FWIW here is my progressive, non-native take on Elizabeth Warren's claims in re her DNA test announcement:
1) The first people whose opinion I'd want on this would be native americans who choose to comment. That being said...
2) she's fucked. This discussion can in no way help her.
3) Every white person in the southeast and OK say they have some "Cherokee blood". Maybe they do, maybe they don't but I'd say that whole discussion belongs to the Cherokee.
4) The only area I feel competent to comment on is the DNA testing...it's stupid and dangerous.
Commercial/consumer DNA tests can be interesting, a novelty. When used to eval disease risk they are IMO risky, done without medical counseling, out of context, fear-producing, but...
When I see fucking ads with dude saying "I thought i was italian but turns out I need to wear Lederhosen!" or "I didn't appreciate my heritage from minority group X until i got tested" i want to puke.
Nazis would have loved this shit. They were all about blood determining identity. And this goes against everything Americans supposedly stand for, a land where you can start again...
(unless your ancestors have been here for millennia of course, in which case it's a place for strangers to come and colonize and exploit...which shouldn't actually be parenthetical...)
But the whole idea of your DNA determining your identity is dangerous, nauseating, and should be something we actually fight against rather than glorify.
So, Elizabeth Warren's claims about her ancestry are really between her and native communities, but the whole idea of blood-identity hat she is perpetuating is disgusting and dangerous.
