Spoiler alert! I was born in Oklahoma to parents who worked
for the government as teachers and caseworkers in the Ft. Sill Indian School in
the 1930s. Indian children from all over
the U.S. were separated from their parents and sent to Ft. Sill to learn how to
be “American”. But my father was
subversive, in that he wrote down their various languages and tribal stories so
they would never forget them. As a
toddler my closest playmates and teachers were Comanches. Descendants of
Quanah Parker were my neighbors in Medicine Park. Until my 5th birthday I had
two horses that I took care of and rode -- bareback. For all intents and purposes my heart was
Indian. But I am of European stock. So I
sympathize with Sen. Warren.
Many years ago Sen. Elizabeth
Warren made references to her American Indian heritage. That has recently come
back to haunt her. The public wants to
know if (1) she can prove her identity as part Cherokee, and (2) if she used
that identity to help her academically and professionally. The Atlantic
ran an article (May 20, 2012) that has contributed to all the fuss, but makes
it clear that the answer to the first question above is “No” and the answer to
the second is also “No”. Photo-shopped
pictures of her in cigar-store Indian headdress and war paint have flooded the
media. Donald Trump ridiculed her as
“Pocahontas” in one of his childish rants.
In June 2016 the Republican Party of Massachusetts ran an anti-Warren TV
ad in response to Donald Trump. A few
Cherokee Nation people expressed outrage in the ad, saying that Warren was not
a Cherokee and that she had lied and insulted Indians by claiming to be part
Cherokee. Like many white Oklahomans who
claim to be part Indian, she admitted that she had no proof, but had heard this
from her parents all her life. Below are the facts, with quotes from the Atlantic.
Elizabeth Warren was born June
22, 1949, in Oklahoma City, OK, and graduated from the University of Houston in
1970. She took her Law Degree in
1976 from Rutgers University (where she declined the school’s offer to take
advantage of affirmative action policies.) Her distinguished teaching career
began at the Universities of Texas and Pennsylvania, where she taught law.
(Both schools listed her on their websites as a minority professor, probably to
make the universities look good for accreditation purposes.
In 1995 Senator Warren joined
the Law Faculty at Harvard. From the Atlantic: “Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S.
Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing
committee that recommended Warren for hire … said [Warren’s] Native American
heritage … [never came] up during the hiring process. It simply played no role
in [her appointment].” In 2008 Elizabeth
Warren was named Chair of Congressional Oversight Panel, and in 2010 she served
as Special Advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She was elected Democratic U. S. Senator from
Massachusetts in 2013
To quote from the writer of the
Atlantic article: “The Democratic Senate candidate [now
Senator from Massachusetts] can’t back up family lore that she is part Indian –
but neither is there any evidence that she benefited professionally from these
stories. … Based on the public evidence so far, she doesn’t appear to have
used her claim of Native American ancestry to gain access to anything much more
significant than a cookbook; in 1984 she contributed five recipes to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook published by the
Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, OK.
[She was listed as,] ‘Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee’.”
I’m not sure where the photos
of Sen. Warren in cigar-store Indian headdress and war paint came from, or who
might have made them, but the slightest scrutiny of them shows they are
photo-shopped. They first appeared on
billboards set up by the owner of a motorcycle shop in Hanson, MA, who supports
Republican Senator Scott Brown. That
same shop owner also is known for putting up revoltingly crude billboards
attacking Pres. Obama. For me, this sort
of twisting of free speech is unconscionable. Unfortunately, some people will believe
anything.
