I believe this remains the earliest document on which Warren attested with her signature to being "American Indian." It dates to 1986.
My mom said she believed my uncle/her brother's physical appearance suggested our family had Native American ancestry. As the ca. 2012 article from which I took the document above (and the link for which I provide below) observes...
No. They are not. As I know from my own.
A year before Warren wrote that her race was "American Indian" on the document above, I heard word of a high school classmate who was said to have checked "American Indian" on her college applications. It was done cynically, and instead of attending Berkeley, she attended Columbia. I can't assert cause & effect between the alleged checked box and her educational options. Back when Warren's representations began, and when my classmate allegedly did what she did, this claim certainly conferred Affirmative Action program advantage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-controversy-over-elizabeth-warrens-claimed-native-american-heritage/2012/09/27/d0b7f568-08a5-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html
Ten years is a long time to have yourself listed as "Minority" in a Directory of Faculty. There is plenty of deniability on Warren's part, and it is misfortunate that the public figure who made greatest political hay about this all is a detestable fraudster from Queens.
But I don't care what deniability she might successfully bring to the table. I followed her story closely, because the basis of her claim seemed as flimsy & familiar as one I might have made at a time when I and others understood it to confer advantage.
So... if I call Warren "a liar," I'm comfortable with the charge. Does any of that detract from notable stuff she did, some alluded to in the article? Not in any way - I remember watching her on CSPAN after the GFC and before she entered politics and being extremely impressed. I knew who she was before she ran for Senate.
But I'll go further: I think she was a self-serving cynical fucking liar when she made her claim... which isn't that big a surprise, since she ended up being a politician, and "self-serving cynical fucking liar" is sort of a prerequisite.
For men & women alike.