I was admitted to Duke University because I was Native American. It took me years to come to terms with it, even if I knew that to be true. I had fine SAT scores, but they were about 300 points below Duke’s average. My GPA was good, for my small-town public high school, but compared to the litany of rich kids that gained admittance alongside me—I was the odd one out.

A couple weeks before everyone else received their admittance letters, I got a letter telling me I got in and inviting me to attend a weekend where I would spend time alongside my fellow Native students that had found their way in—there were, maybe, eight of us total out of a class of 1,700. When I told people at my small-town North Carolina high school, I knew what came next, either out loud or in their heads: It’s just because he’s an Indian. And so, I ran from this truth. I sprinted as far as I could in the other direction, denying it, pointing to my record, to my inane summer camps, to anything that would reject the premise that I, a boy who had been raised in an homogeneously white, Christian town, had somehow been granted a step up because of my tribal heritage. I had to deserve it, you see, because otherwise I was a fraud.

I carried this weight for years, releasing it only a year or so back; it was then, after many conversations and dozens of hours of research on my tribe’s history, that I recognized that shame to have manifested itself from a place of misunderstanding of what affirmative action is meant to accomplish.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108262&forum_id=2#37039722)

at best it was an extremely long-winded explanation of native american tribal members don't equate blood/dna with tribal membership. and that's fine i guess but warren never claimed to be a MEMBER of *any* tribe.

she claimed to believe based on family histories that she was descended from *some* quantum of native blood, and she seemed to think this bespoke DNA test would somehow substantiate that belief, and thus her claim to identify in some sense as native american, NOT to identify any specific tribal membership or affiliation.

he sets his argument up saying it doesn't matter whether her genetic test said .1% NA or 100% NA she would be EXPLOITING native people no matter what, just by taking the test, which is stupid. if the best test we have, flawed though it might be since injuns don't want their DNA sampled, came back and said liz warren was 35% native, then it would seem like she had a reasonable point saying "i was told i had native ancestry and the test seemingly bears that out, therefore i wasn't lying and my statements about my native history were pretty reasonable, in context."

it's the fact that the test came back with laughably almost no native markers that makes her look ridiculous, not the fact that she took a test at all. native *tribal* members already get to say who's in and who's out for casino wampum, but that doesn't mean they get to cry redman tears just because someone tests native heritage, divorced from any *tribal* benefits or rights, as a scientific exercise.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4108262&forum_id=2#37040581)