Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread

[varwoche]

It is human to want to connect with those with whom one shares something in common.

As for substantial evidence? Her DNA is consistent with her family lore. It was right - a mundane claim and given the times when she was young, and the shame associated with it, a claim that would have been unlikely to have been made unless it had a basis in truth

I suppose there could be regional variation in a shame factor. In my experience, growing up in the SF bay area, it would have been cool to be NA.

 

[jimbob]

I suppose there could be regional variation in a shame factor. In my experience, growing up in the SF bay area, it would have been cool to be NA.

I'm guessing her grandfather or his peers didn't think it was cool.

ETA: and Oklahoma still is not the SF Bay area

 

[Elagabalus]

...All correct. She could not possibly have satisfied everyone. Her mistake was in trying to satisfy Trump – who of course was going to weasel out of the $1million – instead of the Native people who should have been the focus of this dust-up. Remember, the Native folks don't see liberals as any better than conservatives. Also, the social justice warriors among the liberals make it their life's work to run everyone through a purity test that leads to Democrats eating their own young...

Like everyone is doing in this thread. People, please, let that most hated side do all the heavy lifting. Let them get bogged down in a muddy quagmire attacking Warren Hill. Because beyond Warren Hill there's a bunch of other hills they'll have to attack! Wear them out my brothers and sisters!

Instead, sing praises to Warren! Keep sending her supplies and ammunition even though she's going to (probably) die on that lonely hill so far from home. It will be worth it in the long run. Stick and move, people.

 

[BobTheCoward]

It is human to want to connect with those with whom one shares something in common.

As for substantial evidence? Her DNA is consistent with her family lore. It was right - a mundane claim and given the times when she was young, and the shame associated with it, a claim that would have been unlikely to have been made unless it had a basis in truth

A) that is still not substantiated enough to believe that claim

B) the claims were a grandfather was part Delaware and grandmother part Cherokee. Which means each grandparent would be approximately 1/512 respective tribe if I'm doing my math right. We are starting to get an improbable set of circumstances where there were two independent mingling a thousand miles apart on the east coast before relocation, that then stuck mostly white, and then somehow their descendents happened to end up in Oklahoma with little affiliation of the respective tribes that just so happened to be relocated there.

 

[BobTheCoward]

"the family claim would have been unpopular so that makes it more likely to be true" is one of those things that sound good, but does that have any basis in fact?

 

[Elagabalus]

A) that is still not substantiated enough to believe that claim ,,.

What happens in BobTheCowardverse stays in BobTheCowardverse



Unless you transpose it into Iambic pentameter

 

[The Shrike]

We are starting to get an improbable set of circumstances where there were two independent mingling a thousand miles apart on the east coast before relocation, that then stuck mostly white, and then somehow their descendents happened to end up in Oklahoma with little affiliation of the respective tribes that just so happened to be relocated there.

Uh, you might want to read a bit about the settlement history of the Sooner State because this is exactly what happened. The US government moved Native people from their ancestral lands to "Indian Territory" in what is today Oklahoma. Then the US reneged on their treaties again by opening land here to white settlers through the "Land Runs". The result? Tens of thousands of white people rushed into Indian Territory to stake their claims literally overnight. This created a mix of white and Native folks living alongside each other and lots of opportunities for intermingling.

Today, some of the whitest of white people in Oklahoma have legit Native ancestry, just like Warren claimed she did (and indeed does have). I'm talking about blonde-haired, blue-eyed people who are card-carrying members of their affiliated tribes. This is a real thing.

BTW, I'm often saddened to meet Mohawks, Kickapoo, Lenape and other people whose ancestors lived far away but are now exiled to Oklahoma. For example, I've got a Kickapoo student with whom I work and his people were from the Great Lakes. The climate, vegetation, wildlife, etc. are so dramatically different here compared to where his people are actually from there is likely little of his cultural traditions that might have survived to this point that make any sense to him.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Uh, you might want to read a bit about the settlement history of the Sooner State because this is exactly what happened. The US government moved Native people from their ancestral lands to "Indian Territory" in what is today Oklahoma. Then the US reneged on their treaties again by opening land here to white settlers through the "Land Runs". The result? Tens of thousands of white people rushed into Indian Territory to stake their claims literally overnight. This created a mix of white and Native folks living alongside each other and lots of opportunities for intermingling.

Today, some of the whitest of white people in Oklahoma have legit Native ancestry, just like Warren claimed she did (and indeed does have). I'm talking about blonde-haired, blue-eyed people who are card-carrying members of their affiliated tribes. This is a real thing.

BTW, I'm often saddened to meet Mohawks, Kickapoo, Lenape and other people whose ancestors lived far away but are now exiled to Oklahoma. For example, I've got a Kickapoo student with whom I work and his people were from the Great Lakes. The climate, vegetation, wildlife, etc. are so dramatically different here compared to where his people are actually from there is likely little of his cultural traditions that might have survived to this point that make any sense to him.

You are making the same mistake of ignoring what percentage we are talking about, and how many generations before the relocation occurred. She is allegedly 1/1024. The claim were both of her grand parents had some blood let's assume the most favorable and that it was only one grandparent who was 1/256. 2 generations at 1/256 means 9 generations back. The most liberal estimates I have seen is six generations back. So now we are talking about a couple to several generations before the relocation where it was a mix of one native American and one non, then exclusively non leading up to the relocation and joining along. That is a lot of circumstances.


ETA: what I'm accusing the family of is constructing a narrative around the tribes present in Oklahoma, when the actual test supports a case of single mixed relationship followed by exclusively non native relationships generations before the tribes arrived in Oklahoma.

 

[ahhell]

I suppose there could be regional variation in a shame factor. In my experience, growing up in the SF bay area, it would have been cool to be NA.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, it was a cliche when I was a kid, the guy who claimed he was 1/8th Cherokee. Almost always Cherokee for some reason. We laughed at that guy then and now we laugh at Warren.

I'll repeat, the claim doesn't actually bother me. Ok, so she had this family story and ran with it. Silly to do so, but meh its not why I wouldn't vote for her. On the other hand, her reaction to it has been even dumber and the reaction of her partisans has been absurd.

 

[carlitos]

"the family claim would have been unpopular so that makes it more likely to be true" is one of those things that sound good, but does that have any basis in fact?

Christian apologists use this type of logic. "Why would the Bible have included this unflattering anecdote about Jesus if it wasn't true?"

 

[d4m10n]

Today, some of the whitest of white people in Oklahoma have legit Native ancestry, just like Warren claimed she did (and indeed does have). I'm talking about blonde-haired, blue-eyed people who are card-carrying members of their affiliated tribes. This is a real thing.

My wife is just one example. She only has maybe 2% Native American ancestry but is nonetheless a card-carrying member of the Delaware Tribe. What sets her apart is that (unlike most people with fractional ancestry) she can say which specific ancestress of hers was on the Dawes Rolls.

 

[crescent]

She is allegedly 1/1024.

That's not false, but it is not the entirety of what the testing showed. She is probably closer to 1/64 Native American, with a single Native American ancestor six generations ago.

The results in Warren’s DNA test are static. The percentage of Native American DNA in her genome does not shrink as you go back generations. There could be one individual in the sixth generation — living around the mid-1800s, which is similar to Warren family lore — or possibly a dozen or more ancestors back to the 10th generation, which would be about 250 years ago. Her results are consistent with a single ancestor, however.

The Pinocchio Test
We are not trying to defend Warren’s decision to release the test, just to set the record straight about what the test shows. The media bungled the interpretation of the results — and then Warren’s opponents used the uninformed reporting to undermine the test results even further. We fell into this trap as well, and were too quick to send out a tweet (now deleted) that made an inaccurate comparison. We should have not relied on media reporting before tweeting.

Warren’s Native American DNA, as identified in the test, may not be large, but it’s wrong to say it’s as little as 1/1024th or that it’s less than the average European American. Three Pinocchios all around — including to our tweet.

Three Pinocchios

Her claimed family lore has been supported by the testing results. How she should have interpreted or used that family history is certainly debatable.

 

[BobTheCoward]

That's not false, but it is not the entirety of what the testing showed. She is probably closer to 1/64 Native American, with a single Native American ancestor six generations ago.





Her claimed family lore has been supported by the testing results. How she should have interpreted or used that family history is certainly debatable.

Her family claims two grandparents.

ETA; and in my defense, I mentioned the sixth generation one ancestor piece.

 

[Vixen]

My wife is just one example. She only has maybe 2% Native American ancestry but is nonetheless a card-carrying member of the Delaware Tribe. What sets her apart is that (unlike most people with fractional ancestry) she can say which specific ancestress of hers was on the Dawes Rolls.

2% is quite substantial.

 

[The Shrike]

2% is quite substantial.

Indeed.

Folks are also conflating which specific ancestor should have been Native to the proportion of Native genetic markers in Warren and her siblings.

Admixture of Native American and European genes predates the Trail of Tears by approximately 300 years. During all that history people of mixed ancestry were living fully as Native American in any of hundreds of tribes across the continent. The likelihood of European genetic markers in people who identify as 100% Native increases with time and is an especially sensitive subject for people who are descendants of survivors of genocide. The smaller the population of your people becomes, the more likely members of that population will seek mates elsewhere. This is why the cultural identity matters so much more to a lot of Native folks than does straight genetics.

So . . . if you're assuming a 100% genetically Native ancestor providing Warren's Native ancestry, then the data suggest someone in the more distant past than does her family lore. If you allow for her ancestor who provided the Native markers to have had mixed Native/Euro ancestry themselves, then that ancestor can be quite a bit closer generationally to Warren herself.

Again, none of this is at all surprising in Oklahoma.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Indeed.

Folks are also conflating which specific ancestor should have been Native to the proportion of Native genetic markers in Warren and her siblings.

Admixture of Native American and European genes predates the Trail of Tears by approximately 300 years. During all that history people of mixed ancestry were living fully as Native American in any of hundreds of tribes across the continent. The likelihood of European genetic markers in people who identify as 100% Native increases with time and is an especially sensitive subject for people who are descendants of survivors of genocide. The smaller the population of your people becomes, the more likely members of that population will seek mates elsewhere. This is why the cultural identity matters so much more to a lot of Native folks than does straight genetics.

So . . . if you're assuming a 100% genetically Native ancestor providing Warren's Native ancestry, then the data suggest someone in the more distant past than does her family lore. If you allow for her ancestor who provided the Native markers to have had mixed Native/Euro ancestry themselves, then that ancestor can be quite a bit closer generationally to Warren herself.

Again, none of this is at all surprising in Oklahoma.

I would like you to construct what you think is the most probably distribution of her ancestors.

 

[The Shrike]

I would like you to construct what you think is the most probably distribution of her ancestors.

That's nice. I would like you to complete this manuscript review I'm working on tonight. Short of that, if you could make some kind of a coherent statement as to how Warren's genetic analysis confirming Native ancestry refutes her family's claim to some amount of Native ancestry, I'd be much obliged.

 

[BobTheCoward]

That's nice. I would like you to complete this manuscript review I'm working on tonight. Short of that, if you could make some kind of a coherent statement as to how Warren's genetic analysis confirming Native ancestry refutes her family's claim to some amount of Native ancestry, I'd be much obliged.

She claimed more than native ancestry. There are specific claims of two grandparents, specific tribes, and reactions to those family members. She has no evidence of that. By describing it as "some amount of native ancestry" is moving the goalposts.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

I wonder how you think that evidence would appear. Newspaper clippings? Diary entries? Skeletons not missing any bones?

 

[applecorped]

How