Schooling Diana

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For the millionth time. Elizabeth Warren is not Native.

This weekend, a number of Natives ended up schooling Diana, whose ignorance had her attempting to dominate a Tweet by @aliwatson117, dismiss the education given her about Warren’s genealogy by numerous Natives, attempted to namedrop a former Cherokee principal chief as though yet another wild claim would shore up her lies. No one fell for it; not even her own followers from the looks of it. Here’s the short and long of it.

The remainder of this article assumes the reader knows about Elizabeth Warren’s claim to being Cherokee or Delaware, has never been able to provide genealogy, did a DNA test that doesn’t actually make anyone Native let alone which tribe(s) may be involved, finally admitted to not being enrolled but ‘I know who I am’. If you’re not aware of this long drawn out saga, there are a lot of articles and information on this elsewhere.

Following my tweet, Diana ended up dropping this ignorant gem and then refused to listen to any Native who attempted to educate her, all the while insisting that the rest of us were all wrong. The white entitlement has been surreal. On top of this, Diana claimed to many of us that she was a “Native auntie” and we should know who we speak to (there’s that entitlement again).

She starts out benevolently by offering one person an invite to a picnic. Then she gets progressively hostile about her position and identity.

I tagged former principal chief Baker for a response and haven’t gotten one, though it’s not surprising. Given Diana’s attitude over the weekend, it was likely merely a name drop on the pretense of seeming important rather than offering fact (or just. You know. Throwing him under the bus for no reason). Though, if he publicly contends that Warren is Cherokee, we’ll revisit this article.

At this point, it’s starting to look like Diana isn’t up for being educated. To date, Baker still hasn’t come to bat for her. Also at this point, some of us began to question why any Native would go this hard for Warren in trying to make Warren out to be Cherokee. Diana did accuse me of appropriating culture when enrollment isn’t… you know… culture…?

There’s a few important things to note with this next segment. One being that at no point did Twila, a Cherokee genealogist who has done Warren’s genealogy, bring up enrollment. Diana had invited someone to a Cherokee picnic, someone asked if that picnic was real, and Twila responded that they were an at large satellite group, not a tribe. At no point did any of us bring up enrollment, yet Diana really dug deep.

These two bits, “Some can prove their ancestry but don’t qualify for enrollment. That doesn’t make any of us less Cherokee, or more Cherokee.” and “Cherokee walked off from the Trail, took their Cherokee family documents with them, & did not end up with a relative on the Dawes.” are red flags of people who have family lore stories that they can’t corroborate by documentation or history. At one point, Diana had claimed that many ancestors had such common names that they were ‘lost’.

The reason the above is significant is that the majority of Natives never owned land of what is considered the United States today in the first place. White people (the government) didn’t think we had any rights and the majority of Natives were either wiped out or displaced. Diana’s family owning land and keeping land doesn’t remotely suggest that her ancestors were Cherokee. It’s not conclusive, but damned interesting. It’s also an insult to those who walked that Trail, suggesting anyone who left or abandoned their people were better than those who walked. As well as those who walked were less “Indian” than her ancestors. No Native walked with their relatives, often to the death, on the idea that “the White Man” (why is that capitalized by her?) needed to acknowledge our identity. If that’s your idea of what the Trail of Tears was, you need to learn a whole lot more.

Let’s get into where she really opens up and tells on herself.

Two tribal chiefs and a king according to her Patreon bio. The contents of which quite a few of us laughed went over.

From ᏣᎳᎩ Auntie Eagle-
“Diana: *while playing education & legal expert “When you’re in my feed (really, it was Ali’s thread) you are in my classroom.”
Also Diana: “I plan to graduate in spring 2020 with a master’s degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and will begin my teaching career”
These are things Diana put in print, these quotes are real, unlike her “classroom”. It really says a lot about what she believes is required to speak as an “authority” on something.”

Now back to Ali.

While Diana seems to be claiming to be Cherokee, she never named which tribe, only that she grew up near “her ancestral lands” of “Chatahoochee River and Ball Mound” and didn’t answer a Cherokee genealogist whether or not she was enrolled in Cherokee Nation.

She seems to have a habit of going to bat for people falsely identifying as Native. Warren was one. Michelle Latimer is another. This try hard attitude seems to suggest Diana’s insecurity around her own lack of ability to prove her own ancestry, which is why her defense of pretendians makes more sense.

It took a little digging to find her speak of her ancestors. “Grandma” is not very far back in ancestry to try the ‘but no one would have documentation’.

Ah yes, this is sounding more and more familiar to Warren and Latimer, isn’t it? Claims based on family lore with zero supporting documentation anywhere about it, but plenty of indication that Diana is not Native. She’s white. A white auntie. If she’s an auntie at all.

Before, I thought Diana’s claim was to Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Above, she’s claiming grandma is Eastern Cherokee. Yet she also told someone in my thread that they weren’t the same Cherokee tribe and the person was EBCI, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Maybe Diana meant another Eastern Cherokee tribe? She also claims Mvskoke and at one point in her Twitter timeline, she claims Seminole as well. But she only seems to regard the two chiefs as important.

Whoa, what’s this?

I wonder what criteria that Diana has for choosing which pretendian to defend.

For this next gem, I wonder if she thinks anyone can just say, ‘my great grandma was Native’ and suddenly be imbued with a white woman’s level of entitlement. Let’s just peruse a few not so winning takes.

(How many casinos is this really? I have questions.)

Is Diana claiming to be Black as well? I haven’t seen anything anywhere else from her making this particular claim.

ALERT ALERT ALERT

We interrupt calling out a pretendian for also being a hypocrite!

First this:

I found Diana’s Instagram where she sells “Native inspired” jewelry and crafts like this “Navajo inspired” blanket shawl. While hypocritically whining about appropriation at me (and being wrong about it; enrollment isn’t culture and can’t be appropriated. Appropriation would be more like… falsely identifying as Cherokee and selling art bastardized from another tribe that one’s not claiming, DIANA). You claim to know appropriation, but can’t recognize that you have appropriated art from numerous tribes that you haven’t claimed for profit. There’s a whole federal law about non-Natives selling art and passing it off as “Native made”, Diana. You’ve used turquoise, dreamcatchers and bastardized Navajo designs in the few posts that I’ve been through. Big yikes.

Diana. I have family who are Diné. That doesn’t mean I get to make “Navajo INSPIRED” art. They don’t get to wear Lakota regalia at a whim. Or rather, I suppose we could – if we had no respect for each other’s cultures. Respect is important to many of us Natives, Diana.

Interestingly, Diana is a serial defender of any and all fake Native claims. Including the Northern Cherokee Nation, claiming that they have state recognition – they do not. They have state recognition as a charitable organization, not a Native tribe and it seems Cherokee tribes assert that they are fake.

She replied to a Quora question, attempted to dismiss facts in the first response and then claimed that Val Kilmer is Cherokee. “Val Kilmer, born and raised in Los Angeles, is Cherokee (his grandpa was enrolled and registered at 100%)…” The first article that comes up when you google Val Kilmer and Cherokee is this quote from Indianz dot com. “Kilmer said he is “part Native American and would never conceive of slandering a human in any way because of the color of their skin,” according to the Associated Press. Kilmer said his grandmother was Cherokee but there is no word whether she was a princess.”

In that same Quora question about DNA ancestry and Native claims, Diana has this hot and wrong take. “Blood Quantum: This can be based on scientific formulas or culture. Culturally, if you’re descended from a Chief, you’re 100%.” So if she’s DIRECTLY descended from two chiefs and a king, does that mean she’s 200% NDN plus royalty? The need to place herself in a superior position based on dead relatives is quite the cringe here. For the record, no tribe uses this formula, especially as a replacement for blood quantum. Such claims are erroneous, harmful to Native sovereignty, and perpetuate stereotypes and false claims to our cultures.

Diana claims in one tweet to be a member of the American Bar Association, avoided answering whether or not she’s a lawyer, and even made this claim at trump:

Except when you look at her LinkedIn profile or her Wayup profile, Diana shows that she’s only a student member of the American Bar Association, not a lawyer like she’s seemed to imply throughout her twitter feed and in replies to other people. Including the last president of the U.S. Is that acceptable for any student membership to the American Bar Association? The “student” designation seems particularly important to not misrepresent themselves as a lawyer as many times as Diana has done in the last few years. I would wager that student members wouldn’t be encouraged to throw around an American Bar Association membership as a backing for one’s wild claims.

Now for the coup de grace.

I have exhaustively gone through Diana’s Twitter, looking through her social media and how she constantly speaks over Natives with false information and perpetuating stereotypes and encourages non-Natives to invade Native spaces by excusing pretendian claims and supporting fake Cherokee tribes while claiming to be Cherokee. Not once did I find an actual Cherokee tribe that she’s claiming, whether it be one of the three federally recognized, or one of the hundreds of fake Cherokee tribes. Diana will find any means of elevating herself while also looking down on other Natives, regardless of how much more information and truth that we are sharing. I’m going to drop some tweets here that might be worth a read or laugh.

Diana Schooling is no more a Native auntie than Elizabeth Warren. Enjoy that dubious solidarity, Diana.

(Baker, you may want to address this at some point, lol.)

(I have heard from Cherokee people that this is not correct).

(WOW. Way to throw Native women under the bus and blame them for the actions of men. You clearly know nothing of AIM back in the day and need to do a whole lot of learning if your coming for Native women, white woman.)

BONUS: Diana wrote an opinion article on education. Upon reading, it seems solely a means of announcing unbidden yet again of how Native she is. I quote. “As a person of proud Native American descent, a mother, a legal advocate, and the recipient of a master’s degree and several academic honors…” She seems to honor herself in this way a lot throughout her tweets. This time she strangely downplays her Native-ness to “Native American descent” for some reason. As if understanding she’s not really Native but not willing to let go of the possibility. Like a certain senator and fellow white woman who’s name escapes me (it doesn’t, I just don’t want to type it again).

Diana, had you scrolled on your way, you never would have been outted as a fake. Don’t worry though. White women who need to feel Native never truly let that go. There are plenty of other white women who feel the same, like Warren, Bubba Otep, Kaya Jones and plenty more not even in these pages (go read about your sisters in this site). No one can take away your white entitlement and fetishization of our cultures. Many of us wish it were possible, but you may spend the rest of your life being what you’re not, all while proclaiming you are and that we’re all wrong.

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