Native American

US Senator Scott Brown has turned questions over Democrat Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native American ancestry into a key strategy in his bid to retain his Senate seat. Almost every day for more than two weeks, the Brown campaign or a Republican surrogate has highlighted the latest bit of news to emerge on the subject, often citing articles on conservative websites in a bid to coax more coverage from the mainstream news media. Warren's failure to offer a full and concise answer on what role her ancestry has played in her professional career has left an opening that has allowed the questions to linger.

For nearly three weeks, Scott Brown's campaign has been battering Elizabeth Warren for listing herself as a Native American on a legal directory and then being billed as a minority law professor at Harvard University. Now, Warren has a Democratic critic, too. Warren's primary opponent, Marisa DeFranco, who is trying to raise her profile in the race, is arguing that voters should be concerned about Warren's "lack of a clear, consistent message" in response to the Native American controversy.

Harvard Law School was stretching its credibility when it boasted, in a 1996 press release, that Professor Elizabeth Warren was a Native American; she has, according to family lore and long-ago marital records, some Native American ancestry, but she wasn't a tribe member and, by her own account, didn't hold herself out as a Native American. Her ancestry may have been a small point of diversity on a largely white-male faculty, but it was a disservice to students to suggest she was offering the perspective of a Native American.

Eight Oregon high schools will have to retire their Native American mascots after the Board of Education voted Thursday to prohibit them, giving the state some of the nation's toughest restrictions on Native American mascots, nicknames and logos. The 5-1 vote followed months of passionate and emotional debate about tolerance and tradition. The schools have five years to comply with the order or risk losing their state funding. Another seven high schools identified as the Warriors will be allowed to keep their nickname but will have to change mascots or graphics that depict Native...

During her long career as a law school professor, Democratic U.S. Sen. hopeful Elizabeth Warren has sometimes presented herself as having Native American ancestry. How often she did that, in what context, and why has become the thorniest debate in Massachusetts' contentious Senate contest as Warren tries to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, said she came to identify herself as having a Native American background, in part, through "family lore.

Elizabeth Warren fumbled through her worst stretch as a Senate candidate this week, setting off a debate among strategists over whether the controversy over her claims to Native American ancestry would linger when the November election is closer. The Warren campaign will not say when top advisers learned that she considered herself part-Native American, but it was an element of her biography that seemed to catch them off guard. When news emerged last Friday that Harvard Law School had publicly touted Warren as a Native American professor in the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s,...

The start of this year's powwow season got under way Friday as hundreds of Native American and indigenous dancers crowded onto the floor of University of New Mexico Arena, each one pounding their feet in rhythm to dozens of beating drums. Donning traditional costumes of beads, bells, feathers, fringed leather and shells, they came from Canada, both coasts of the United States and everywhere in between. "It's a wonderful spectacle to see," said Jason Whitehouse, a master of ceremonies for the 29th Annual Gathering of Nations.

Tim Turner greets tourists from a bench in downtown Plymouth next to Plymouth Rock and beneath the watchful gaze of Massasoit’s statue on Cole’s Hill. With his New England Patriots backpack and his hair cascading down his back in traditional Eastern Woodlands style, he is ready to tell the tale of this storied New England settlement from the Native perspective. A member of the Cherokee Nation, Turner, 37, grew up in the Plymouth area and works at Plimoth Plantation. The Pilgrim point of view is already the stuff of history and myth.

A group of influential minority legal associations passed a resolution last year calling on law schools to require "sufficient documentation of Native American citizenship" from law school applicants to prevent "academic ethnic fraud. " The resolution signed on July 2011 by the Coalition of Bar Associations of Color faults the practice known as "box checking," and says law schools perpetuate the problem because they do not want their minority enrollment...

Senator Scott Brown's campaign called on Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren Friday to apologize for letting Harvard Law School tout her as a Native American in its attempts to demonstrate faculty diversity in the 1990s. Warren said she didn't know Harvard was promoting her that way until Friday. Warren's maternal grandparents had Native American lineage, her campaign confirmed. The Boston Herald reported Friday that Harvard had touted Warren's Native American background as the...

As a woman, an academic, and a descendant of Native Americans, I felt the need to respond to the reports about Elizabeth Warren's claim to minority status (" Bad week may haunt Warren ," Page A1, May 5). Like Elizabeth Warren, I grew up in the sixties and seventies, when civil rights, including Native American rights, were very much on our minds. In high school and college, I identified with my Native American ancestors, and listed myself as a person of Native American descent on application forms.

US Senator Scott Brown has turned questions over Democrat Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native American ancestry into a key strategy in his bid to retain his Senate seat. Almost every day for more than two weeks, the Brown campaign or a Republican surrogate has highlighted the latest bit of news to emerge on the subject, often citing articles on conservative websites in a bid to coax more coverage from the mainstream news media. Warren's failure to offer a full and concise answer on what role her ancestry has played in her professional career has left an opening that...

US Senator Scott Brown has turned questions over Democrat Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native American ancestry into a key strategy in his bid to retain his Senate seat. Almost every day for more than two weeks, the Brown campaign or a Republican surrogate has highlighted the latest bit of news to emerge on the subject, often citing articles on conservative websites in a bid to coax more coverage from the mainstream news media. Warren's failure to offer a full and concise answer on what role her ancestry has played in her professional career has left an opening that has allowed the...

During her long career as a law school professor, Democratic U.S. Sen. hopeful Elizabeth Warren has sometimes presented herself as having Native American ancestry. How often she did that, in what context, and why has become the thorniest debate in Massachusetts' contentious Senate contest as Warren tries to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, said she came to identify herself as having a Native American background, in part, through "family lore.

Elizabeth Warren fumbled through her worst stretch as a Senate candidate this week, setting off a debate among strategists over whether the controversy over her claims to Native American ancestry would linger when the November election is closer. The Warren campaign will not say when top advisers learned that she considered herself part-Native American, but it was an element of her biography that seemed to catch them off guard. When news emerged last Friday that Harvard Law School had publicly touted Warren as a Native American professor in the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s,...

A group of influential minority legal associations passed a resolution last year calling on law schools to require "sufficient documentation of Native American citizenship" from law school applicants to prevent "academic ethnic fraud. " The resolution signed on July 2011 by the Coalition of Bar Associations of Color faults the practice known as "box checking," and says law schools perpetuate the problem because they do not want their minority enrollment numbers to decline. ...

US Senator Scott Brown has turned questions over Democrat Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native American ancestry into a key strategy in his bid to retain his Senate seat. Almost every day for more than two weeks, the Brown campaign or a Republican surrogate has highlighted the latest bit of news to emerge on the subject, often citing articles on conservative websites in a bid to coax more coverage from the mainstream news media. Warren's failure to offer a full and concise answer on what role her ancestry has played in her professional career has left an opening that...

Harvard Law School was stretching its credibility when it boasted, in a 1996 press release, that Professor Elizabeth Warren was a Native American; she has, according to family lore and long-ago marital records, some Native American ancestry, but she wasn't a tribe member and, by her own account, didn't hold herself out as a Native American. Her ancestry may have been a small point of diversity on a largely white-male faculty, but it was a disservice to students to suggest she was offering the perspective of a Native American.