Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s newly released DNA results show that the Democrat’s Native American ancestry is roughly the same as that of the average white American, and may be less.
A 2014 study by Harvard University and 23andMe found that European Americans tested overall for 0.18 percent Native American ancestry, while Ms. Warren’s results show she has anywhere from 0.09 percent to 1.5 percent.
“This means that the DNA test shows that Warren is actually LESS NATIVE AMERICAN than the average American of European ancestry,” said Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson on his right-tilting Legal Insurrection blog.
The 2014 study was tweeted by the Republican National Committee’s Michael Ahrens shortly after the Boston Globe ran an exclusive story Monday revealing Ms. Warren’s DNA results.
So Elizabeth Warren is *possibly* 1/1024 (0.09%) Native American.
— Michael Ahrens (@michael_ahrens) October 15, 2018
Scientists say the average European-American is 0.18% Native American. (https://t.co/XU0l1JQO1L)
That’d make Warren even less Native American than the average European-American.
SEE ALSO: Boston Globe issues second correction on Elizabeth Warren DNA story
Ms. Warren released her DNA results and an analysis by Stanford geneticist Carlos Bustamante, who told the Boston Globe that “the results strongly support he evidence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor” dating back six to 10 generations.
At the same time, the article noted that genetic data from Native Americans is sparse, and that Mr. Bustamante filled in with samples from Mexico, Peru and Colombia.
The 2014 report, which appeared in the American Journal of Human Genetics, involved DNA testing of 160,000 people and was billed as “the largest study of its kind so far.”
The European American genome was found to be “much different” than that of African Americans and Latinos, with “European American genomes being 98.6 percent European, 0.19 percent African and 0.18 percent Native American,” according to a 2015 article by the Genetic Literacy Project.
“In general, the numbers seem to agree with what one would expect given the history of American colonization by Europeans and their interactions with African and Native Americans,” said the article.
Ms. Warren’s unproven claims of Cherokee ancestry while teaching law at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have dogged her potential 2020 presidential bid, with President Trump mocking her as “Pocahontas.”
The percentages in this story have been updated to reflect corrections in the Boston Globe report.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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