Cherokee Women Try to Meet With Elizabeth Warren; Campaign Offends Them [View all]

[IamK]

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/06/20/cherokee-women-try-to-meet-with-elizabeth-warren-campaign-offends-them-119585

If U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was telling the truth back in May when she said that she listed herself as an American Indian minority in order “to find some more people like me” while a professor from 1986 to 1995, she seems to have altogether abandoned that mission. That’s the conclusion of a group of four Cherokee women who are traveling in Massachusetts this week with the intent of meeting with the candidate to talk about her unproven claims of Indian ancestry and her understanding of tribal issues. During their time in Boston, Warren has dodged them – much to the delight of local press pointing out the oddness of the situation – and her campaign has labeled them as out-of-staters cavorting with extremists.

“The out-of-state group in question is being promoted and supported by a right-wing extremist who is on the record supporting and contributing money to Scott Brown,” Warren spokeswoman Alethea Harney told The Boston Herald in an article published on June 20. “It is past time we moved on to the important issues facing middle-class families in Massachusetts — even if Scott Brown won’t.”

Harney has not responded to requests for comment from Indian Country Today Media Network since the publication reported on May 31 that Warren and her campaign have dodged the Native press on several questions, while attempting to label Indian concerns as nonissues. She had told ICTMN earlier in May that the campaign wanted “to keep the lines of communication open,” but has since gone silent.

The Herald, which broke the story of Warren’s ancestry claims on April 27, reports that the extremist Harney told them she was referring to is Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson, who runs the conservative blog Legal Insurrection and who contributed $500 to Brown during the special Senate election in the state in 2010. Jacobson has said he has helped the local media get in touch with the Cherokee women.