President Trump on Monday referred to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as “Pocahontas” at an event honoring American Indian “code talkers” who fought in World War II.

Ms. Warren immediately criticized the president for making the “racial slur” at “an event to honor heroes.”

At Monday’s ceremony, Mr. Trump, who has previously ridiculed Ms. Warren for claiming in a bio that she had American Indian ancestry, made reference to the longevity of American Indians before taking his jab.

“You were here long before any of us were here,” Mr. Trump told the group. “Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.”

A reporter who attended the White House event said there was an “awkward silence” among the Navajo members after Mr. Trump made the remark.

The controversy overshadowed media coverage of the event for the code talkers, American Indians who served the U.S. military’s need to transmit sensitive information without the enemy deciphering the messages. The Navajo language has no alphabet or written materials, and ultimately about 400 Navajos helped the military to develop an undecipherable code during the war.

Ms. Warren said on MSNBC that the president is trying to silence her with the repeated attack.

“It is deeply unfortunate that the president of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur,” she said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Ms. Warren’s assertion that Mr. Trump uttered a racial slur “ridiculous.”

“What most people find offensive is Sen. Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career,” Mrs. Sanders said.

She said the president respects the Navajo code talkers, and that’s why he invited them to the White House to honor their “historic role” in helping to win World War II.

The issue first arose during Ms. Warren’s campaign for the Senate in 2012, when Republican Scott Brown accused her of lying about her ancestry to gain an advantage in her academic career.

At the time, Ms. Warren insisted she had American Indian blood in her family background as a descendant of Cherokee and Delaware Indians.

“I am very proud of my heritage,” she told NPR in 2012. “These are my family stories. This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I’m very proud of it.”

Harvard Law School in the 1990s touted Ms. Warren, then a professor, as being “Native American.” She acknowledged that she had listed herself as a minority in an Association of American Law Schools directory.

Critics noted that she had not done so on her student applications and while she was a teacher at the University of Texas.

Mr. Trump has called her a “fraud.”

“She made up her heritage, which I think is racist,” he said last year. “I think she’s a racist, actually, because what she did was very racist.”

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