WASHINGTON Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was positioned to make a strong bid for president in 2020, but she infuriated tribal leaders by releasing the results of a DNA test to prove her Native ancestry and now her future is unclear.

Thats what lots of news outlets want you to think, anyway, after Warren unexpectedly released a carefully choreographed video in mid-October featuring a geneticist who confirmed that she had a Native ancestor six to 10 generations ago.

Nearly two months after Ms. Warren released the test results and drew hostile reactions from prominent tribal leaders, the lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened, The New York Times reported in December.

Warren enraged tribal groups and other minorities concerned about her reliance on a test to measure ethnicity, The Washington Post reported last month. That episode injected uncertainty over the decision-making by Warren and her campaign staff and subjected her to both anger and mockery just as she was gearing up for a potential presidential effort.

Wow, this sounds bad! Lets see what all these tribal chiefs and Native people are saying about Warrens DNA test and why her decision to release it was so outrageous.

[Crickets]

Oops. Neither of these stories included comments from any elected tribal leaders. The Post story didnt include comments from Native people at all. Of the three Native voices mixed in with political pundits in the Times story, one is a known Warren critic and one is a congresswoman-elect whose positive comments were buried a stunning distortion of how many tribal leaders and Native people in general feel about Warrens move.

HuffPost talked to a dozen tribal chiefs, Native politicians, researchers and influencers to get a sense of why this narrative that has taken off in the media that Warren, who has been a strong ally to tribes , is suddenly on the ropes with them because of her DNA test seems off. Some spoke on record; others spoke only anonymously, given their close work with tribes whose privacy they wanted to respect.

The consensus was clear: This narrative is incredibly overblown. Tribal leaders have far more pressing matters to deal with than a senators DNA test. And, frustratingly, non-Native people are defining a debate about Native people without letting them speak for themselves.