The Massachusetts Senate race has gotten ridiculous. Incumbent Scott Brown is passionately attacking Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren with the charge that she lied about being part Native American. He claims she got preference in hiring because of this, something his campaign hasn’t been able to prove. Warren can’t prove her Indian – Cherokee and Delaware – ancestry either, and seems taken aback at being asked to do so. It’s something she grew up knowing, she says. She didn’t ask her parents for documentation.

Brown backed his charges with absurd statements like “As you can see, she’s not” [Native American], causing Rachel Maddow to refer to his “magic DNA goggles.” Some ebullient Brown backers began disrupting Warren appearances with allegedly Indian war whoops and tomahawk chop gestures. Oh look, some weren’t just Brown backers, they were Brown employees. Well, one Brown employee and one Republican Party field coordinator, a-bubble with spontaneity.

The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Bill John Baker, objected to this “uneducated, unenlightened and racist” nonsense. Brown’s office said they couldn’t control everyone, but that he had told his staff that such behavior would not be tolerated. Also he “regrets” how they behaved.

That’s not an apology. He takes no responsibility for what happened, only for taking what he hints may be ineffective measures to stop it. (Something he could have tried earlier.)

He didn’t apologize to the Cherokee Nation, and he certainly didn’t apologize to Warren, stepping up his attack with ads showing people calling her a liar.

He can’t document his claims (that Warren got preference for being categorized as Native American, and that she isn’t actually Native American).

Cherokee portraits, collage by Robfergusonjr. Magic DNA goggles reveal that Cherokees like retro fashions.

Warren can’t document hers either. Thinking about it, I realize that I’m a situation like Warren’s. Like her, I’ve been told since childhood that I was part Indian. But the information was oddly thin. For a long time, we weren’t even sure of the tribe.

We didn’t know because Indian heritage was once something to keep quiet, for social reasons and self-protection. There was more than one Trail of Tears relocating Indians from different states. You could be an upright citizen, farming your own land – ‘Hey! we’re confiscating your stuff and making you walk to Oklahoma. You’ll love it there!’ Some Indians managed to evade government forces who would have relocated them.

We also didn’t know because my great-great-grandmother Verinda Susan Lake, a crypto-Cherokee in Ohio, was orphaned when her parents got yellow fever. The house was burned to prevent contagion, the surviving children were put on a wagon, taken to West Virginia, and given to whoever would take them. Not the kind of situation where paperwork survives. I can’t document a step of this.

Verinda, from a fugitive generation, was taught never to say she was Indian, and never to sign anything. Caution was passed on – my grandmother didn’t tell my mother she was part Indian until she was 12.

This is not to suggest that present-day Americans like me and Elizabeth Warren fear being dispossessed and moved to Oklahoma. (Although it is a long walk for me, Warren is actually from Oklahoma.) It is to suggest that there are pervasive historical reasons why many people can’t document their Indian ancestry.

I haven’t found statistics on how many Americans have a smidge of Indian ancestry. Apparently that’s not how people get categorized. But I’ve met a lot. People like us get teased by Indians who are indisputably Indian, who are part of Native American nations and tribes. We are teased as wannabes who classically claim their great-grandmothers were Indian princesses (a ridiculous concept, much like claiming your great-grandfather was an Indian rabbi). We are warned that if we stub a toe we could lose our Indian blood then and there.

Scott Brown may not realize how many Americans have a little bit of Native American ancestry and can’t prove it. He may have offended a significant electoral bloc. Our Great Grandmothers were Indian Princesses and We Vote!

In their second debate (10/1/12), Brown might surprise people by taking the high road. He might apologize for calling Warren a liar. He might say that he should have stopped the whooping and chopping the first time he saw it. And he might turn to important subjects that affect the citizens of Massachusetts. And Bill John Baker might offer to make me a Cherokee princess.