[Jennifer Reeser]

An excellently-written op-ed at the liberal site, "THINKPROGRESS" blog, written by a Cherokee woman, and also a member of the LGBT community, a "two-spirit" woman.

Let me say -- I am a direct descendant of the father of Matoaka (Pocahontas), on my paternal line. This is not "family lore," but I can actually show this to you, on paper, along with other of my confirmed ancestors of Native origin directly from the Powhatan, such as "Black Davis." I have an actual family tree proven by professional genealogists, to back me up. Obviously, any of you who have read my posts are familiar with my connection to the Cherokee -- both past and present.

https://thinkprogress.org/elizabeth-...-c1ec6c91b696/

What I love about this, is that the writer makes absolutely no objections (as far as her personal, subjective, emotional reaction), based on Warren's appearance, or actual lineage, etc. She ties it all to "what has she ever DONE for us?" I love that, because it pretty much says it all, in this quote, "A real Native American hero, right? Wrong. She was not a hero to me when she failed to foster a haven of support for Native students within Harvard University’s alienating Ivy League culture. She is not a hero for spending years awkwardly avoiding Native leaders. She is not a hero because, despite claiming to be the only Native woman in the U.S. Senate, she has done nothing to advance our rights. She is not from us. She does not represent us. She is not Cherokee."

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

All fair points. Sadly true about almost all of Congress save a few.

Yet, the entire hunt after Warren is used as fuel for a movement of Oligarchs who would love to see all Native lands sold to the highest bidders and strip mined into oblivion. The discussion about Warren is not taking place in a room that gives a damn about indigenous peoples.

It is interesting why so many whites dream of indigenous ancestry. It is a longing for a different relation to the whole than the modern. I think some of it is silly but much of it takes root in the more clear sighted hearts of children. I like Warren's family, like many whites, incorporated a fantasy into their oral history. I doubt it was sinister. It is unlikely that she gained from it. She should have worked to pay that debt with action, honesty and real solidarity. She remains an imperfect politician standing on the side that is holding back far worse. Ambiguous stuff. White people are weird.

[Roger Slater]

She never claimed it was anything other than family lore. Despite charges to the contrary, she never once sought to use her supposed ancestry to gain an advantage. Her college application had a box to check if you were seeking to be admitted as a minority or under an affirmative action program, and she checked the "No" box. When she was granted tenure at Harvard Law, according to arch-conservative Republican Charles Fried who was on the tenure committee, the subject of her supposed native American ancestry never came up at all, and no one other than Republican critics has claimed otherwise. There's no reason to think that she was making up the story about "family lore" since she never made much of it or tried to take advantage of it.

Meanwhile, I think it's naive to suppose that Trump's insistence on calling her Pocahontas is entirely free of any racist overtones. It's certainly not meant as a compliment, and the way he repeated the taunt during the Navajo talkers ceremony -- like a verbal tic on his part -- was bizarre and disrespectful.

[Jennifer Reeser]

"White people are weird." LOL, Andrew. You always make my day. Thanks. What I find weird is how nothing ever changes. This is your standard update on the "token cigar store Indian" phenomenon. We have become the little Indian pieces moved around for political purposes, and a heck of a lot of the time, it seems like NEITHER side cares, sincerely.

Natives have a term for the other thing you mention: "pretindians." As for me, I don't get it. As a little girl, when the other children were making fun of my "slanty" eyes, and funny skin color ("Jenny, Jenny, copper as a penny..."), and no doll in the world looked like me...

I think it is mostly romanticism.

Roger, I thought that she had also made the claim that she's got photographic evidence of her Indian forebears. I thought I read in an interview, when the reporter asked her to see them, she answered, "They're not for your eyes," or something to that effect. I could be wrong, or that could have been "fake news," so don't quote me....

J

[Roger Slater]

I hadn't heard that.

I recently read that there was a Harvard Law public relations release that boasted about her being a native American, but it wasn't her decision to include that. The school was under a lot of pressure for not having minorities, and the dean was aware that Warren claimed to have some Native American ancestry so he decided to include that fact and embarrassingly pump it up. Interestingly, the degree of ancestry that she claimed -- 1/32nd, I believe -- would not have qualified her for tribal membership even if it had been documented. Having a single great-great-great grandparent, after all, is pretty remote. One could conceivably have 32 different nationalities if that really meant something.

On subjects like this, people can only go by "family lore." Marco Rubio apparently was under the wrong impression about when his parents came over from Cuba. While I despise Rubio, I never thought he was lying. He was just repeating what he'd always been told since he was a kid, and it never occurred to him to play investigative journalist on his own parents and dig up the records. Neither he nor Warren intended to or tried to defraud anyone over it. For Warren, it was just an interesting fact, not something that she ran on or used to elevate herself. Her political enemies are the ones who falsely claimed she used it to get into college and secure tenure at Harvard. She never portrayed herself as a champion for native Americans.

[Jim Moonan]

What Andrew said. What Roger said. What Jennifer said.