More than 200 Native Americans urge Elizabeth Warren to fully retract ancestry claims

More than 200 Native Americans signed a letter asking Elizabeth Warren to fully retract her claims of Native American ancestry, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Why it matters: The authors, who include prominent activists like Daniel Heath Justice and Rebecca Nagle, write that her actions "have normalized white people claiming to be Native, and perpetuated a dangerous misunderstanding of tribal sovereignty."

• It adds that her previous apologies to the Cherokee Nation and Native American voters were "vague and inadequate."

The backdrop: Warren had long claimed that Cherokee ancestry was a part of her family's history and listed her race as "American Indian" on her registration card for the Texas bar in 1986.

• After people contested the claims, the Massachusetts senator took a DNA test, which indicated that she is between 1/32 and 1/1,024 Native American.
• An earlier Boston Globe analysis found that her ancestry was never a consideration during the hiring process at Harvard Law School, where she worked as a professor, or throughout her rise in the legal profession.

What they're saying: Warren sent a 12-page response to the predominately Cherokee authors on Tuesday night to both apologize and detail her plan to protect tribal lands and support Native Americans if elected president.

• "I am not a person of color; I am a white woman, and that is how I identify. In addition, I am not a tribal citizen. Tribal Nations — and only Tribal Nations — determine tribal citizenship. It’s their right as a matter of sovereignty, and they exercise that in the ways they choose to exercise it," she wrote.

Read the letters: