On MSNBC’s AM Joy on Sunday, host Joy Reid discussed with her guests both the Tweet by President Donald Trump directed at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Warren’s own claims of Native American ancestry. Rebecca Nagle, a women’s advocate and member of the Cherokee nation who joined by phone, spared no criticism of either politician.
Guest Michelle Goldberg, in the clip above, responded to Nagle’s remarks earlier in the segment by first disclosing that her husband works with Sen. Warren, then offered the line that Warren has been running with for some time about having merely been speaking to what her family told her growing up.
“I just want to say that Elizabeth Warren did, in fact, have a native American ancestor, and grew up believing this was part of her heritage and kind of identified with it,” said Goldberg. “I think she was mistaken and she obviously shouldn’t have identified herself as Native American on that bar application, but she, this was kind of part of — if you watch that video, the video that’s gotten her in so much trouble, her conservative brothers also say this was the story of our family that we grew up hearing.”
“Yeah, so, that’s completely false,” said Nagle. “Warren has zero Cherokee ancestry.”
“Genealogists in 2012 did her genealogy. That’s what Cherokee genealogists do when somebody claims to be
So her ancestors that she claims are the Cherokee people in her family are on the census as white at times when actual Cherokee people weren’t on the census at all, because we weren’t considered citizens, let alone humans,’ said Nagle.
Nagle explained in more detail how this is determined.
“The other thing that we checked, and this is really important for people to understand, is that Cherokee people are one of the most well-documented people in the world. We’re right up there with royalty, and that’s because we endured genocide,” she said. “So before we were removed, while we were being removed, when our land was being allotted out and our treaty territory was being dissolved– at all these moments, every living Cherokee was documented.”
“There are over forty-five rolls of Cherokee people between the 1810s and the 1910s, and Cherokee genealogists went and looked up Warren’s family tree and then crossed-referenced her relatives with those 45 rolls and looked for them, and they’re not there,” said Nagle. “So there is no evidence that she has a single Cherokee ancestor.”
“The only evidence she has
“She is still allowing people to believe this myth about Cherokee identity,” said Nagle.
The entire segment is definitively destructive to Warren’s attempts to thread the needle between apologizing and not taking responsibility for using Cherokee identity for her own personal gain.
Nagle, on the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center website, is described as “a citizen of Cherokee Nation and a two spirit (queer) woman,” and as “a nationally recognized leader in the movement to end sexual and domestic violence.” She is not politically aligned with Republicans or Trump, and earlier in the segment attacked the President as well over his tweet about Warren.
Of Trump’s tweet, and his son’s Instagram post, Nagle said “it’s not a joking matter. It’s not a light matter. It’s completely inappropriate for trump and his son to mock it.”
Watch the clip above, courtesy of MSNBC.
[Featured image via screengrab]
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