XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, can.politics, alt.politics.liberalism
XPost: alt.politics.democrats, alt.politics.usa.republican

Why Many Native Americans Are Angry With Elizabeth Warren

Senator Elizabeth Warren angered many Native Americans by releasing the results of a DNA test to help back up her claim to Native American heritage.

Senator Elizabeth Warren angered many Native Americans by releasing the results of a DNA test to help back up her claim to Native American
heritage.

Credit...Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Senator Elizabeth Warren angered many Native Americans by releasing the results of a DNA test to help back up her claim to Native American heritage.


By Maggie Astor

If Senator Elizabeth Warren thought that releasing her DNA test results showing Native American ancestry would neutralize a Republican line of attack, she was wrong.

The test - part of her strategic preparations for a likely presidential campaign - did not placate President Trump, who has mocked Ms. Warren as "Pocahontas" and once promised $1 million to a charity of her choice if a DNA test substantiated her claims of Cherokee and Delaware heritage. And her announcement of the results angered many Native Americans, including the Cherokee Nation, the largest of the country's three federally recognized Cherokee tribes.

DNA testing cannot show that Ms. Warren is Cherokee or any other tribe, the secretary of state of the Cherokee Nation, Chuck Hoskin Jr., said in a statement. Tribes set their own citizenship requirements, not to mention that DNA tests don't distinguish among the numerous indigenous groups of North and South America. The test Ms. Warren took did not identify Cherokee ancestry specifically; it found that she most likely had at least one Native American ancestor six to 10 generations ago.

Ms. Warren defended herself by saying she was not claiming to be eligible for membership in the Cherokee Nation - and she isn't, given that her ancestors do not appear on the Dawes Rolls, early-20th-century government documents that form the basis of the Cherokee citizenship process. She said she was simply corroborating the family stories of Native American lineage that she has often recounted.

But that distinction actually cuts to the heart of why Native Americans are so upset with her. Fundamentally, their anger is about what it means to be Native American - and who gets to decide.
Politics Across the United States

Tennessee Special Session: Tennessee Republicans ended an emotional and chaotic special session of the state legislature devoted to public safety without passing new gun restrictions.
Michigan G.O.P. in Turmoil: Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election have left the Michigan Republican Party broken and battered. Can the party rebuild in time for the 2024 election?
Wisconsin's Election Chief: Republicans in Wisconsin pushing to oust the state's nonpartisan head of elections clashed with voting rights advocates and some local clerks during a rancorous public hearing, sowing further distrust about voting integrity.

"The American public doesn't understand the difference" between ancestry and tribal membership, said Kim TallBear, a professor at the University of Alberta who wrote a book titled "Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science."

While many people see "Native American" as simply a racial category, she said, "we have additional ideas about how to identify when one is Native American that aren't really consistent with the way most Americans think. Our definitions matter to us."

And so when someone like Ms. Warren emphasizes undocumented lineage over tribal citizenship criteria, said Dr. TallBear, who is a member of the Sisseton- Wahpeton Oyate tribe in South Dakota, "what they're telling us is they are privileging nonindigenous definitions of being indigenous."

Membership in a Native American tribe is "very precious to us," Mr. Hoskin, the Cherokee Nation secretary of state, said in a phone interview. "It's not just a card that we hold. It's something that we consider a dear possession, and so we don't take it lightly."

This perspective is grounded in a long history of persecution, displacement and massacre. Over many decades of United States history, the government took the land of Native American tribes, including the Cherokee, and pushed them steadily west. President Andrew Jackson's policies, continued under Martin Van Buren, forced the Cherokee into their current territory in Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears during 1838 and 1839. Administration after administration signed treaties with tribes and then violated them. It was not until the 1930s that tribes gained the sovereignty they now have on their reservations.

"Those of us who are Cherokee citizens, we know our ancestors in some cases perished along the Trail of Tears," Mr. Hoskin said.

"Most reasonable people can understand," in that context, why claims to Native American heritage based on a DNA test are fraught, he added.

Neither Ms. Warren nor anyone on her staff contacted the Cherokee Nation before publicizing the DNA results, Mr. Hoskin said. A spokeswoman for Ms. Warren's re-election campaign, Kristen Orthman, declined to comment on this point.

Ms. Warren's announcement was clearly intended to put to rest one of Mr. Trump's favorite lines of attack. (Mr. Hoskin criticized Mr. Trump, too, for his repeated use of "Pocahontas" as a slur.) Instead, the DNA test brought a barrage of negative headlines and opinion pieces, in liberal-leaning publications like HuffPost as well as conservative-leaning ones like The New York Post.

Asked about the criticism, the senator's campaign spokeswoman, Ms. Orthman, sent links to a tweet by Ms. Warren and to a statement posted on Facebook by the Eastern Band Cherokee, a separate tribe from the Cherokee Nation.

The Eastern Band Cherokee's statement was supportive of Ms. Warren, saying that she "has not used her family story or evidence of Native ancestry to gain employment or other advantage" and that she "demonstrates respect for tribal sovereignty by acknowledging that tribes determine citizenship and respecting the difference between citizenship and ancestry." It also listed Native- friendly bills she had supported in the Senate.
Sign up for The Campaign Reporter

Hey, I'm Alex Burns, a politics correspondent for The Times. Send me your questions using the NYT app. I'll give you the latest intel from the campaign trail.

Our 2018 Election Messaging experiment has ended. For more coverage, please visit nytimes.com/elections.

"Some people who have family stories or evidence of Native ancestry have sought to appropriate Cherokee culture, claim a preference in hiring, claim that their art is "Indian art," or advance their careers based on a family story or evidence of Native ancestry," Principal Chief Richard G. Sneed added in the statement, which argued that Ms. Warren had not done any of those things. "We strongly condemn such actions as harmful to our tribal government and Cherokee people."

========================================================================

The Liberal Argument Outline

1. Use spun facts:

These can be found on Huffington Post, Daily Kos, MSNBC, and many other liberal sources. What they do is take facts, polls or arguments and add a liberal spin in a weak attempt to make bad news for liberals look good. These are easily debunked and exposed as lies by going to the original source and posting the hard, cold facts with NO spin.

Note: At this point, you have won. It should never take more than one
post to win an argument with a liberal. It is recommended that you claim victory and disengage at this point. If you continue, for fun or
experimental purposes, no further logic will be forthcoming from the
liberals.

2. The Next Step For The Liberal Will Be To Attempt To Discredit Your
Source

If it is Fox or any perceived "right wing" source, they will refuse to
believe it. If it is a non-partisan source, they will claim it is right
wing, if it is a left of center source, they will find another lefty
source to "prove" you are wrong. They will not discuss the facts
themselves, as they know they have lost. If you must go down this road
(there is a high entertainment value), don't allow this diversion. Go
back to the facts.

3. The Limbaugh Defense:

This is one that comes out early and often. Although you know they never listen to Rush Limbaugh and have no idea what he says, they will drag him out and claim you are a Ditto head. This is another diversionary tactic. It has no relevance and is an attempt to change the subject. The more desperate they are, the more childish and ridiculous the reference to Limbaugh becomes: Flush, LimpBag, etc. Ignore this and re-post the facts. DO NOT BE DIVERTED.

4. The Personal Attack:

Another common thread. Also designed to divert the lost argument. NEVER give any hint of personal information. Even something as innocuous as "I am a chef".

They will attempt to engage you and call you a liar to divert attention
from the original lost argument. Ignore this and re-post the facts yet
to be refuted.

5. Name Calling:

Still another diversion. If you fail to give them any personal information, they will attempt to draw you out to gain more insight into your personal side. Then they will return to step 4. Ignore this.

6. The Liberal Bat Signal:

When they find out they are unable to engage
you, divert you or goad you into a completely irrelevant topic, they
will send out the Bat Signal. This is where a bunch of Liberals (or
often, the same one using several names, i.e., Rudy) post a number of
rapid fire posts congratulating the Liberal on handing you your head on
a platter. This tactic often works on even the most logical and
disciplined of us. The urge to rant must be resisted. Your rant will
supply them with all the personal insight they need to spew hatred and
personal attacks. The best tactic here is to use the same tactic back at
them.

Keep in mind, a Liberal will never admit you have a valid point (Dutch
did, once), much less that you won a debate. So, the only reasons to
continue a dialog with a liberal after the initial statement of facts
that established your victory are for entertainment and educational
purposes. If you refuse to take the bait and demand the topic remain on
the original premise, they will eventually just go away and try to find
someone else that will engage them on their terms.

Now, go away, Snowflake.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)