The Boston Herald reports on the looming showdown between angry Cherokee activists and Elizabeth Warren (h/t Legal Insurrection):
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.”
Late last night, a Warren campaign official told the Herald that staffers will “connect” and “offer to have staff meet with them.”
Warren isn’t doing herself any favors by playing aloof and refusing to meet with them, though she might feel she has no other choice. These are actual tribe members with experience researching genealogy. How can she look them in the eye and claim to have a family ancestry that is not backed up by the facts?
You might be wondering whether the Cherokee activists in this showdown are politically motivated, as this seems like too much of a gift to Sen. Brown’s campaign to be a coincidence. But it actually looks like the woman leading the group, amateur genealogist Twila Barnes, has been an active critic of false Cherokee ancestry claims for years. Her blog, “Thoughts From Polly’s Granddaughter,” has focused on the issue of “wannabe” Cherokees since 2009. One post from December 2010 explains the fake Cherokee phenomenon, and it sounds remarkably familiar if you’ve been following the Elizabeth Warren controversy:
These are the people who refuse to accept evidence that flies in the face of their family story. You can show them documentation from where their “Cherokee ancestor” arrived on the boat from England, yet they still insist this ancestor was Cherokee. You can show them that their ancestors were always listed as white in the records, but they insist the records were wrong, citing they were “whitewashed” or their full blood ancestor “passed for white”. …
Hopefully you are getting the point. A wannabe is someone who just won’t give up the family story, no matter how absurd. They claim to be Cherokee no matter what and no one will ever be able to convince them otherwise because they so desperately “wannabe” Cherokee.
Please don’t be a wannabe. Adhere to the Standards for Sound Genealogical Practices and only claim the things you can verify with supporting evidence.
That’s good advice for anyone, particularly wannabe senators.
This is where I reach the exact opposite conclusion as Ms. Goodman, for most of the same reasons. n nFor those who haven't read them, find the time to read the German Racial Purity Laws of 1935, otherwise known as the "Nuremburg Laws. Read the actual text and then think of the chilling consequences that text had in the lives of real people. n nThis whole thing is a racial spoil system and should terrify anyone with a scintilla of historical knowledge — what I find even more offensive than her claim to special privilege because of bloodline is the authority of others to deny (or grant) such privilege. The absolute presumption that everyone is an individual with equal rights is the defense against something like the Holocaust happening. n nMy race is human. End of discussion.
A better headline might be, "Her 'Tribe' Confronts Chief Lying Witch."
Has she taken a DNA test similar to those given television personalities by here fellow Harvard leftie professor, Henry Louis Gates? n nThis might even settle the matter, but that's probably her biggest fear!
Warren would so like this issue to die as evidenced by recent press conferences. She wants to focus on those non-Cherokees on Wall Street that are "ripping off the middle class". Well, they did buy Manhattan from the Indians so she has a point.
These women might not even be Cherokee citizens according the ABC News. Here's what they reported. n n"While the women have criticized Warren for self-identifying as Cherokee, they don’t themselves have any affiliation with their tribal governments. Representatives from the press offices of each nation stated that none of the women involved are affiliated with their respective nations’ governments, and should not be construed as representatives of their respective nations. n n“We do not know her, have never had any contact with her, other than she may be a tribal member,” a representative from the Keetoowah Band media office said in reference to Sacks. “They are in no way affiliated with the tribal government, and I cannot confirm or deny their citizenship in the tribe,” said Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, deputy executive director of communications for the Cherokee Nation, of Barnes and Goss. A representative from the Eastern Band said she was not able to answer questions about Davis. n nMakes you wonder what the real deal is there and who's pulling the strings especially since the genealogy they say they have is full of errors.