The real problem with Elizabeth Warren's DNA test: Geneticists

ABC News ^ | October 18, 2018 | Chris Francescani

[2ndDivisionVet]

Does Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren really have Native American blood running through her veins?

It's scientifically impossible to know for sure, according to a collection of leading geneticists, industry experts, research scientists with expertise in indigenous genetics and Native American leaders who spoke with ABC News.

The process of tracing one's ancestry is still evolving, geneticists told ABC News, and efforts to establish genetic affiliation with an indigenous group like Native Americans are at best thorny and uncertain, and, in the extreme, offensive.

Some experts were critical of Warren's press conference this week and her latest declarations.

Numerous experts also said that the Native American gene databases are too thin to make definitive conclusions about ancestry as far back in a person's lineage as Warren laid claim to again this week.

One leading Native American anthropologist -- Dr. Kim Tallbear -- characterized Warren's Monday press conference and declarations as just the latest incidence in a decades-old practice of white Americans co-opting the Native American identity when it suits them.

Finally, critics said, using DNA to claim an ancestral affiliation with Native Americans contravenes contemporary notions of Native American identity, and, to some in the Native American community, is simply insulting.

Some experts, including Tallbear, saw Warren's DNA test as an affront to Native Americans' spiritual heritage, which is based on long and deeply-held tribal beliefs that the tribes have for centuries occupied the land on which their reservations sit.

Warren's renewed claims to Native American heritage touch on an extremely delicate subject among U.S. geneticists who study indigenous genomics. Several of a dozen scientists and experts interviewed by ABC News asked to talk on background in order to speak frankly and avoid any political blowback....

[Repeat Offender]

That's right.

Remember, back when she started the lie - DNA couldn't even convict OJ Simpson.

It certainly wasn't some $19.95 take home kit that could catalog your ancestry.

Chief Swamp Beaver thought she'd never get caught. It was just a harmless "white" lie and no one would ever know. Besides, it was the thought that counts, right? Hahvahd wanted to hire a "woman of color" so they picked some bleach white dips4!t willing to make a [at the time] dubious claim to minority status.

The problem was someone with a spine was willing to call her out publicly and DNA testing has become a lot cheaper and more readily available.

Warren, the poor fool, had told the lie so much that she started to believe it herself. She's been living in fantasy land this whole time, her professional reputation, all these things based on the lie no one was ever supposed to know......

She's a fraud of the highest order.

[rovenstinez]

Well, the popular DNA tests done by Ancestry, are pretty accurate. I manage a dozen people from Guatemala and Mexico, one individual has 97% Native American genes. Elizabeth Warren just needs to face the fact that her parents were giving her a spinning a story, to make little kids impressed. A lot of the things that I was told as a kid turned out to be false. Like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

[I want the USA back]

There is no such thing as “Native American blood”. That’s just a way of saying that someone is declared to belong to a specially-privileged government-certified victim group with the power to take others’ jobs and to feel morally superior.

The Native American’s blood is no better and no worse than mine.

Enough with the obsession with race!

[bray]

Time for Walking Buffalo to resign the Senate. She is an embarrassment even for that corrupt organization.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Warren is all buffalo wings and no scalps.

[BlueLancer]

but, does she float?

Why? Is she a witch as well?

[SunkenCiv]

I'd quibble, and say the real problem is, Hoaxahontas is a lying ****.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3639523/posts?page=2#2

[Pharmboy]

When I did my DNA with 23andme, 1% of my DNA was identified as "either Mongol or Native American." It makes sense if you think about it since so many Indians came from Northern Asia. Knowing my roots it was impossible for me to have a Native American in my line, but not so difficult to see where a Mongol might have come in.

So, she may have gotten those cheekbones from Ghengis Khan or one of his soldiers.