(CNN) Elizabeth Warren 's campaign is soaring: She is rising in the polls, her fundraising is on fire and her seemingly endless ideas are helping to define the Democratic race for the White House .

And then there is the issue of her ancestry -- her past disputed claims to Native American heritage

The Massachusetts senator has struggled with the subject for years , and last fall, it appeared to threaten to blow up her presidential campaign before it had even begun. Her campaign released the results of a DNA test that showed distant Native ancestry, drawing fierce criticism from many, including some tribal groups. Warren apologized in both public and private.

Warren's efforts to make amends and rebuild her relationships with the Native American community in the months since have gone far beyond those apologies, according to CNN's interviews with almost a dozen people. They have included private meetings with tribal leaders, seeking counsel from Native Americans friends, and, on Friday, the release of a set of ambitious policy plans aimed at helping Native people.

That outreach will unfold in public on Monday, when Warren speaks at length alongside tribal leaders at a conference hosted by the Native voting rights group, Four Directions, in Sioux City, Iowa.

Stick with the policy

The controversy surrounding Warren's claims to Native lineage has been one of the most trying for a campaign -- and candidate -- not prone to missteps. With less than six months until the Iowa caucuses, it's clear the senator has no plans to again draw attention to her own family ancestry, and that she and her team are eager to put the matter to rest in the midst of a tumultuous primary contest.

The only way to do that, her campaign says, is to stick to what Warren has most excelled at this year: policy

Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren, a US senator from Massachusetts, speaks during a campaign event in March 2019. Hide Caption 1 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren is held by her father, Donald Herring, soon after she was born in Oklahoma City in 1949. "My daddy worked hard his whole life," Warren said when she posted this picture to Facebook on Father's Day 2014. "He sold fencing and carpeting, and ended up as a maintenance man. He and my mother never had much, but he said that his life was a success because his four kids had more opportunities than he had." Hide Caption 2 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren A young Warren sits with her mother, Pauline. "When I was 12, my daddy had a heart attack," Warren wrote on Facebook in 2017. "All three of my brothers were off in the military, and Daddy was out of work for a long time. We lost our family station wagon, and we were about an inch away from losing our home. One day, I walked into my mother's room and found her crying. She said, 'We are not going to lose this house.' She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and pulled on her best dress -- the one she wore to funerals and graduations. At 50 years old, she walked down the street and got her first paying job: answering the phones at Sears. That minimum wage job saved our home, and my mother saved our family." Hide Caption 3 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren poses for a Christmas photo with her brother John. All three of her brothers served in the military. Hide Caption 4 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren In the late 1960s, Warren attended George Washington University on a debate scholarship. She dropped out after two years to get married, but she graduated from the University of Houston in 1970. Hide Caption 5 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren holds her newborn daughter, Amelia, in 1971. She and her first husband, Jim Warren, had two children before divorcing in 1980. Hide Caption 6 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren with her three brothers -- Don, John and David -- in 1980. After graduating from college, Warren worked as a speech pathologist at a New Jersey elementary school. She then got a law degree and taught at the Rutgers School of Law before becoming a professor at the University of Houston Law Center. She's also been a professor at the University of Texas Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Harvard Law School. Hide Caption 7 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren and her second husband, Bruce Mann. She posted this old photo to Facebook in 2016 along with a story about how she proposed to him. They were married in 1980. Hide Caption 8 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren teaches at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in the early 1990s. Hide Caption 9 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren US Sen. Barack Obama listens to Warren speak during a roundtable discussion about predatory lending in 2008. Warren is an expert on bankruptcy law and was an adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in the 1990s. In 1989, Warren co-authored the book "As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America." Hide Caption 10 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren takes her seat to testify before the House Budget Committee in 2009. The United States was battling a recession at the time, and Warren had been appointed to a congressional oversight panel overseeing the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program. Hide Caption 11 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner listen to President Barack Obama at the White House in September 2010. Obama was appointing Warren to be his assistant and special adviser to the Treasury Secretary in order to launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren had long called for a federal agency designed to protect consumers from fraudulent or misleading financial products. Hide Caption 12 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren and US Sen. Scott Brown, right, make fun of each other during an annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast in Boston. Warren announced in 2011 that she would be challenging Brown for his Senate seat.. Hide Caption 13 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren speaks to constituents at a campaign event in Scituate, Massachusetts, in May 2012. Hide Caption 14 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren takes a morning walk with her dog Otis on the Harvard University Business School campus in May 2012. Hide Caption 15 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren stands with family members after giving a speech in Springfield, Massachusetts, in June 2012. Warren has several grandchildren. Hide Caption 16 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren President Barack Obama greets Warren at a fundraiser in Boston in June 2012. Hide Caption 17 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren speaks at the Democratic National Convention in September 2012. Hide Caption 18 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren greets supporters during a campaign event at Boston University. Hide Caption 19 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren takes the stage after defeating Brown for a Senate seat in November 2012. Hide Caption 20 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren listens during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in May 2013. Hide Caption 21 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren meets with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in April 2016. Hide Caption 22 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren campaigns with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in June 2016. Hide Caption 23 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, questions Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf in September 2016. Warren unleashed a verbal barrage at Stumpf, calling the embattled bank boss "gutless" and demanding he step down. Her diatribe was the most forceful condemnation yet of Wells Fargo, who fired more than 5,000 employees over the years for creating fake accounts without customer knowledge. The employees created the fraudulent accounts to meet bank quotas and were allegedly threatened with firing if they didn't comply. Hide Caption 24 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren In January 2017, Warren posted this photo of her and Obama together. Obama was leaving after two terms as President. Hide Caption 25 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren holds a transcript of her speech in the Senate Chamber after she was cut off during the debate over Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions in February 2017. In an extremely rare rebuke, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell silenced Warren after he determined that she violated a Senate rule against impugning another senator. Warren was reading from a 1986 letter in which Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., was critical of Sessions -- who at the time was a nominee to be a federal judge. Hide Caption 26 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren and other Democrats listen as President Donald Trump speaks to a joint session of Congress in February 2017. Hide Caption 27 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren US Sen. Bob Corker talks with Warren during a Senate committee hearing in June 2017. Hide Caption 28 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren attends a confirmation hearing for Jerome Powell, who was nominated to be chairman of the Federal Reserve, in November 2017. It was a day after President Donald Trump referenced Warren as "Pocahontas" during an event honoring Navajo code talkers. Conservatives have long criticized Warren for claiming that she is part Native American, and the senator's heritage became an issue during her Senate campaigns. Trump seized on the attacks and has regularly mocked Warren by calling her "Pocahontas." In October 2018, Warren released results of a DNA test showing she has distant Native American ancestry. The DNA results claimed "strong evidence" of Native American ancestry "6-10 generations ago." But it only served to intensify the criticism given her distant ties. Hide Caption 29 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren runs down Boston's Clarendon Street waving to crowds during the annual Boston Pride Parade in June 2018. Hide Caption 30 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren and US Sen. Susan Collins ride the Senate subway in June 2018. Hide Caption 31 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren is seen in the sunglasses of Arian Rustemi during a rally in Boston in June 2018. Warren was calling for the swift reunification of children and parents who had been separated at the US-Mexico border. Hide Caption 32 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren helps Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams make calls to voters in October 2018. Hide Caption 33 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren A Warren figurine sits in the back pocket of Mary Jo Kane during a town-hall event in Boston in October 2018. Hide Caption 34 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren was re-elected in 2018. Here, she is joined by her husband, Bruce Mann, as Vice President Mike Pence re-enacts her swearing-in. Hide Caption 35 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren, her husband and dog Bailey attend an event in Manchester, New Hampshire, in January 2019. Warren had recently announced that she was forming an exploratory committee for the 2020 presidential race. Hide Caption 36 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren speaks in Columbia, South Carolina, in January 2019. Hide Caption 37 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren looks down at the crowd in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before formally announcing her presidential bid in February 2019. Hide Caption 38 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren answers questions at a town-hall event in Jackson, Mississippi, in March 2019. Hide Caption 39 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren makes a pinky promise with 8-year-old Sydney Hansen during a campaign stop in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in July 2019. Hide Caption 40 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren US Sen. Bernie Sanders grabs Warren's hand during the CNN Democratic debates in July 2019. Sanders and Warren, two of the most progressive candidates in the field, were targeted early in their debate by their more moderate counterparts. Hide Caption 41 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren speaks at her Super Tuesday rally in Detroit in March 2020. Hide Caption 42 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren acknowledges supporters as she arrives to speak to the media outside her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in March 2020. She had just dropped out of the presidential race. Hide Caption 43 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren appears on "Saturday Night Live" with actress Kate McKinnon, playing Warren, in March 2020. "I wanted to put on my favorite outfit to thank you for all you've done in your lifetime," McKinnon said. "I'm not dead," Warren responded. "I'm just in the Senate." The two then said the show's famous catchphrase, "Live ... from New York! It's Saturday night!" Hide Caption 44 of 45 Photos: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Warren asks questions during a Senate committee hearing in June 2020. She was appearing via video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic. Hide Caption 45 of 45

A senior Warren aide told CNN that as it relates to the ancestry dispute, they could only describe the campaign's next steps as focusing on issues that are important to Indian Country through outreach and policy work. (The aide declined to elaborate on any other strategic thinking, including how the campaign plans to beat back future attacks from critics, including President Donald Trump.)

One person in contact with the campaign described her advisers as being sensitive to the heritage issue, and careful about any deliberations related to Indian Country. The decision to attend Monday's conference would have fallen in that category, that person said: "She has to go to it. You're sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't."

OJ Seamans, a co-executive director of the Four Directions group, told CNN that he spoke with PaaWee Rivera, a Warren aide who was previously the Democratic National Committee's director of Native American and Rural Engagement, more than a half-dozen times over the past few weeks. The two chatted about a wide range of issues, including the upcoming conference, and Rivera was "cautious" about how the event would be handled, according to Seaman. Seaman offered reassurances that the purpose of the forum was to educate the public and discuss the unique needs of Native peoples.

And if anyone tried to create a distraction while Warren was on stage, "I would stand up and stop it," Seamans quipped.

Seamans, whose group is nonpartisan, said among the 2020 White House candidates, Warren was easily at the "forefront" of advocating for Indian Country.

"We are not the general population. We are nations within a nation, and in order to address our needs, it has to be addressed differently. And she does that," he said.

Private meetings with tribal leaders

The Warren campaign said Warren herself has been in regular contact with Native American leaders over the last year, including a January backstage meeting in Iowa with Native American activist Frank LaMere, who died this summer and after whom the Monday conference is named after; a private meeting with the Eastern Band of Cherokees in February; and last month, a lengthy discussion with tribal leaders in Detroit the week of CNN's presidential debates.

There have also been staff-level outreach to tribal groups, including Cherokee Nation, to whom Warren apologized earlier this year about the DNA test after the tribe called it "inappropriate and wrong." Many of Warren's policy plans have featured provisions to aid Native Americans.

Rion Ramirez, the chairman of the DNC's Native American Caucus, said Warren's campaign was the first one to commit to the Detroit roundtable with tribal leaders. (Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, were also among the candidates who participated.) Native leaders met with each candidate for about 40 minutes to an hour, Ramirez said, and he recalled that the issue of Warren's family ancestry did not come up during her session. He had enthusiastic praise for the senator's work on tribal issues.

"We haven't been included in so much and she has been actively out there doing outreach and engaging for a long time now," Ramirez said. "So that's something that's fundamentally different from the other candidates."

Seeking advice from Native American friends

As Warren climbs in the polls, questions over her past claims to Native ancestry have largely receded into the background. The issue didn't come up during either of the first two rounds of primary debates.

On the campaign trail, Warren has only faced a handful of questions about her ancestry in recent months. The sharpest came during a May interview with the hosts of "The Breakfast Club," a New York-based nationally syndicated radio show. Co-host Charlamagne tha God compared Warren to Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who falsely claimed to be black.

"I grew up in Oklahoma. I learned about my family the same way most people learn about their family, from my momma and my daddy and my aunts and my uncles, and it's what I believed," Warren said. "But I'm not a person of color, I'm not a citizen of a tribe, and I shouldn't have done it."

Trump, for his part, has only ratcheted up his attacks on Warren in recent days, including by deploying a racial slur. At a rally last week in New Hampshire, Trump vowed to "revive" the "Pocahontas" nickname he has frequently used to describe the senator.

Warren has largely declined to engage the President's attacks in public. But in private, Warren has sought advice from Native American friends.

In an interview, Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, the chairwoman of the Wampanoag tribe who has been friends with Warren for years, said the two have had numerous conversations over the years about the attacks on the senator's ancestry. She said those discussions date back to Warren's 2012 Senate race, when Republican opponent Scott Brown relentlessly went after Warren for having previously self-identified as Native American.

Andrews-Maltais said that more recently, Warren asked for her counsel on whether -- and how -- to respond to some of the racially charged attacks, including Trump's frequent use of "Pocahontas."

"She wanted to make sure she wouldn't do anything that would be negatively reflected on my community, or myself," said Andrews-Maltais, who described Warren as a "tremendous" ally of Native Americans.

She recalled that her response to Warren was: "Nope, I have your back on this one. Swing back."

In a speech before the National Congress of American Indians in February 2018, Warren made the rare move of addressing, at length, Trump's use of "Pocahontas" head-on. In that speech, she pledged that "every time someone brings up my family's story, I'm going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities."

'A deeper understanding of what it means to be a Cherokee citizen'

If Warren's wide-ranging efforts to address the plight of Native Americans have been widely applauded by tribal leaders, her release of the DNA test was an unwelcome distraction.

New Cherokee Nation chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., who was openly critical of Warren after she released her DNA test, adopted a softer tone in an interview ahead of the Monday forum. Asked what he wanted to hear from the progressive senator in Iowa, Hoskin said he hoped her comments "would reflect a deeper understanding of what it means to be a Cherokee citizen."

"Of course, I would hope that of any public official, but particularly one like Sen. Warren, who demonstrated a lack of understanding of that idea," Hoskin said.

Others in the community remain more critical.

Rebecca Nagle, an activist and Cherokee citizen, said she applauds Warren's work with New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and one of the first two Native Americans elected to Congress last year. But Nagle said Warren's apology to Cherokee leadership didn't go far enough in clearing up damaging misperceptions.

"The public understanding of Native identity in 2019 is like a dumpster fire. Warren poured gasoline on the dumpster fire and a private apology doesn't make up for that," Nagle said.

She pointed to the fact that the DNA test video is still live on Warren's campaign website . A campaign aide told CNN that as part of an upcoming relaunch of the "fact squad" section of the campaign website, that video — and some other older materials — would soon be removed, and replaced with newer content.

Activists' concerns are hardly symbolic. White developers have sought to exploit confusion over the definition of Native identity to secure lucrative government contracts. According to a recent Los Angeles Times investigation , white contractors with dubious claims to Native heritage have, since 2000, won more than $300 million in funding intended for minority-owned businesses.

"It's a narrative that doesn't need to be given any more life. And that's what Warren did," Nagle said.

Haaland, who endorsed Warren in July and released a draft legislation with the senator last week that, in part, boosts funding for Native American programs, told CNN in an interview that she readily offered Warren her support around the DNA controversy.

"I never question anyone's identity. There are a number of people who told me, 'Yes, I'm native. And I just don't question that about people," Haaland said.

And if anything, the congresswoman said, she sees Warren's upbringing as making Warren a stronger ally of the Native American community: "Her ancestry? It's helped her to understand that the US government has a responsibility. She understands what that trust responsibility is."