Time's latest 7 Questions interview turned to Native American writer David Treuer, who arrived to make excuses for Elizabeth Warren's DNA-test debacle.The New York Times published "Why Many Native Americans Are Angry with Elizabeth Warren." CNN's Chris Cillizza explained "Elizabeth Warren's Native-American heritage reveal was just as bad as you thought it was." GQ magazine posted "What Elizabeth Warren Keeps Getting Wrong About DNA Tests and Native American Heritage."
But Time was pushing back. The headline was "David Treuer, the Ojibwe writer, on Elizabeth Warren, the problem with tragedy, and his new book The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee." Lily Rothman set it up:
TIME: You make the case for defining Indian identity by relationship to culture, so what did you think of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s choice to take a DNA test?
TREUER: I can understand the drive to want to put the issue to rest, but it didn’t put it to rest. Frankly what’s most interesting about Warren are her economic policies. Those are worth talking about. The fact that she grew up in Oklahoma hearing she was Native, that just makes her Oklahoman. She took a test, and it proved that she heard stories that were largely true. So what? The only reason it’s a story is because we’re continuing to bite the baited hook.
He also claimed "identities are always constructed, multiple, and overlapping. Those are largely consciously made by us."
Treuer has a new book to promote (and has already pushed it on PBS and NPR), but his defense of Warren was well-known. Back in 2012, Treuer wrote a Washington Post op-ed shamelessly titled "Elizabeth Warren says she’s Native American. So she is." Treuer spun aggressively:
Regardless of why Warren claimed minority status (she said she did it in hopes of meeting people with similar heritage), to be a woman from Oklahoma of working-class upbringing — and to want not only to walk the halls of power but to help build them — you have to press whatever advantage you have. Doing so might seem distasteful to those who’ve never had to do it because they were born into privilege and power.
But beyond the question of whether Warren “gamed the system,” isn’t the question of her identity and its deployment suggestive of something else? Doesn’t it show us that whatever its sins, America’s virtues have won — that we have become a plural society?
Rothman alos asked Treuer about the Covington kids, a purported "video of young men in MAGA hats surrounding an Omaha elder became a focus of controversy. is there a less people can take away from the way that moment went viral?" Treuer replied "The surface is ugly, but the depths are profound. We could focus on [the elder] Nathan Phillips. Despite what' he's been through -- and I imagine it's been a lot -- with dignity and compassion and gentleness even, he stayed in the fight."
