Thread by @cricketcrocker

Okay Meg, here's a quick thread just for you, since you're my follower and I'm really horrified that you're going off like this to Indigenous womxn activists.

Especially those I look up to and who I regularly learn from. Yikes, way to shame the follower-family.

https://twitter.com/MegAnneGarst/status/1051890223058116608

The reason that the DNA doesn't matter, is because DNA is irrelevant for tribal citizenship claims.

When determining if someone is part of our Nations, approaches vary, but all involve membership in the community.

DNA only comes into it because of racism.

DNA comes into it specifically because of the type of racism imported by Europeans and practiced unilaterally by, yeah, ALL European cultures to come colonize here.

So we are often racialized.

But that was never what determined anyone's membership in a particular Nation.

Why this matters, is because it's a European construct of identity.

Which means if you're using it to define us, you are highkey (as in literally) denying us agency (as in sovereignty, which many Nations have and all Nations should have, but the federal government plays games)

So, people who have been ripped away from their cultures (like in the 60s scoop, look it up) or grown up estranged/far away (like me, or even further removed) CAN reconnect. We do this, and there are ways of doing it.

It involves tracing your family line.

But hang on. Because.

You family line is not necessarily the same thing as your DNA, for a lot of reasons.

And while blood quanta CAN be used, that's a concept that's generally credited as from the genocidal school of thought that wanted to dilute out the indigeneity.

And the membership rolls of Nations are generally pretty closely kept and very very carefully maintained/updated.

For a lot of reasons.

So, no, some random DNA test that is validated by using South American DNA as a comparison group...is not the same.

As for your claim Warren "never said she was a member of the Cherokee Nation"...

This reads as, at best, a VERY careful splitting of hairs in order to try to credit Warren over, literally, whole entire Nations of indigenous people (for example and most pertinently, the Cherokee)

But let's pretend you're factually correct, just for the sake of argument.

The reason that Warren made those claims in the first place was because she wanted to be treated the way that she thought her institution(s) would treat her if she were Indigenous.

White people/colonizers usually have a mindset that racialized minorities are "given preferential treatment" inside institutions.

This is wrong. And I'm not here to explain affirmative action, if anyone wants to learn more about it, go read "For Discrimination" it's a good book.

So you either get to believe that Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the white liberal Democrats:

- has been a longtime believer in the kind of race science that says racial characteristics are biological & thus this is valid

or

- that she was eliding cultural connection and DNA

If the former, she's buying into the type of 'science' that is the 'empirical' basis of white supremacy, which she has never decried, and therefore is no innocent.

If the latter, then your defense of her won't work, because she's by definition guilty.

So either way you slice it, this is not okay.

It's not okay for you to defend her, it's not okay that she did it, it's not okay that she's taking up oxygen from other important Indigenous issues, and it's super not okay that she's perpetuating the elision between DNA and culture

It's not okay that she's using this as a way to solidify and rally her white liberal base.

It's bad for Indigenous people and our Nations on every level, and the echoes of this continued erasure of continuing forms and legacies of genocide are going to mislead a lot of people.

So, no. You aren't right. You're wrong.

You're factually wrong, you're morally wrong, you're politically wrong, and you're being a jerk about it.

For the sake of something you care about, just stop arguing.