Today, at the National Congress of American Indians, Senator and potential 2020 Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D) made a powerful speech on issues concerning Native Americans and addressing the right-wing racist smears against her head-on.
Few controversies have dogged Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as long as attacks related to her claiming of American Indian ancestry. Warren has consistently stated that her mother is part Cherokee, but Warren is not an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, or the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees, the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes.
Nor do any of her known ancestors appear on the Dawes Rolls, an official list of members of the Cherokee, Chocktaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes compiled by the federal government in the early 20th century.
That, however, is hardly proof that she has no Cherokee ancestry. She heard of her ancestry through family oral tradition, and American Indian ancestry of some kind is common in Oklahoma, where she grew up. She has never claimed majority Cherokee ancestry, or enough ancestry to qualify as a member of a registered tribe. Despite conservative claims that she exploited race-based affirmative action to be hired at Harvard Law School, the evidence is clear that Warren never gained any professional advantage from her claimed heritage.
Nevertheless, President Trump has taken to attacking Warren for her claimed ancestry and tauntingly referring to her as “Pocahontas.” On one occasion, he even used the slur in the Oval Office during a ceremony honoring Native America veterans. If Warren runs for president in 2020, she will face this criticism again, at far greater volume.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren hit back on Wednesday at President Donald Trump for repeatedly ridiculing her as "Pocahontas," saying he has tried to make Native American history "the butt of a joke" while also defending herself against criticism that she hasn't been forthright about her heritage.
[...]
The speech by Warren highlighted that she is prepared to take on Trump over his insults, inflammatory rhetoric and contentious policies. Her remarks also show she is working to shore up possible political weaknesses by addressing her family background and charges she misrepresented it to gain unfair advantage in her career.
Warren said Wednesday that her mother's family was "part Native American" and that her parents eloped in 1932 because her father's family opposed the relationship. She told the story of their difficult life together and vowed that she would not let Trump demean their legacy.
"They're gone, but the love they shared, the struggles they endured, the family they built, and the story they lived will always be a part of me. And no one — not even the president of the United States — will ever take that part of me away," she said.
Recognizing the criticism of her previous statements, Warren explained that her mother’s family was part Native American, but said that she never used her ancestry to further her career. “So I’m here today to make a promise: 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,” Warren said.
Trump came under intense fire in November for making a “Pocahontas” joke during an event honoring Native American war veterans. That was further exacerbated by the event’s setting, which took place in the Oval Office where Trump displays a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the former president who forced the removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their lands.
Speech transcript, via The Boston Globe:
Thank you for having me here today.
I want to start by thanking Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais for that introduction. It has been an honor to work with, to learn from, and to represent the tribes in my home state of Massachusetts, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head — the Aquinnah — and the Mashpee Wampanoag.
I also want to thank President Jefferson Keel, and everyone at the National Congress of American Indians. For over 70 years, you’ve championed the rights and dignity of First Americans and I am honored to be here with you today.
I’ve noticed that every time my name comes up, President Trump likes to talk about Pocahontas. So I figured, let’s talk about Pocahontas. Not Pocahontas, the fictional character most Americans know from the movies, but Pocahontas, the Native woman who really lived, and whose real story has been passed down to so many of you through the generations.
[...]
Our country’s disrespect of Native people didn’t start with President Trump. It started long before President Washington ever took office.
But now we have a president who can’t make it through a ceremony honoring Native American war heroes without reducing Native history, Native culture, Native people to the butt of a joke.
The joke, I guess, is supposed to be on me.
I get why some people think there’s hay to be made here. You won’t find my family members on any rolls, and I’m not enrolled in a tribe.
And I want to make something clear. I respect that distinction. I understand that tribal membership is determined by tribes — and only by tribes. I never used my family tree to get a break or get ahead. I never used it to advance my career.
But I want to make something else clear too: My parents were real people.
By all accounts, my mother was a beauty. She was born in Eastern Oklahoma, on this exact day — Valentine’s Day — February 14, 1912. She grew up in the little town of Wetumka, the kind of girl who would sit for hours by herself, playing the piano and singing. My daddy fell head over heels in love with her.
But my mother’s family was part Native American. And my daddy’s parents were bitterly opposed to their relationship. So, in 1932, when Mother was 19 and Daddy had just turned 20, they eloped.
Together, they survived the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. They saved up to buy a home. They raised my three older brothers, and they watched as each one headed off to serve in the military. After Daddy had a heart attack and was out of work, after we lost the family station wagon and it looked like we would lose our house and everything would come crashing down, my mother put on her best dress and walked to the Sears and got a minimum-wage job. That minimum-wage job saved our house and saved our family.
My parents struggled. They sacrificed. They paid off medical debts for years. My daddy ended up as a janitor. They fought and they drank, but more than anything, they hung together. 63 years — that’s how long they were married. When my mother died, a part of my daddy slipped away too.
Two years later, I held his hand while cancer took him. The last thing he said was, “It’s time for me to be with your mother.” And he smiled.
They’re gone, but the love they shared, the struggles they endured, the family they built, and the story they lived will always be a part of me. And no one — not even the president of the United States — will ever take that part of me away.
[...]
But there’s another story that also needs to be told. The story of our country’s mistreatment of your communities. And this isn’t just a story about casual racism – war whoops and tomahawk chops and insulting Facebook memes.
It’s a story about discrimination and neglect — the unmet health care needs of Native children and families, the alarmingly high rate of suicide among Native teenagers, the growing opioid crisis and the broader epidemic of substance abuse that has ravaged so many Native communities.
It’s a story about greed. For generations — Congress after Congress, president after president — the government robbed you of your land, suppressed your languages, put your children in boarding schools and gave your babies away for adoption. It has stolen your resources and, for many tribal governments, taken away the opportunity to grow and prosper for the good of your people.
Even today, politicians in Washington want to let their Big Oil buddies pad their profits by encroaching on your land and fouling your rivers and streams. Meanwhile, even as the economic future of your communities hangs in the balance, they want to cut nutrition assistance, cut Medicaid, and cut other programs that many Native families rely on to survive.
It’s a story about violence. It is deeply offensive that this president keeps a portrait of Andrew Jackson hanging in the Oval Office, honoring a man who did his best to wipe out Native people. But the kind of violence President Jackson and his allies perpetrated isn’t just an ugly chapter in a history book. Violence remains part of life today. The majority of violent crimes experienced by Native Americans are perpetrated by non-Natives, and more than half — half — of Native women have experienced sexual violence.
This must stop. And I promise I will fight to help write a different story.
Full transcript: www.bostonglobe.com/…
If she runs in 2020, this could be one of the defining issues for her (for better or worse) on the trail.