Is Elizabeth Warren Native American or What?
“There’s a running joke in Indian country: If you meet somebody who you wouldn’t necessarily think they’re Native, but they say they’re Native, chances are they’ll tell you they’re Cherokee,” said Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, a spokesperson for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, which with more than 300,000 citizens is the largest Cherokee tribe.
.. Further, to enroll as a member of the Cherokee Nation, an individual must have had a direct ancestor listed among the more than 101,000 people enrolled on the “Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory” between 1898-1914, now known as the Dawes Rolls.
.. The difference between him and Warren is he has a direct-line ancestor clearly documented as a Cherokee whom he can name. So far, Warren has only been able to point to family lore.
.. As well, “there are a lot of folks who are legitimately Cherokee who are not eligible for citizenship,” said Krehbiel-Burton, because, for example, their ancestors lived in distant states or territories when the rolls were drawn up, or because they are direct descendants of people left off the rolls for other reasons.
.. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, for example, grew up thinking she came from a Catholic Czech family. It was not until she joined the U.S. Cabinet that she learned her parents — not her great-great-great-grandmother, but her own parents — were Jewish refugees who had converted and misled her about her ancestry after losing their families in the Holocaust.
.. in 1984 she contributed five recipes to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, signing the items, “Elizabeth Warren — Cherokee.”
.. He said he didn’t recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.