INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY

If U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was telling the truth back in May when she said that she listed herself as an American Indian minority in order “to find some more people like me” while a professor from 1986 to 1995, she seems to have altogether abandoned that mission. That’s the conclusion of a group of four Cherokee women who are traveling in Massachusetts this week with the intent of meeting with the candidate to talk about her unproven claims of Indian ancestry and her understanding of tribal issues. During their time in Boston, Warren has dodged them – much to the delight of local press pointing out the oddness of the situation – and her campaign has labeled them as out-of-staters cavorting with extremists.

What and who are the “Ins and Outs” of Indian Country?

Okay, so Elizabeth Warren is out as an Indian academic, but the 1/256 by blood folks I have worked with in academia are in. Johnny Depp is in and the nearly full-blooded Indian kid from southwestern Oklahoma whose 1/16 Comanche ancestry coupled with four or five other tribes is out. Pamunkey and Mattaponi Indians who have lived on their reservations for nearly 20 generations are out, while people whose aunties found a link to an Indian ancestor through Ancestry.com and are now enrolled with a federal tribe are in.

WASHINGTON – The campaign of U.S. Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, has done something that Elizabeth Warren, his main Democratic challenger for his seat in Congress, has failed to do for the past month as a major controversy has swirled over her self-reported Cherokee ancestry: it responded to inquiries from the American Indian press.

WASHINGTON – 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.

Elizabeth Warren has been taking a lot of heat lately for claiming Native American ancestry. But what do the records say? And what do they mean?

What’s up, you ask, with the “Native American” uproar in the Elizabeth Warren-Scott Brown race for U.S. senator from Massachusetts? The politics part is easily understood; the Indian part is a heavier lift, involving legalities of Native nations and tribal citizenship. You don’t have to be a lawyer—only a reader—to understand the issues.

I listen to NPR nearly every morning just to have some background noise as I fry up an egg, toast a tortilla, and put an ice-cube in my tea so I can gulp it down before scrambling to find my keys and a clean pair of socks. Most days the most relevant news for my life is the weather report. But I listen anyway, lampooning the earnest voices, slowly shaking my head, and waiting until I turn on my computer to find the perspectives I actually care about.

In this video, Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, addresses the media frenzy that has followed the suggestion of Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) her likely opponent about Warren forging her Native American Identity.

When Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) suggested in late April that Elizabeth Warren, his likely Democratic opponent this November, had forged a Native American identity that helped her get ahead during her career in academia, many Indians couldn’t help but think of the cautionary tale of Ward Churchill.