“You won’t find my family members on any rolls, and I’m not enrolled in a tribe,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an apparent surprise appearance at the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. She addressed more than 500 tribal delegates there.

“And I want to make something clear,” Warren continued. “I respect that distinction. I understand that tribal membership is determined by tribes — and only by tribes.”

During her speech at this NCAI event — its 2018 Executive Council Winter Session — Warren also used the opportunity to take multiple swings at President Donald Trump, whose treatment of native American Indians she described as “disrespectful.”

“But now we have a president who can’t make it through a ceremony honoring Native American war heroes without reducing native history, native culture, native people to the butt of a joke,” said the Massachusetts lawmaker, whose own claims to this ancestry have repeatedly met with scrutiny and been found lacking.

Warren took another jab at Trump near the end of her speech in a segment that addressed the violence that native peoples have suffered and continue to suffer. On President Trump’s supposed personal contribution to that “violence,” Warren said, “It is deeply offensive that this president keeps a portrait of Andrew Jackson hanging in the Oval Office, honoring a man who did his best to wipe out native people.”

Questions about Warren’s claims began surfacing following a 2012 story in the Boston Herald. In it, the writer mentioned that Harvard University had used Warren’s “avowed Native American heritage” to bolster the school’s claims of its faculty’s diversity, Politifact reported.

The questions snowballed after that, when other outlets reported that Warren had been listed as a “minority” in other colleges and universities where she had taught.

The net result, Politifact reported, is that “Warren’s campaign team could never uncover any documents that confirmed Native American heritage in her family. The New England Historic Genealogical Society also could not find any … Warren’s ultimate explanation was she was drawing on family stories.”

Her speech to NCAI’s tribal leaders on Wednesday boiled down to precisely that: Warren’s claims to native ancestry are based on remembered stories from childhood.

Some media outlets have described Warren’s speech as “striking” and “bold.” Many have applauded her strategic retelling of Pocahontas’ story as a clever means of taking a preemptive strike against President Trump, who has repeatedly invoked the name of the Native American historical figure in poking fun at Warren.

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Interestingly, many outlets have suggested she sufficiently addressed long-standing challenges to her claimed native ancestry in the speech. The Boston Globe, for example, said Warren was “defending her claims of Native American heritage more expansively than she has before.” Careful examination of her words, however, suggests that she left herself plenty of room for plausible deniability.

For example, in one section of the speech, Warren said, “I never used my family tree to get a break or get ahead. I never used it to advance my career.”

If Warren had used feigned native ancestry as part of a bid for better-paying or more prestigious professorships, as some have alleged, then the above statement is still, technically, true. If her true ancestry contained no or precious few native elements, then it obviously wouldn’t be helpful in attaining a position for which minority status is a sought-after characteristic in potential new hires.

Direct claims of native ancestry in the 17-minute speech came down to the following: “My mother’s family was part Native-American.” Readers and listeners can interpret that as they may.

In another interesting portion of the speech, Warren said, “So I’m here to make a promise: Every time someone brings up my story, I’m going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities.”

In another interesting portion of the speech, Warren said, “So I’m here to make a promise: Every time someone brings up my story, I’m going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities.”

Some listeners may take that to mean that Sen. Warren intends to use her platform to amplify the voice of Native Americans — a laudable goal that is sorely needed. Other listeners may take that as an indicator that Warren does not intend to directly address the lingering issue of her questionable claims to native ancestry ever again. Perhaps both interpretations are true.

The NCAI summarized its response to Warren’s address in a statement on their website: “In addressing NCAI, Sen. Warren addressed the world, and we are deeply honored by the courage she showed today,” said NCAI president Jefferson Keel. “We appreciate her candor, humility and honesty, and look forward to working with her as a champion for Indian Country.”

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Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and regular contributor to LifeZette.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Elizabeth Warren [1], [2], CC BY-SA 2.0, by Edward Kimmel; Donald Trump… [1], [2], CC BY-SA 2.0, CC BY 2.0, by Gage Skidmore and Michael Vadon)