Race and Identity

Abstract

Elizabeth Warren has been a regular target for Trump, particularly her problematic Native American identity. Trump, an adherent to the idea of the ‘vanishing Indian’, has relentlessly mocked her claims to a Native American identity, delegitimising it by emphasising the concept of Indigenous racial purity. To complicate matters, Warren’s claims to a Native American identity have been rejected by many Native Americans. Based on vague family histories rather than cultural experience or a shared identity, Warren’s struggle with her own ethno-identity cast a light on an important phenomenon—Native American identity theft. This chapter examines Native American identity theft and the process of cultural appropriation that underpins it. It explores the ways in which the blood quantum has been used to create a national narrative which implies the eventual disappearance of Native Americans; and how that idea has helped to shape Trump’s approach to Warren. It also examines the ways in which imagery of Native Americans has evolved over the course of the twentieth century, helping to create an aspirational image that has proven itself attractive to many non-Indians who have gone on to claim, often without any basis in reality, an Indigenous identity of their own.