Lieawatha should be on the front lines at the #DAPL protest.
Via The Observer:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has garnered criticism over the past few years for her failure to corroborate a claim that she is part Native American. “Warren has claimed Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage, but the only proof so far seems to be stories she says she heard from family members as a child,” reported The Washington Post. “Cherokee groups have demanded documentation of the candidate’s Native American ancestry, but she hasn’t delivered.” Warren was touted as Native American while serving as a faculty member at Harvard, and her Republican opponents have argued Warren used the claim to boost her career academically and professionally.
When Warren responded to Donald Trump pejoratively calling her “Pocahontas” during the presidential election, she failed to defend Native Americans, only reverting to calling Trump a “loser.” In an Op-Ed published by CNN, Simon Moya-Smith, the culture editor at Indian Country Today, demanded Warren apologize to Native Americans. “Ever since the controversy surrounding her contested background became public discourse in 2012, when she ran for the U.S. Senate, Warren has avoided Indian country like an ex,” he wrote. “That is seriously problematic for Native Americans.” He added, “Warren continues to perpetuate a false reality of who Native Americans are today, while in turn, inadvertently or not, encouraging the claims of millions of convenient Indians who self-identify as Native American for their own gain.”
The Dakota Access Pipeline presented an opportunity for Warren to save face and fight for the rights of Native Americans. The efforts of the Standing Rock Sioux to stop the pipeline have developed into a broader movement for indigenous rights across the country, but again Warren is nowhere to be found in this fight.
This lack of commitment to touted principles has come to define Warren’s political career. Her neutrality during the Democratic primaries illuminated her political cowardice as she avoided risking her career by sitting on the fence until a clear winner appeared.
Democrats portray themselves as champions of identity politics, only to abandon these principles when any political risks are attached to doing so. Mass incarceration still plagues the prison system, with Democrats exerting little effort to reform it.
HT: Legal Insurrection