Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., identified herself on a 1986 registration card for the State Bar of Texas as an "American Indian" — a previously undisclosed example of her claiming an Indian heritage, The Washington Post reported.
Using an open records request during a general inquiry, the Post obtained Warren's registration card that was filled out by hand in blue ink, signed and dated April 1986 — the first document to surface showing Warren making the claim in her own handwriting, the Post reported.
The Texas bar registration card is significant, among other reasons, because it removes any doubt Warren directly claimed the identity. In other instances, Warren has declined to say whether she or an assistant filled out forms, the Boston Globe reported.
The potentially damaging revelation came the same day Warren, in an interview with the Post, tried to put the controversy over her claims of Indian ancestry behind her as she mounts a 2020 White House bid.
"I can't go back," Warren told the Post. "But I am sorry for furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty and tribal citizenship and harm that resulted."
Last week, Warren expressed her regrets for taking a DNA test to verify her claims of Indian ancestry to the chief of the Cherokee Nation. But the move backfired with Cherokee leaders who were outraged she used the test to show any connection to the tribe, a process they control.
Warren's office did not dispute the authenticity of the 1986 Texas bar card.
According to the Globe, the Texas bar card date coincided with Warren's first listing as a "minority" by the Association of American Law Schools. She reported herself as minority in the directory every year starting in 1986 – when AALS first included a list of minority law professors – to 1995, when her name dropped off the list.
The Globe reported Warren also had her ethnicity changed from white to Native American in December 1989 while working at the University of Pennsylvania, two years after she was hired there.
And several months after Warren started working at Harvard law school in 1995, she approved listing her ethnicity as Native American, the Globe reported. Harvard listed Warren as Native American in its federal affirmative action forms from 1995 to 2004, records show, the Globe reported.
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