Posted on 05/01/2012 6:00:14 PM PDT by Qbert
Yesterday I posted about how Elizabeth Warren’s campaign acknowledged that she self-identified as Native American on forms she filled out for the Association of American Law Schools in the mid-1980s through 1994, but that she still was searching for the genealogical evidence to support her claim.
According to the Boston Herald (added- Cover here)(h/t Instapundit) Warren found the proof last night, in the form of her great-great-great grandmother being Cherokee:
Desperately scrambling to validate Democrat Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage amid questions about whether she used her minority status to further her career, the Harvard Law professor’s campaign last night finally came up with what they claim is a Cherokee connection — her great-great-great-grandmother.“She would be 1⁄32nd of Elizabeth Warren’s total ancestry,” noted genealogist Christopher Child said, referring to the candidate’s great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, who is listed on an Oklahoma marriage certificate as Cherokee. Smith is an ancestor on Warren’s mother’s side, Child said.
The controversy will not be over, as further reported by the Herald:
Suzan Shown Harjo, a former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, expressed outrage yesterday after learning that Warren had identified herself as a Native American on law school records without documentation.“If you believe you are these things then that’s fine and dandy, but that doesn’t give you the right to claim yourself as Native American,” said Harjo, who said Warren might have taken a job another Native American could have received.
On what basis does someone who is 1/32nd of anything claim that 1/32nd as ethnicity or race for any purpose? And is it believable that Warren had no purpose in claiming Native American status when she was building her career in a field which desperately sought minority, and particularly Native American, members.
The issue, though, is larger than Warren personally and goes to the ethos of Warren’s campaign.
How ironic that the new liberal lioness has resorted to counting drops of blood for her self-identification.
She’s definately a white Native American.
Next we will hear that her middle name is Churchill and she tried to join Banks and Means at Wounded Knee.
Even the Nazi’s looked only to 1/8th (or maybe to 1/16th) for proof that someone was enough Jewish to mandate death for them. As somebody said on one of the other threads, this Dimocrat claims special status because of 1/32nd But Zimmerman does not qualify for a minority status at 1/2.
This is really funny in our race obsessed culture. The only “advantage” my considerably larger Indio blood has ever gotten me is being called a damn Mexican and poor white trash on the same day. Oh well. I should have followed the career path pioneered by Ward Churchill. Nah.
Just as she’s the philosophical mother of the OWS scum, she’s the philosophical great granddaughter of Sitting Bull. Her Indian name is Spouting Bull
And somehow Obama escapes being called a white black person.
Claiming "Minority" status for Benefits should be prosecutable as Perpetrating a Fraud, I would think.
If the SAME tortured ancestry search could provide that one's distant relative had an ounce of black blood, we could all be "minorities", and avail ourselves of "Obama Money", right?
She would have joined, but she took an arrow to the knee...
Yeah, the one thing nobody has any input on.
At 1/32 you can't enroll yourself as a member of any legitimate tribe, even if you can prove that ancestry, and the only reason I can think of to self-identify as Native American is to claim "minority" status. I'm amazed she got away with it.
My great grandfather was full blood Indian, according to my grandmother. No one in our family has ever tried to claim native American anything.
If she’s 1/32 Cherokee, I’m 1/2 woman (but I don’t fill out my paperwork as such!)
“...Warren might have taken a job another Native American could have received.”
Anyone see the irony in this ?
Thomas Jefferson (discussing offspring of white/black relationships) said that "three crosses clear the blood" (meaning that someone who had only one black ancestor after that many generations would count as white). Not quite sure what he meant but it could mean someone with one-eighth black ancestry. Of course in reality in America someone with one-eighth black ancestry is usually considered black unless some other identity supersedes that--Native American or Hispanic. (George Zimmerman seems to be at least one-eighth black, if his "Afro-Peruvian" great-grandfather was entirely of African ancestry.) Homer Plessy was one-eighth black but was arrested for sitting in the "white" cars in public transportation in Louisiana.
A great-great-great-grandmother could be pretty far back in time. One of mine was born about 1792 and died in 1852; another was married in 1770 (I don't know her year of birth or year of death).
Mr. RR is 1/4 Cherokee. But, we have never claimed the special rights and benefits that he is entitled to. Rather do it on our own efforts.
We are not foolish enough to deny the oil royalty checks we receive quarterly, however.
Remember, because of intermarriage with individuals in other tribes you can be 100% Indian and not actually qualify for membership in many of the tribes who might lie in your background.
What the genealogist has to do is PROVE Elzbet has an ancestor who was on the Dawes Rolls. According to the Boston Globe's full article "But he said Warren’s family is not included in the official Dawes Commission rolls, a census of major tribes completed in the early 20th century that Cherokees use to determine tribal citizenship."
Now that doesn't mean she wasn't a Cherokee ~ it just means she doesn't qualify for membership. There were well over 20,000 people who followed the Cherokee West to Oklahoma who were rejected for inclusion in the rolls by the Dawes Commission.
The observation that the woman was identified in an old document as Cherokee is suggestive of her being, at the least, an Indian of some sort, and possibly even a Cherokee. Or, she might have been a gypsy ~ or a mulatto ~ or whatever.
It would have been quite unusual for someone to identify someone as an Indian if 'white' was available.
Many amateur genealogists have come up against that problem ~ that an ancient but certainly loved ancestor was identified in the census as 'NOT WHITE' ~ not realizing that took place during a period where Indians were not even part of the census!
My Great Grandfather walked across the line at Naco a few years before the Cananea strike and never looked back. He was Mayo from southern Sonora so no Oklahoma oil well in my ancestry.
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