Like A Replacement Negroe, Pocahantas Warren Lied, Cheated, and Benefitted

BostonGlobe |  She added: “When someone is pouring gasoline on a fire it’s always better to put the fire out. But, in this case, the Warren campaign thought it would burn itself out.”’

Marsh said that Brown’s campaign erred in overreaching on the issue. And Warren won that race by 7 percentage points, even as Obama carried the Bay State over Romney by more than 23 percentage points.

Warren says she believes these issues are in her past.

“These issues were extensively litigated in 2012 and I think the people of Massachusetts made their decision,” Warren said in her brief interview with the Globe this month. “I think what the people of Massachusetts and what voters are concerned about is the direction that Donald Trump is pulling this country.”

And Warren appears to be taking tentative steps to build ties to Native American advocates in Washington.

“I’d put her on a list of someone who is open and willing to listen and engage,” said Jacqueline Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, a Washington-based group supporting Native Americans.

But when asked if Warren has led any major legislative efforts for tribes, Pata demurred. “Not that I know of,” she said. “Nor do I believe we’ve asked that either.”

In December, Warren attended a rally in Washington led by the Gwich’in Nation and Inupiaq Tribe in December opposing a provision in the Republican tax bill that opens a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

In the Globe interview, Warren pointed to her broader agenda of working to reduce opioid addiction and substance abuse. “Its an extraordinarily seriously problem for Native Americans,” Warren said.

Warren said she has also pushed for a provision in an education bill that would require reporting on student performance by ethnicity, with an eye toward ensuring that Native American students are being monitored — though the provision also tracks other minorities and isn’t specific to American Indians.

She helped a tribe in Northern California protect water rights by helping in negotiations in a larger defense authorization bill, according to several with knowledge of the bill.

And she has sat down with the Cherokee Nation’s principal chief, Bill John Baker. In a statement, he described Warren as “very welcoming.”

He credited her for supporting a provision in the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that lets tribal law enforcement prosecute non-natives accused of abusing American Indian women on reservations.

But perhaps ironically, it is Trump who may be doing the most to push Native Americans into Warren’s camp. Every time the president labels Warren as “Pocahontas,” she reacts swiftly, calling out the president for using what she terms a racial slur.

“She stands up to the racial slap,” said Smith, the former Cherokee Nation chief. “Anyone who stands up for Indian Country,” he said, “it endears her to me.”