Critics of Elizabeth Warren, especially within the Cherokee Nation, have said the senator's apology wasn’t enough for those who have been pushing her to have a more fulsome public dialogue for years. | Joshua Lott/Getty Images 2020 elections Native American critics still wary of Warren despite apology tour

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren has surged in the 2020 polls, she has made more aggressive moves to quash the lingering controversy around her past claims of Native American ancestry.

But some vocal critics in the Native American community, specifically the Cherokee Nation, are not yet satisfied.


In roughly a week’s time, Warren released a 9,000-word plan on tribal rights that was twice the size of any other plan from her campaign, took down a poorly received video of her family’s ancestral history, and offered her most high-profile apology to date at the first-ever Native American-centered presidential forum.

“Now, before I go any further in this, I want to say this: Like anyone who's been honest with themselves, I know that I have made mistakes,” Warren said at the outset of her appearance last week. “I am sorry for harm I have caused. I have listened, and I have learned a lot. And I am grateful for the many conversations that we've had together.”

The Democratic presidential candidate was warmly received by the audience and by native leaders onstage before they redirected the conversation to her policy positions.

But this wasn’t enough for some prominent Native Americans who have been pushing Warren to have a more fulsome public dialogue for years.

POLITICO reached out to a dozen of her critics, some of whom have been following the controversy since her first Senate run in 2012. A handful have said they can’t vote for the senator — in the primary or the general election. But others are hedging and waiting for a sign Warren has heard their concerns. The recent apology, they said, was not that sign.

“It's a good strategy for her, but it doesn't address the central issue of Cherokee sovereignty: How will you repair the harm you have caused? She has not even admitted what that harm was,” Cherokee citizen and educator Joseph Pierce said.

Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle tweeted Warren should have said this instead: “My family and I are White. ... It was ... my privilege to never question what my parents told me. ... Those of us who falsely claim Native identity undermine this fight” for sovereignty.

Warren has privately apologized to Cherokee leaders, met with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and been advised by Native American friends and colleagues, such as Rep. Deb Haaland, one of the first two Native American women to serve in Congress. She said only tribal nations determine citizenship. At a New Hampshire town hall in July, she told an audience member she shouldn’t have identified as Native American, she is not a citizen of a tribe and she is not a person of color.

But tribal citizens like Nagle and Pierce said the senator’s public mistake needs a more public rectification, one that includes a sit-down with the senator to air their grievances and have a back-and-forth.

A Warren spokeswoman wrote to POLITICO that the senator is committed to protecting tribal sovereignty and upholding the federal trust responsibility with tribal nations. Warren, she added, has worked closely with Indian Country on issues like housing, the opioid epidemic, and the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women.

“Her campaign put forward a comprehensive set of proposals to honor the federal government's obligations to Tribal Nations and empower indigenous communities,” she wrote. “Elizabeth has worked to be a good partner to Indian Country and she will do the same as president."

Some former critics have over recent months seen Warren as a stronger ally.

Julian Brave NoiseCat, member of the Canim Lake Band, has applauded Warren for rebuilding relationships in the native community. He found it encouraging the senator opened with an apology at the Native American presidential forum and used the term “harm.”

“Some of the things people want her to say — it’s hard for me to imagine any politician saying that verbatim,” he said. “We should stop providing fodder to that. You don’t have to vote for her.”

NoiseCat added: “I’m also not Cherokee or one of her toughest critics. I always saw opportunity for her beyond the mishandling.”

Gyasi Ross, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, told The Stranger, a Seattle-based alternative newspaper, that Warren’s robust policy platform “rights so many wrongs, if it’s executed properly, of course."

For still-wary community members, Warren’s recent policy reveal did make some waves. She became the first candidate to call for an “Oliphant fix,” which would subject nonnatives to tribal criminal jurisdiction if they commit crimes on tribal land. She also proposed a Cabinet-level position for Native American affairs.

Pierce called Warren’s plan a major step in the right direction. Cherokee journalist Jen Deerinwater said it would be great to see the original case — Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe — overturned. Kiowa author and political activist Cole DeLaune said her platform has some commendable promises.

However, they also said they’re unsure the senator would follow through on those promises as president. And that’s because she hasn’t given them the apology or conversation they need, critics said.

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Kim TallBear, a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota, said any Democrat will be as good or relatively uninformed as another on Native American policy issues. DeLaune said former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and Sen. Bernie Sanders have intriguing platforms, too.

These concerns aren’t new and Native American critics have been vocal about what they want to hear, particularly on Twitter, Nagle told POLITICO.

“What I fear most is that if she does become the nominee, then it’s going to be this ugly front-and-center issue where basically native identity is going to be weaponized,” she said. “If Warren doesn’t take care of this issue in the primary stage, I don’t think she’s going to be able to handle it in a general election against Trump.”

While Warren’s past claims of ancestry have dogged her for years, the controversy multiplied when President Donald Trump seized on it, labeling her “Pocahontas.” The Massachusetts senator tried to defuse the situation in October by releasing the results of a DNA test that showed some evidence of ancestry. But the video and media rollout was largely seen as ham-handed. It may not be a deciding factor for her candidacy, but it still threatens to diminish her standing with primary voters.

Many Native American have said they are increasingly worried about tribal sovereignty. They say people still misunderstand native identity as a race instead of a political status. And they’re irked about loose definitions that lead to scandals such as the one unearthed by a recent Los Angeles Times investigation that found white entrepreneurs claiming Cherokee heritage had won more than $300 million in contracts meant for minority-owned businesses.

That’s why Warren’s heritage claim is an issue, said Twila Barnes, a well-known Cherokee genealogist who first looked into the senator’s ancestry seven years ago.

“She put it on the national stage. It focuses on her. She’s a public face of it,” Barnes said.

Because Native Americans aren’t a monolith, Warren has seen statements of support, opposition and indifference from people outside her most vocal critics for how she handled the DNA test aftermath.

Heads of native voting rights group Four Directions and the National Congress of American Indians said Warren’s DNA test was not an issue compared with other day-to-day issues Native Americans face.

Haaland, who partnered with Warren on legislation to address the underfunding of federal programs to help Native Americans, said last Monday that journalists “feed the president’s racism” when they ask about Warren’s ancestry.

But efforts to equate opinions against Warren with the “radical Trumpian right,” as Pierce puts it, rub critics the wrong way.

“Indian Country shouldn’t be censuring people, especially Cherokee people, demanding she recognize the harm she’s done,” he said. “The left really needs to grapple with the truth of why it hasn’t taken these claims seriously.”

