Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was embroiled in a scandal 10 years ago when it came to light that she’d falsely claimed to be of Native American ancestry for years to advance her career.
Warren is still dealing with the fallout… and she just dug the hole even deeper.
On Monday, Warren wished her followers a happy Indigenous People’s Day, despite her record of lying about her own ancestry.
“On #IndigenousPeoplesDay, we celebrate the contributions, the extraordinary resilience, and the rich cultures of tribal nations and Native communities. Today and every day, the federal government must recommit itself to honoring its promises to Native peoples,” Warren tweeted.
One Twitter user told Warren, “That’s rich coming from you.”
Another user joked, “I think that you deserve reparations.”
In the 21st century, Indigenous People’s Day has become more commonly observed than Columbus Day because of “woke” revisionist history that paints Christopher Columbus as a villain.
Currently, Columbus Day remains a federal holiday but not a national holiday. In other words, federal buildings usually close for the day, but other offices around the nation usually remain open.
24 states still observe Columbus Day, according to the database at OfficeHolidays.com.
Other states delegate the task to city halls. Some states, like Arizona, celebrate Indigenous People’s Day alongside Columbus Day. Others, like Alaska, celebrate it instead of Columbus Day. Since 2020, Colorado has been replacing Columbus Day with Cabrini Day.
Massachusetts — Warren’s constituency — remains one of the 24 states to observe Columbus Day.
So, Warren could have avoided this gaffe by wishing her constituents a happy Columbus Day. However, Warren would have risked angering her liberal base. Perhaps she could have pursued the third option by wishing her followers a happy Canadian Thanksgiving.
“Imagine being Elizabeth Warren and thinking you can still virtue signal on this,” one conservative columnist wrote.
Imagine being Elizabeth Warren and thinking you can still virtue signal on this… https://t.co/m7IJT2Ehqq
— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) October 10, 2022
Warren has taught at Harvard Law School since 1995 and told the school she was a minority, which is registered on its federal forms for affirmative action, according to Boston.com.
Warren first claimed she didn’t know. Then it came to light she’d written for the cookbook, “Pow Wow Chow” and self-identified as “American Indian” in the past.
Here is the form Elizabeth Warren filled out for the State Bar of Texas claiming American Indian heritage. pic.twitter.com/VwHifS7BCL
— Amy Gardner (@AmyEGardner) February 6, 2019
Harvard also boasted that Warren was the institutions “first woman of color.”
A 1997 Fordham Law Review story on intersectionality wrote —
There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries. This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reaons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.
In 2018, Warren released a DNA test to “prove” her Native American roots.
The analysis was done by Stanford University professor Carlos D. Bustamante, a prominent expert in the field. He concluded that the great majority of Warren’s ancestry is European but added that the results “strongly support” the existence of a single Native American ancestor.
In his report, Bustamante said he analyzed Warren’s sample without knowing the identity of the donor. He concluded that Warren had a Native American ancestor… as many as 10 generations ago.
If Warren’s ancestor were six generations removed, she would be 1/64th Native American. But if her ancestor had been as much as 10 generations removed, that would make the individual a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent and render Warren only 1/1,024th Native American, according to Blaine Bettinger, a genealogist and author who specializes in DNA evidence.
In a 2018 email to supporters, Warren said she “never expected the president of the United States to use my family’s story as a racist political joke against Native American history, culture, and people — over, and over, and over.”
Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said DNA tests are useless to determine tribal citizenship and don’t distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America.
“Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong,” he said. “Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”
Warren acknowledged in a tweet that DNA and family history have nothing to do with tribal affiliation or citizenship, which is determined by tribal nations. “I respect the distinction, & don’t list myself as Native in the Senate,” she said.
Warren apologized to the Cherokee Nation for her fake claims.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.