Elizabeth Warren’s avowed Native American heritage — which the candidate rarely if ever discusses on the campaign trail — was once touted by embattled Harvard Law School officials who cited her claim as proof of their faculty’s diversity. 
 
 Warren’s claim, which surfaced yesterday after a Herald inquiry, put the candidate in an awkward position as campaign aides last night scrambled but failed to produce documents proving her family lineage. Aides said the tales of Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware tribe ancestors have been passed down through family lore. 
 
 “Like most Americans, Elizabeth learned of her heritage through conversations with her grandparents, her parents, and her aunts and uncles,” said Warren’s strategist Kyle Sullivan. 
 
 The Ivy League law school prominently touted Warren’s Native American background, however, in an effort to bolster their diversity hiring record in the ’90s as the school came under heavy fire for a faculty that was then predominantly white and male. 
 
 “Of 71 current Law School professors and assistant professors, 11 are women, five are black, one is Native American and one is Hispanic,” The Harvard Crimson quotes then-Law School spokesman Mike Chmura as saying in a 1996 article. The Crimson added that 83 percent of the Law School’s students believed the number of minority women on staff was inadequate. 
 
 “Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, Chmura said professor of law Elizabeth Warren is Native American,” the Crimson wrote. 
 
 The Crimson noted Warren’s heritage again in 1998 when Lani Guinier became the first black woman tenured at the law school, mentioning that Warren was “the first woman with a minority background to be tenured.” 
 
 The Warren campaign said the candidate never authorized Harvard Law to claim her as a minority hire. 
 
 Sarah Marston, the current spokeswoman at Harvard Law School, said the school has had a change of heart when it comes to discussing Warren’s heritiage. 
 
 “The Law School’s current policy is to refrain from publicly commenting about the race or ethnicity of individual faculty members,” Marston said in a statement. 
 
 Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn’t recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process. 
 
 “It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn’t mention it to the faculty,” he said. 
 
 Warren’s campaign said she has no recollection of discussing her Native American heritage with Harvard Law School faculty before her hire, and that her background came out later through conversations. 
 
 Fried said he learned about Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware background later when he found a picture of Warren’s mother and asked her about it. Both Warren’s grandparents on her mother’s side had Native American lineage, her campaign said yesterday. 
 
 Christopher Child, a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, traced back Warren’s family to her great-grandfather on her mother’s side and couldn’t find any proof of Native American heritage. 
 
 “In her immediate pedigree there is no one who is listing themselves as not white,” said Child, who has researched the heritage of several prominent politicians. ||||| 6 years ago 
 
 (CNN) – Elizabeth Warren, currently engaged in a heated U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, said Wednesday she listed herself while teaching at Harvard law school as having Native American roots so she could meet others with similar backgrounds. 
 
 Warren made the comments while speaking to reporters, according to the website of the Boston Herald. It was first reported earlier this week that the former economic adviser to President Barack Obama listed herself as a minority in law school directories in the 1980s and 1990s. 
 
 
 
 - Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker 
 
 "I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it and so I stopped checking it off," Warren said. 
 
 The revelation that Warren listed herself as having Native American roots in the law school directories set off a flurry of reaction from conservatives, who suggested she used the label to advance her career as a law professor. Harvard's campus newspaper The Crimson printed articles in 1996 and 1998 quoting law school administrators hailing Warren's Native American heritage as evidence of faculty diversity. 
 
 The New England Historic Genealogical Society provided CNN with initial research showing several members of Warren's maternal family claiming Cherokee heritage. The Native American link extends to Warren's great-great-great grandmother O.C. Sarah Smith, who is said to be described as Cherokee in an 1894 marriage license application. NEHGS gathered that information through a 2006 family newsletter, and says the original application cannot be located. 
 
 The society was quick to point out that research into Native American ancestries often relies on oral histories, and that paper documents were not kept for many early generations of Native American families. 
 
 On Wednesday, Warren said she was hired at Harvard for her teaching ability, not in an effort to bolster diversity on Harvard's faculty. She also added she was proud of her Native American heritage. 
 
 "Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born," Warren said. "These are my family stories, I have lived in a family that has talked about Native American and talked about tribes since I was a little girl." 
 
 Despite Warren's claim to have embraced her Native American heritage as a child, she has largely avoiding referencing that background on the campaign trail and in her official biography. 
 
 Warren's competitor, incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown, told reporters Wednesday that Warren needed to answer remaining questions about the Native American listing. 
 
 "I think that she needs to answer the questions that are still lingering out there, that's for sure," Brown said, according to the Boston Globe. 
 
 Reached Thursday, Brown's spokesman said they had no comment on Warren's latest comments. 
 
 Also see: 
 
 Romney adviser left after being silenced, source says 
 
 Bachmann to endorse Romney 
 
 Pro-Romney super PAC back on the air ||||| As we wrote earlier this week, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D) has been playing defense regarding recent questions about her Native American heritage 
 
 The bigger problem for Warren as the week has drawn one is that she isn't playing defense very well, continuing to give Republicans lighter fluid with which to keep the controversy burning. 
 
 In a long back-and-forth with reporters on Wednesday, Warren explained that she had listed herself as a minority in past professional directories “because I thought I might be invited to meetings where I might meet more people who had grown up like I had grown up.” 
 
 
 
 View Photo Gallery: The Harvard professor, chief bailout watchdog and key architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will run for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Scott Brown. 
 
 Asked if she regretted self-identifying as Native American given all the grief she’s gotten over the past week, Warren gave a long, rambling response. 
 
 “I have lived in a family that has talked about Native America, talked about tribes, since I’ve been a little girl,” she said. “I still have a picture on my mantle at home, and it’s a picture of my mother’s dad, a picture of my grandfather, and my Aunt Bee has walked by that picture at least a 1000 times, remarked that her father, my Pappa, had high cheekbones, like all of the Indians do, because that’s how she saw it, and your mother got those same great cheekbones, and I didn’t. And she though this was the bad deal she had gotten in life. Being Native American has been a part of my story, I guess since the day I was born, I don’t know any other way to describe it.” 
 
 Here’s the video of that Warren riff: 
 
 That kind of convoluted answer, filled with odd details, is exactly how not to respond to an attack. Instead of a short and to the point response about why she claimed Native American heritage on some law documents, Warren instead launched on a personal reflection that gives her political opponents plenty of fodder. (High cheekbones!) 
 
 Records show that Warren does have a great-great-great grandmother who was listed as a Cherokee on her marriage application, and its entirely plausible that that small tie was enough for her family to consider relevant. (The current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation is only 1/32 Cherokee.) 
 
 And the Warren campaign was quick to find officials at every law school where she’s taught to say that her listing as a minority had nothing to do with her hiring. 
 
 “Elizabeth Warren is being straightforward about her family heritage and the achievements she’s earned through hard work and accomplishment, as the people who recruited her over the past 30 years make clear,” said campaign manager Mindy Myers. Myers blamed the story on incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R), who she alleged, is attempting to use it as a “distraction”from issues like health care. 
 
 But Warren’s inability to stick to one message on this question has turned what might have been a one-day story into a drawn-out affair. 
 
 Democrats acknowledge that it’s been a bad week for Warren, but they argue that in the grand scheme of the race this moment won’t be very memorable. Brown has stuck his foot in his mouth too, they note, as he was fooled by fake photos of Osama bin Laden’s body almost a year ago to the day. 
 
 That’s true, and this race is not going to be won on this odd but ultimately minor story. What is significant: Warren was caught off-guard and had difficulty responding. With all the attention she’s gotten and money she’s raised, it’s easy to forget that this in­cred­ibly high-profile Senate race is Warren’s first political campaign. To beat Brown, she will have to learn a little more quickly. 
 
 Read more on PostPolitics: 
 
 Elizabeth Warren explains minority listing 
 
 Ann Romney's $990 designer T-shirt 
 
 Obama’s former girlfriends share stories, letters in new biography
– Elizabeth Warren is still playing defense over a flap about her claims to Native American ancestry. The problem for her is that "she isn't playing defense very well," writes Rachel Weiner at the Washington Post. Ever since reports surfaced last week that Warren identified herself as a minority in her academic career, citing Native American ancestry, the Scott Brown camp has been gleefully keeping the story alive in their Massachusetts Senate race and suggesting that she misrepresented her roots. Warren lays claims to a great-great-great-grandmother who was Cherokee. Yesterday, Warren sought to defuse things, saying she listed herself as a minority only “because I thought I might be invited to meetings where I might meet more people who had grown up like I had grown up," reports CNN. Then she gave what the Post describes as a "long, rambling response" that mentioned an aunt who often spoke of the family's "high cheekbones" as a sign of their Indian heritage. In other words, instead of a succinct response, she "turned what might have been a one-day story into a drawn-out affair," writes Weiner. It's a reminder that despite her high profile, Warren is still a political novice. Luckily for her, it's only May.