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| Elizabeth Warren at a campaign rally in 2012. Credit Tim Pierce |
My response to recent reports that Senator Warren has released DNA results proving she has a pure Native American ancestor appears in her family tree “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” This would make her between 1/64th and 1/512ths Native American. However, without documentation it is unclear which percentage she is. For comparison, I can prove I am 1/16th French, 1/16th English and 1/16th German. None of which I claim as my identity or "race."
Here was my response:
And this response on Twitter really gets to the heart of the problem:
And this response from an epidemiologist about whether the DNA evidence ties her to actual documented Cherokee or Delaware citizens:To me, it seems like if they know nothing of the person they’re related to, their culture then or now, & need a blood test because they & they’re family have lived as white for generations, they’e evidence of genocide & that fraction is an artifact of genocide not indigeneity.— Ericka Twitty (@ErickaTwitty) October 15, 2018
I also edited my Facebook post (but cannot correct the tweet) because The Boston Globe corrected its math on her possible blood quantum from 1/512ths to 1/1024ths. Interesting tweet regarding this percentage:no, it doesn't. He didn't match her with people that claimed to be Native American. He looked at a sequenced cohorts from Latin American that had a history of admixture. She shared patterns of genetic variation (allele frequencies) with the Native American background— James Jaworski (@jaworskijim) October 15, 2018
So Elizabeth Warren is *possibly* 1/1024 (0.09%) Native American.— Michael Ahrens (@michael_ahrens) October 15, 2018
Scientists say the average European-American is 0.18% Native American. (https://t.co/XU0l1JQO1L)
That'd make Warren even less Native American than the average European-American.