Cherokees to Protest Warren at State Convention

A group of Cherokee Native Americans will be protesting Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren at this weekend's Massachusetts Democratic party convention in Springfield. The Boston Herald reports:

Cherokees angered by Elizabeth Warren’s claims of Native American heritage said today they’ll stand in silent protest against the embattled Senate candidate during Saturday’s Democratic Convention in Springfield.

“I believe we need a presence there. Warren hasn’t recanted her claims or apologized to the Cherokee people,” said David Cornsilk, a 53-year-old citizen of Cherokee Nation who co-created a group called “Cherokees Demand Truth from Elizabeth Warren.”

But Warren, who has not been able to prove that she is descended from Native Americans, is apparently doubling down. In an email to supporters, titled, "Who I Am," she writes, "My mother, grandmother, and aunts were open about my family’s Native American heritage," according to BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller.

Twila Barnes, one of the spokespeople for the "Cherokees Demand Truth" group, appeared on Laura Ingraham's radio show today. Barnes said her group, which is not supporting any candidate in Warren's race against Scott Brown, wants to educate Americans on Cherokee history and and to get Warren "to admit that she's not one." Here's more of what Barnes had to say:

But when you're Cherokee you grow up and you hear every single day somebody else saying they're Cherokee or they have a great, great grandma who is a Cherokee princess, and it's a real issue for the Cherokee people, all the people who claim they have an ancestry when they have no basis for that. It's usually just a fictitious story somewhere that was invented, and when you do the genealogy it's not there. And being Cherokee is not a race of people. It's a nation of people. And we descend from a group of people who always stay with their nation.