Cherokee Secretary Of State: Warren, Trump DNA Fight ‘Not Useful’

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Cherokee Nation secretary of state Chuck Hoskin Jr. said Monday that a DNA test does not mean much in the way of proving Native American ancestry, and that the back-and-forth between President Donald Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) about her ancestry is “not particularly useful.”

“It doesn’t drill down to whether a person has Cherokee ancestry, for example, or ancestry of any particular tribe. It’s useful to connect yourself with some lineage, determine paternity, but it doesn’t narrow down the scope of who your ancestors were to any identifiable tribe,” Hoskin Jr. said to CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“We need to be clear about what it means to be a Native American and Indian in this country. And it comes down to a legal status that we frankly have fought long and hard for and are very proud of,” he added.

“We have a lot of issues, and we would rather the President of the United States and Senator Warren focus in on things that affect us, housing, health care, clean water, clean air,” he continued. “We don’t think it’s particularly useful to have them in a back and forth about a DNA test, name calling and that sort of thing.”

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