We didn’t bring ourselves into this. This whole trip was planned to get a meeting with her.”
Per The Herald article, however, Warren only will have a staffer meet with them (and even that agreement was only after The Herald reached out to the campaign).
I spoke with Barnes after The Herald article was published, and while the group would meet with a Warren staffer if that is all Warren offers, it is not an acceptable result:
“I think it is important that we meet with Warren herself. She claimed she ‘checked the box’ so she could meet others like her apparently meaning Cherokees or Indians. She has that chance now.”
While Warren will not meet with Cherokee women traveling from far away to speak with her, she’s holding fundraisers in the Bay State this week to celebrate her birthday on Friday.
Update: Barnes appeared on the Todd Feinberg Show this morning:
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