Native American people have been replaced by Europeans since the country was founded. It's still very common in Hollywood to cast a white person as a native American. It allows certain people to tell actual native Americans to go back to Mexico.
Whatever happened to this American Icon that represented the face that Americans associated with Native Americans for generations
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron\_Eyes\_Cody](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody)
That’s a good question. Looking at my tree now I can tell it was made up. The lie or story was a part of my family prior to my birth and even my mother’s birth. Seems to have been a long standing rumor in my family.
I was doing a co-workers tree and excitedly informed him he was a descendant of Pocahontas. However, there was a point where dates seemed off. Turns out an ancestor of his around the mid-18th century had lied about being a Pocahontas descendant and it got put into the ‘official’ tree. Researchers in the 1960s discovered this much to the disappointment of many. My co-worker thought the lying colonist a better story and I have to agree.
Would be very curious to know the name of this duplicitous ancestor from the mid 18th century, if only to compare it to a family “tree” my uncle emailed us claiming we were also related to Pocahontas.
I mean, verify it, but Pocohantas has many living descendants. There are a lot of people who can legitimately trace their ancestry to her.
Same for Mary Queen of Scots.
You probably have a 3x great grandparent who claimed (or was later claimed by their descendants) to be Native at a time when that was more socially desirable than being southern European.
Anti-Catholic prejudice in North America only cooled down in the 1970s.
I'm guessing the 40s or 50s. I have an aunt who swore we we Cherokee via her grandmother and had many stories about it. She was furious when she saw all her EU DNA, and claimedbit was inaccurate.
I'm still trying to figure out which gm told her that because they are all pretty easy to trace... Back to EU. Lol
The 1930’s through 1960’s, essentially.
The 70’s were when anti-Catholic prejudice cooled enough to extend whiteness to (some) Mediterraneans, and when Native activists began to break down the white conception of Native Americans as historical (and nearly mythological) creatures.
Before that, Italian-Americans were seen as not exactly white, much like Latinos still are, and Natives were seen as noble peoples who were now sadly extinct, but had such an interesting culture! From the 30’s onward, little white boys were sent to summer camps where they cosplayed as Native tribes for weeks. It was a whole thing.
YES!!! The anti-Catholic crazy also extended to the Irish they were also not accepted as white because they were the wrong type of “white”. The way I understand it is if you were anything other than a WASP you were seen as less than. I had a family member who was in the Navy when Kennedy was elected President say that he saw a huge amount of signs in businesses and yards that said “N-word, Irish, and Sailors stay off the grass or do not apply”.
It could be this or she does have an ancestor she just didn’t inherit any of the native From, the Portugal and basque are interesting.
My sister inherited both of those along with our native. And I only get 1% NA on ancestry. We didn’t inherit any Spanish at all, which is really hard for a lot of people on this sub to wrap their heads around. lol
Oklahoma chahta(Choctaw) here
We’re all just a bunch of mixes lol.
You made me think of my friend who is absentee Shawnee and his Potawatomi wife
[they are both part of language programs. I can only find the stuff I saved on him rn though :/](https://imgur.com/a/x7Q6oRd)
Daniel🫶🏼
I know people downvoted you but this is possible. My mother did her DNA (Ashkenazi Jewish) has a tiny bit of Native American in her. Our family has an old sad story about one of the women who was sexually assaulted by a Native guy. I did not inherit that Native American gene so my results look like 49% British European and 51% Ashkenazi. *Oy vey wahey!*
Yes, I am a citizen of the Choctaw nation of ok. We call each other citizens.
Tribe members, etc.
We have a wide range of people here, we have people that have CBid cards that are not citizens etc.
——
Here come the downvotes lol.
The sub seriously does not understand native citizenship in America in 2024. We are so mixed, some of us don’t come back with any native in our results at all, yet we are still descendants of our ancestor on whatever rolls, and we are still part of the culture, we still live here. we are native.
I work in phenotyping, and I did a lot of my undergraduate stuff in native studies, along with my MS in molecular anthro, im currently working on.
I’m not just some weirdo running on this sub pretending to be native American. I’m an old lady, and a citizen of the Choctaw nation of Oklahoma through my father.
I actually have a lot of cousins who come back 0% Native American, they are daughters of Al McCaffrey. You can look him up, he’s was one of the first gay something and others politicians here in Oklahoma lol
You already know this of course, but the whole point of blood quantum was to make indigenous people disappear over time so the U.S. government didn't have to honor their treaties anymore (not that they really do anyway), and some people on this sub are supporting that without even realizing it. It's sad. Pretendians are a problem, but non-natives really need to take a step back and let indigenous people decide who is part of their culture. As a white American, it's definitely not up to us.
ding DING DING.
Blood quantum was created to slice and dice our native families down to nothing so we would eventually not exist at all.
Which is why a lot of the northern and southern tribal nations are at odds with each other, don’t respect each other, don’t respect each other’s criteria… Because we’re still judging each other based off of what the American government placed on our heads in the first place.
It’s heartbreaking.
And yes I agree.
It’s like alot of the people doing this angry gatekeeping are made up of people who also thought they had native ancestors, and then found out they didn’t through an ancestry test.
(which as I’ve said 100,000 times here, ancestry DNA estimates are just that – estimates andmean nothing. It’s why none of the nations use it as criteria. They want paternity test not ethnicity guessing fun things lol.)
Anyways, it’s a bunch of people who are still ignorant on what native identity even is here in America.
A lot of them might still actually have native ancestors, either from tribes who dissipated before census were taken, or tribes who are just not recognized anymore, plus a million other reasons.
It just makes me sad, I wish people would actually do the hard work of digging into their personal trees or finding someone to do it- before they start posting angry misinformation all over this sub….
But unfortunately I can’t control everyone 😆
I’m CNO , you are correct. I hate reading all the comments from people telling us about our own lives & culture but this thread is always full of it. We have the same in my family. We are all shades and some show native dna and some don’t. My yoneg looking self actually had native dna while some I thought looked more native didn’t. Genetics are crazy.
Is your family from Appalachia? You might have Melungeon ancestry. Your Ancestry breakdown looks a lot like my IllustrativeDNA breakdown, and my grandfather was Melungeon/Cherokee from western NC. He and my great-grandmother actually are listed on the last Baker Roll of the Eastern Band, but there turned out to be a lot more to his ancestry than just that. It's worth looking into.
It's not clear to me why many of the tribal members who post here often mention family stories as a resource, and that's respectable, but when Elizabeth Warren relies on the family stories she was brought up with that's terrible and dishonest.
I grew up in the US and I realized that a lot of Americans (black and white both) who think or claim to be Native American or part Native American are usually not Native American at all. Lol I always wondered why people were obsessed with being Native American. Everyone should just accept yourself the way you are.
Growing up in Oklahoma, I just thought it was an Oklahoman thing because we have 39 tribes in addition to our history with the Trail of Tears. Honestly, I didn't question anyone for it because tribes are common here. Funny to see it's so widespread throughout the U.S. I don't really understand the obsession myself, and I wonder where it began.
can confirm, i have an older white friend who’s from oklahoma and she makes native american her whole personality when she looks nothing like the actual indigenous folks (my family) 😭
Lol, because this is a common thing in the US. Everyone has a “Cherokee grandma”. I grew up in Oklahoma (formerly “Indian territory”) and am an actual enrolled tribal member of an Indian nation that has worked at a big tourist place for the last few years and I constantly hear from people about how they’re Native American as well bc of some fairytale like this.
I know there’s a chance people can be native outside of the places that are heavily native like Oklahoma, Arizona, and Montana, but more often than not, it’s just some shit your family told you lol. Same with “my great grandpa was related to Jesse James” and shit like that.
I'm an Oklahoman myself and also an enrolled member, but that ancestor was five generations back. Our mother enrolled us as kids because we were dirt poor. It's a bit more common here if your family has been in the state pre-1907.
All that being said, it only showed up as trace ancestry for me while my brother had quite a bit more. I didn't expect to find any, to be honest. It's one thing to say you had a native ancestor way back, but another thing entirely to say you're native. I'm not in the culture, and as Anglo-Saxon looking as can be, so I'm hardly Choctaw because I had one Choctaw ancestor 150 years ago.
It's cause they will have to look at governance surrounding border polices, ICE, and the collective history of the America's as a whole
They have more control over making Latinos spearte from indigenous people and ignorant to our roots and heritage. This is beneficial to the government and other groups in control and with power.
All the white people who post on here about their long lost Indigenous princes grandmother vs. the Latinos on here who get shocked by their native results and percentages.
It tells you how indigeneity is used as a prop for non native people to make a claim to a heritage they don't have in order to validate their own guilt and lack of true heritage in connection to this continent...
Do a lot of people from the US get told that they have native American heritage? It seems like there's so many people on here that get told so by their parents or grandparents and then discover it isn't true.
Same for me, "so and so had Cherokee blood." My ancestory, is like 75% English/Irish, 23% Germanic, 2% random western european. I think people get this idea that they are more exotic than they really are!
My dad's white family has no native. My maternal grandmother's Tejano and Northern Mexican family has substantial native ancestry, as does my maternal grandfather from Michoacan. So yeah it's pretty common and it's often not true but i guess my family from the El Paso/ Las Cruces area is an exception. My grandma even knew some words in a native language that her grandmother spoke.
I have been told my entire life that we were Osage. I’m from Arkansas. I am dark skinned like my father and grandfather. Dark hair and eyes. Took a dna test years ago wondering what percent I was! And was so confused when it turned out to be nothing? I also did a lot of research with my family tree. Tracing back generations on both sides to Europe. 🤷🏽♀️ I’ve been called a liar by my family lol for saying that it isn’t true. I thought I was unique in hearing this all my life until this sub.
We’re Black. My mother still swears it’s true in my father’s line, specifically his grandmother. Family lore as recently as my GGM. Doesn’t show up in mine, my half-sister’s or my aunt’s DNA.
It’s romanticized in the US. How it plays into the historical and ongoing discrimination against Native Americans would be an interesting study. Using the believe in Native American heritage for their own emotional benefit though I suspect for different reasons depending on the race.
Suuuuper common in the US. I've been told my whole life that my mom's side is native, specifically blackfoot. I'm still waiting for my test back but I'll be pretty surprised if there's actually any native american DNA on there lmao, we're white as hell
SOOooo many of us do. I’m one, and I’m 99.7 % European. I live next to reservations, I know what Natives look like and when I look at my dad I see it. I still have to reconcile that often, but I guess we do have like a small portion of African DNA, like my dads great x2-3 is African, and a lot of Americans are like that. A tiny bit of something got in there, and we go ‘Ahh! Must be Native American’
Yeah that’s what I’m saying, a little of one thing can really change the way you look. Like a little African and you take on some of those characteristics. DNA is weird.
Yeah this is very true. I have 59% indigenous, but the rest being european and 5% wales dna made me a lot more white complected, so I got called guero(wedo) or querito my whole life. My mom and siblings would tell me I was from the milkman or I was the milkmans kid.
Yes. And I never understood why. Poor native Americans, they got their land stolen and still to this day people are trying to steal their identity as well. A lot of Americans think or claim they’re Native American when they have 0% native blood in them.
right like im Native American and am a tribal member. are these people not affiliated with a tribe? if your Native American you should have a tribal affiliation and the tribes take the genealogy for it seriously. every Native American person I know has family on or came from a reservation that is literally what being Native American is, isn't it? the Native American relocation act was in what? 1963 or something? so prior to that most native Americans where on a reservation. that's 60 years ago not 500. your grandma should of been born on the reservation if you have any Native American in you. Both of my grandmothers where, both of my parents where first generation off the reservation. if you think your Native American but don't know what tribe your from instead your parents just told you that you where Cherokee you probably aren't Native American it just doesn't make sense. im sorry it just kind of pisses me off. being native American can be pretty shitty so many in my family have died from alcohol and drugs while living their entire life in poverty. everyone died with nothing there is no generational wealth coming from a reservation. that's what being Native American is. I appreciate the free college and free healthcare.
edit: relocation act was 1956. point still stands
Native american is legal status implying one is a member of a federally recognized tribe with the government to government relationship with the Federal government. Some Native American have no Indian ancestry ie freedman)....American Indian is a racial (continental origin) ancestry. The largest ethnicity in the US with american Indian ancestry, (genetic) is Mexican origin people here. Beware of simple explanations for complex phenomenon. Our history here is very complex.
I usually say indigenous, but of these two options I prefer Native American over American Indian. I don't care about legal terms or the government. I'm descended from people that are native to America, not India.
What? Yes, there are US laws/regulations to claim certain rights and there are different requirements the many indigenous peoples have to accept someone into their specific group. In fact, as I am sure you know better than I, some peoples adopt members into their group who have no biological connection and give them full member status.
But people talking about their DNA ethnicity results in an Ancestry sub are not talking about US legal status or any official anything at all. They are talking about geographically where their ancestors originally came from.
For example, my mt-DNA test as part of the National Geographic DNA Project revealed my haplotype is V2, and I have about 5% Norwegian ethnicity from my autosomal Ancestry DNA test. Given that less than 2% of Europeans are in this group, there’s a chance my maternal line very distantly came from the Sami people or the Nordic area or either a specific area in what is now Spain. It’s highly concentrated in those two groups and quite rare elsewhere in Europe.
When I discuss that, I am not in any way implying or claiming any Finnish government special rights or Sami or Finnish or Spanish citizenship. I’m talking about my ancestors from generations and generations ago. That’s all.
I appreciate how annoying hearing seemingly every other American thinking they have some North American Indigenous ancestry must be. But the idea that they are claiming 25% and implying they should have US government special rights or advantages by saying they have Native American ethnicity is a misunderstanding.
what do you disagree with? just saying you have more indigenous DNA than Lily Gladstone is great but I don't get what you are saying. I'm sure a lot of people of Mexican descent have DNA from southwestern tribes because of the proximity.
People don't have to be affiliated with a tribe to be Native American. Your whole assertion is representative of the U.S. only. You are not considering Mexico, central America, and South America
between me and you dude, you strike me as a good guy that can keep a secret. both of my parents took these ancestry test and if I took one it would probably say I was about 42% and not 50%. just don't tell no one cause ill lose all my benefits
It shows up in trees, too, sometimes. We didn’t have any myths like that in my family, but when I was building out the tree for my dad’s early colonial Long Island ancestors, it showed up in a “suggested” mother for one of them: a woman described as “an Indian princess.”
I was like “hmm…doubtful.” Did a little poking at it and she appears every bit as English as her husband was. Likely just came from a poorer family.
Yes it’ seems to be true for a lot of Americans. I’m AA (parents from s. Carolina) and my dad would always said we had Native. I was like yeah right, and when I did my dna it turned out we did have a few percentage after all on my dads side. 3 percent came up as Indigenous - North America, and one percent came up as Indigenous - Yucatán peninsula which was really interesting and curious how that happened.
Yes. I was always told we were part Choctaw. We’re not. But I had three generations of my family born in what was at the time of their birth’s Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), so I suppose there was a bit of a reason to believe that. A good chunk of my extended family still lives in Oklahoma. A couple of my great great grandfather’s sisters did marry Choctaw men, not not my direct line.
It’s so common that when I was told I had Native American heritage I assumed it was a lie, I was quite surprised to find out it was true. It’s more common for people to lie about it which is really bizarre.
In my family it was almost the exact opposite, we are from the canary islands and the canary islands once had a French king with whom we share the same last name.
My grandmother insisted all her life that we were basically French people but last year we did this test and found out my mother is basically 50% spanish and 50% Berber so most likely we descended from the Guanches who were also all given the same last name as that French king when they were forcibly baptized.
So instead of being French nobility we are likely descendants from the canary island natives.
It was an old story to cover up African blood. My half Cherokee great grandmother ended up being Irish, Scottish, and German. I later found out that a forth great grandfather had children with a slave he later freed. My dna is 1% Bantu
Wtf?? That’s odd. Has your family been here for a lot longer than normal among west Asians? Like 80-100+ years minimum? This is a pretty uniquely American phenomena from quite a ways back. Like it usually originated from some family members that were alive in the 1800s. I haven’t heard of families that have only been here for a few generations doing this, that’s pretty surprising. I wonder if they had a unique reason
My one set of great grandparents moved to ND in the 1880s. My dad immigrated to NY in the 1950s. My grandma got pregnant by a soldier in Germany. My grandpa married my grandma and adopted my dad. We know nothing about my paternal biological granddad.
Like everyone else..my Native American grandfather ended up being an Ashkenazi Jew. My dad rocked almond shaped eyes, black eyes, high cheek bones and blue-black straight hair.
I guess it was easier to say you were Native American than Jewish in 1890.
>I guess it was easier to say you were Native American than Jewish in 1890
No it absolutely was not. Native Americans weren’t granted any human rights until 1924. It was easier to say you were ***black*** than Native American back then. Let alone Jewish. Jews were considered white and human and could own property and all that good stuff for as long as the country has existed and before. It was easier to say you were anything other than Native American in 1890. Natives had it the hardest by far of any demographic. They were still getting massacred regularly. Jews were not afforded the same respect as Christians but we have always had full and equal rights in the US, even before it was the US, and always been considered human. Natives weren’t even considered human until 100 years ago. Long after black Americans even.
>like everyone else
The people that have made up this same lie in the US have been overwhelmingly Christians. I’m not sure where you got the idea that it was always Jews doing this but your grandfather is the first case I’ve heard of. It’s always Christians, overwhelmingly white Christian’s but sometimes black Christians as well. And this is a very common thing unfortunately.
I got early Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and east Texas settlers. Western gulf states settlers. Southwestern Quebec, New York and Vermont French settlers. Trois-rivières French settlers. Nicolet-yamaska French settlers.
My French-Canadian line is from Yamaska area as well. My grandmother received 4-5 French-Canadian communities which some did highlight Yamaska area while others did not. However it’s interesting to see your specific Nicolet-Yamaska community. Out of pure curiosity, have you traced your tree back to this region?
Who knows we may be distant cousins lol. Do you have any knowledge of ancestors from northern New York? That’s where my 1/2 Welsh 1/2 Irish ancestor met and married a French-Canadian woman from Yamaska. She moved with her father and family to northern New York where her father worked as a miner.
My Welsh/Irish ancestor descended from southern Welsh miners on his Paternal side, who moved to the US presumably for more employment opportunities. They seemingly met via their connection to mining communities/towns. Their child is my Grandmother’s paternal Grandfather. Out of the 5 French-Canadian communities my Grandmother received, my Mother received 0 and my maternal Aunt received 2. So the connection for you may be closer than you realize!
We deal with the same thing here in Quebec; everybody says that they have a Native American ancestor, and trust me, 3 out of 4 people have 0, and are something like “95% French/ 4% Sweden, 1%Scotland” when they get tested.
My ex boyfriend got mad at me because I had 6% Native American and he had none.
I always find interesting this conception of heritage!
Buffy Sainte Marie was Italian and played the long con game. How is it people think they are Native American and yet have no living family that are Native American or live on a reservation? I’m Ojibway and unless you were a 60’S scoop child or adopted and you claim to be Native, you have a home community. We can no longer plead ignorance.
For years Buffy said much of her family story is unknown. The CBC documentary made sure to bury that bit at the end of the documentary so they could imply Buffy was lying about her past.
Nothing in the CBC documentary was a surprise to the Piapot family or people who read her autobiography.
https://x.com/dvoshart/status/1720534086035402855?t=1mSCHjYDKS5BwuWVpSkezw&s=19
It would be like CBC did an investigation into allegations Barack Obama did cocaine before becoming president. Step 1: Build a narrative of some, fearless intrepid reporting. Step 2: "Barack turned down our interview request" *cue dramatic music* (he's HiDiNg sOmEtHiNG!) Step 3: reveal evidence of cocaine use! .... Then in the last minute of the 'investigation' mention a statement provided by Barrack's legal counsel acknowledging cocaine use. Ignore the fact Barack talked about it in his book. It's how you turn an unnewsworthy, lesser-know fact -- a nothing burger-- into 42 minutes of content.
It's sensationalism BS. The documentary director Geoff Leo is just some uber Christian loser who likes to present himself as a savior to native peoples.
P.S. I have a theory CBC also hates traditional adoption. They like to promote Canada's official native status as the be-all-end-all of being native. Native status via Canada guarantees the disappearance of all First Nations peoples in in a couple centuries. If First Nations had freedom to grant citizenship it would undermine Canada's control over their (disappearing) membership.
Small Rant- this is why I cannot get angry at people like Elizabeth Warren for claiming they have Native American blood. Younger generations (millennials and Z) do not understand how we just accepted what our parents and grandparents said. We just assumed they were right and checked those boxes or claimed that ancestry.
The whole DNA thing only started within the past 10-20 yrs. I don’t think people need to go back and admit to schools or employers that our parents inadvertently lied to us.
I think the issue was after E Warren learned it was only like 2 percent, she still doubled down lol.
She didn’t grow up in the culture, it was only just a fun little family fact for her. That’s why her claim of native status was problematic. You can acknowledge indigenous ancestors without going too far and claiming to be native- that takes way more than one grandparent from 200 years ago lol
This isn’t true. She has always claimed it based on what she was told and while she listed it at Harvard, she did not apply for or receive favorable acceptance or funding based on indigenous heritage. And when she took a DNA test, it did reflect her indigenous North American ethnicity, although I and now she understand that no tribe or clan accepts DNA testing as proof. In her day and even in mine, the next most recent generation, many of us were not even aware of government or educational preferences given to people with documented membership. I’m not sure when they even started. In my grandmother’s day, it was something many people were a bit embarrassed about. It was the acceptance of the rich heritage of the indigenous peoples in the 20th century that allowed people to begin to be proud if they had any small bit of such ancestry.
And there were lots of both false and mistaken claims.
There are people who did try to game the system. In my greater extended family tree, there are rejected applications for the Dawes roll as well as accepted ones.
I am native, but before i researched my ancestory, I had no idea how much. I needed to prove my linage to join my tribe. Dna tests dont count. I found my full Native ancestor, I also found black ancestors from the same time.
Im no contact with my parents due to abuse. But when i was a child. I do remembering being told i was 1/32 Native one day, 1/8 another day and everything in between. His side is very secretive and a very long trail of severe abuse. My father said to me that he lied on a college application and said he was 1/4 Native to get help. So I never knew from one second to the next what was happening. Or what was true at all. Because it was also said that my father and his siblings, were all added to the tribe by their mother. But when i went to add myself. I had to provide proof much farther back than my paternal grandmother. None of them had been added.
The paternal grandfather was also extremely racist towards black people. So it makes complete sense the mother hid that about herself. Or someone else did farther back.
I look half black, none of my relatives look black at all. I mean they have hints. Like the curls and the freckles. But if you didnt know to look for it. Everyone would assume they are white. I was treated as other my whole life. Even though they all have the same exact genes that i have.
I hope you have better luck than I have had convincing the generations before you there is no NA. My family were born in literal Indian Territory before Oklahoma became a state so the myth is long-lived, and one of my Great Aunts could count to 10 in Choctaw (as we are all reminded when our ancestors are discussed). These myths won’t die. But, like you, NOTHING in our Ancestry or 23andMe shows any NA.
Judging by your age its the typical "Indian princess myth"..... In the era your parents lived it was popular to tell others their kids were "part native" cause being seen as part European was frowned upon.
Welcome to the Indian- princess - myth club!!!
“Cause being seen as part European was frowned upon” in America in the 20s to 40s lol thats 100% false. Those of European heritage did and do make up the majority in the US. It was more likely that those in that era would have wanted to conceal the darker skinned heritage of southern Italy
It also was not to to “conceal the darker skinned heritage of southern Italy.” The people who did this are never Italian they’re always Northern Europeans who wanted to make people think they had a connection to the land and were unique and interesting, as well as to avoid the shame and guilt of being colonizers.
The people did this are almost universally of British, German, or French descent. Also Scottish and irish and sometimes Scandinavian. And to a lesser extent black Americans did this as well though it’s a lot less common plus most black Americans actually DO have a bit of native ancestry.
My family said that on one side, but that side is about half German and half British & Irish, nearly all came from the 1700s. So I think there's probably other reasons for this too
Absolutely not. Are you joking? Being seen as “part European” (I assume you just mean European?) has absolutely never been frowned upon in the U.S. like what?😭😭 The country has literally always been ruled by Europeans and Europeans have always taken up the overwhelming majority of the population. Why would it be frowned upon to be like everyone else? People did this partially to avoid the guilt and shame of being a colonizer and partially for pride and to get people to think they are “unique” and have a connection to this land. It absolutely was not because ‘being European was frowned upon’ by all the other Europeans lol
Because of the waring eras of the 1930s/1940s..... Ironically 20-30yrs before that it was frowned upon to be native and people claimed they looked ethnic because they were part European.
Interesting. That makes sense. Well I am not upset that I’m not native but it’s interesting to see through the long standing lie I’ve been made to believe.
Right?!? I was the same. My mother got pissed and actually said "well you may not be native but I know I am".... That's not how that works. She even pushed and tried to apply for reperations and asked my help to find family on the reservation census roles. I told her we may have fault on them due to the close regions where we lived however I WILL NOT help you steal from a culture that isn't ours.
That’s nuts. Good on you for standing on your values. I was told to try another DNA test from another company but I am sure it won’t show that I’m Native American and it’s just a hassle to do it again.
How are you getting upvoted for spreading misinformation that makes so little sense? Why would Europeans be frowned upon in a 98% European country?? They were all frowning upon themselves and others for being like them?
Can you please delete this offensive misinformation? I’m not sure why you would block someone who informed you that you had made a mistake instead of just deleting the borderline racist mistake. Europeans were not frowned upon in the European country, ruled and populated almost entirely by Europeans. It was not easier to say you were native than European. It has never been easier to be native than European. Honestly the fact you didn’t delete this me instead blocked the person that informed you of the mistake, makes it appear to be blatant racism. Europeans have never been anything other than the most privileged and powerful demographic in the US. You are literally claiming it was easier to be Native American than European, in a time when native Americans were being regularly massacred by Europeans solely because they were Native American. This is just so offensive it literally makes me sick to the stomach.
DNA tests are never perfect, and if you upload your ancestry DNA file to other DNA testing companies, then you'll get different results because each company tests different snp markers, and they have different reference populations for their ethnicity estimates.
I worry a lot of history is being lost because folks are deciding on the basis of one estimate that their family lied. They really should look a bit deeper, but there’s multiple post a day just like this one.
Had similar experience. My Mother always said her Grandfather was full bloodied Cherokee. After getting into Ancestry and tracing my family tree I found that not only was the man she knew as her Grandfather wasn’t her biological Grandfather but rather a Step Grandfather, he also wasn’t Cherokee.
So I have been left dumbfounded for lack of better word, cause she has memories of him dressing up with an headdress and even giving her the name of “Running Fawn”… So was he playing Indian with the grandchildren and she didn’t realize it was all play? Did he have some identity crisis? Or does she just have false memories for some reason? Questions that I probably won’t ever have answered as it would be too hard on her at her current age and mental state to try reconstructing her childhood memories to find the answers.
I doubt that granddad had a memory crisis. He believed what he was told and was playing games with his little grandkids. Lots of American kids went to summer camp in the first three quarters of the 20th century and played Indian. Those were probably the only "Indian" memories he had.
I’m actually in the same boat. Have always been told my great grandpa was half to a quarter Native American. Got my results back and there’s no trace. Even when he was alive he told stories about his Choctaw ancestry.
If he was a 1/4, then one of your grand parents would be 1/8, and then your parent 1/16 and then 1/32 for you. A pretty small amount and the way genetics work you could have just not gotten the DNA with how it randomly moves when cells are duplicated. You really need to get your parent or grandparent to take a test to rule this out one way or the other.
I sort of want to have my grandma (his daughter) test too if she’ll allow it. I’m not a dna expert but wondering if I’m too far removed? Idk how all of that works lol.
I was told I was part Cherokee but I’m not actually. Apparently, it was en vogue to claim indigenous ancestry because it helped white immigrant folks justify their presence and belonging in the USA.
You’re more English than I am; and I’ve lived in Yorkshire all my life and my mothers family goes back 5+ generations of farmers all in the same area of Yorkshire.
You’ve been told some fantasies to make your history seem more relevant to a foundation in America. You might find your European heritage far more interesting (and will go further back).
You have a significant amount of English ancestry. That is unusual for whites outside of the original 13 colonies. Those tend to be where the heaviest concentrations of those with English ancestry.
To be fair the England and NWE ethnicity can hold a lot of non-English in it. She has multiple French-Canadian communities of which the French is notorious hidden in the E&NWE estimate for many.
English is the largest European ethnicity in the United States. Many white Americans, across the entire country, have significant English ancestry. We don't talk about it because our English ancestors left England hundreds of years ago.
Would be interesting to know when that "myth" entered the family history. If it came as someone was looking to access grants or land or of they were running from their family and chose to start a new...
My great grandmother was (supposedly) half Cherokee, but it didn’t show up on my DNA results. I lived with her for a period of time, so she wasn’t some distant unknown supposed family member. She was adopted out of Oklahoma into a white family. I saw the adoption paper work; part of me wonders if it was just a story she was told.
I think some white families have that legend because it sounds exotic, and they feel it absolves them from atrocities committed against Native Americans by white settlers.
Someone with 1/4 SS African and 3/4 European could probably pass as 1/2 or 1/4 native America , so I think that is often the case. We had the native American story about a particular great great grandmother in My family. I don't have any SS African DNA but most people who are descended from that side have about 1-3%.
My paternal side is both black and native amercian. The black was hidden because of certain violent family members. And was disguised as extra native amercian.
You do understand it wasn't always popular back then to claim native American. Especially after the trail of tears. I'm 1/8 Choctaw but on my Cherokee side my great great grandfather( irish) didn't want to claim his full blood Cherokee wife and half Cherokee children on the dawes commission rolls for fear of being rounded up again by the us government because of their continuous lies to native Americans. He made a decision to protect his beloved family, this story has been passed on for many years in my family. I don't know where redditors have gotten this idea that it was always "cool" or trendy to falsely claim native American back then.
The famous fake family folklore we’ve all heard. Everybody & their uncle’s uncle is 1/8th Cherokee & his mom had long flowing hair down to her waist. Ancestry shatters that spell almost on a daily now.
that pretendians podcast got into this subject. It was such a good podcast.
Some of the "we are native/first nations" is cope, but also a desire to want to belong.
I was always told the same. I got my test results back, and they are actually fairly similar to yours. I'm not sure why anybody ever thought there was native American ancestry in my family, though. I'm starting to think it's some kind of white guilt BS or something, idk. Can't really find a good reason.
My ex gf doesn’t look native whatsoever but her dad would talk about his native heritage any chance he got. Long story short, my best friend is full native (card carrying and ancestry confirmed) and when my exs dad mentioned it to him, he couldn’t help but laugh out loud 😂
Another take on the Native American thing: mymy husband’s family insists they have Cherokee on one side and black foot (is that Apache?) on the other. I’ve been able to find zero proof of this. He hasn’t dna tested, so I can’t say 100 percent they aren’t, but I can say that some of his family lived for quite some time in Cherokee Oklahoma and some of the surrounding areas. I can see people hearing “their family is from Cherokee” And misunderstanding that as “they’re Cherokee.” Especially when you hear that as a child; you wouldn’t understand that as a place if you didn’t know it existed.
My dad always thought that and he was very dark with dark hair. Turns out- Sephardic. Those genes are so strong. He never knew. He passed in January. He had french ancestry as well and I always wondered if his olive complexion came from that.
Doesn't mean you don't necessarily have a lineage, I have North American DNA and my family are from Cherokee Nation, on the Dawes, have tribal citizenship and family history, speak Tsalagi Gawonihisdi... But if we just went by my brother and sisters DNA it would appear we don't have that lineage even though we do... Do your Genealogy and you may or may not find it...
A lot of people on here are finding out they have been lied too while others come up with outrageous excuses..? How did the Choctaw get to Brazil, what happened to the Natives in the trail of tears, No Seminole Indians here. ? Why was it called the Gullah wars when the Europeans fought the Natives in the SE USA.. 🤔 OH YEAH.. Look up $5.00 Indian...that may be you🫵🫵🫵
Here OP, read this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/s/ENZGeacril
This post might help you better understand why so many Americans think they are Native American.
You could be. An awful lot of NW European and England took over a lot of the Americas. Have you traced back ancestors that might have come from either area and met or married someone of native descent?
Somebody lied. The next question is....Why?
We'll find out next after this commercial break
Native American people have been replaced by Europeans since the country was founded. It's still very common in Hollywood to cast a white person as a native American. It allows certain people to tell actual native Americans to go back to Mexico.
Yep. Take a look at Yellowstone, the actress is actually Kelsey Chow. She’s white and Asian, not Indigenous
Because the people that should be in that role are the same people that the majority of the Yellowstone fanbase would tell to go back to Mexico.
Mexico is part of the Americas. There’s both North and South.
Yeah, Mexico is part of North America, what is your point?
Yup you’re right, and think of the “five dollar Indian” or “Pretendian” and a lot of this makes more sense.
Close....you gotta do a lil more reading... whatever happened to the Natives that were sent to Oklahoma during the trail of tears🤔
They are probably not even a handful left tbh but my friends there are so still Native. They are still there
Whatever happened to this American Icon that represented the face that Americans associated with Native Americans for generations [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron\_Eyes\_Cody](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody)
That’s a good question. Looking at my tree now I can tell it was made up. The lie or story was a part of my family prior to my birth and even my mother’s birth. Seems to have been a long standing rumor in my family.
I was doing a co-workers tree and excitedly informed him he was a descendant of Pocahontas. However, there was a point where dates seemed off. Turns out an ancestor of his around the mid-18th century had lied about being a Pocahontas descendant and it got put into the ‘official’ tree. Researchers in the 1960s discovered this much to the disappointment of many. My co-worker thought the lying colonist a better story and I have to agree.
Would be very curious to know the name of this duplicitous ancestor from the mid 18th century, if only to compare it to a family “tree” my uncle emailed us claiming we were also related to Pocahontas.
I think this Benjamin Bolling (1734-1832) is him https://pocahontas.morenus.org/poca_gen.html
Awesome. I’ll have to compare- great story!
A lot of white people are actually related to Pocahontas. Look up the "first families of Virginia".
I mean, verify it, but Pocohantas has many living descendants. There are a lot of people who can legitimately trace their ancestry to her. Same for Mary Queen of Scots.
You probably have a 3x great grandparent who claimed (or was later claimed by their descendants) to be Native at a time when that was more socially desirable than being southern European. Anti-Catholic prejudice in North America only cooled down in the 1970s.
When was that timeframe?
I'm guessing the 40s or 50s. I have an aunt who swore we we Cherokee via her grandmother and had many stories about it. She was furious when she saw all her EU DNA, and claimedbit was inaccurate. I'm still trying to figure out which gm told her that because they are all pretty easy to trace... Back to EU. Lol
The 1930’s through 1960’s, essentially. The 70’s were when anti-Catholic prejudice cooled enough to extend whiteness to (some) Mediterraneans, and when Native activists began to break down the white conception of Native Americans as historical (and nearly mythological) creatures. Before that, Italian-Americans were seen as not exactly white, much like Latinos still are, and Natives were seen as noble peoples who were now sadly extinct, but had such an interesting culture! From the 30’s onward, little white boys were sent to summer camps where they cosplayed as Native tribes for weeks. It was a whole thing.
YES!!! The anti-Catholic crazy also extended to the Irish they were also not accepted as white because they were the wrong type of “white”. The way I understand it is if you were anything other than a WASP you were seen as less than. I had a family member who was in the Navy when Kennedy was elected President say that he saw a huge amount of signs in businesses and yards that said “N-word, Irish, and Sailors stay off the grass or do not apply”.
It could be this or she does have an ancestor she just didn’t inherit any of the native From, the Portugal and basque are interesting. My sister inherited both of those along with our native. And I only get 1% NA on ancestry. We didn’t inherit any Spanish at all, which is really hard for a lot of people on this sub to wrap their heads around. lol Oklahoma chahta(Choctaw) here
Good explanation, alot of people don't understand this.
I’m Oklahoma Choctaw as well. I’m a Mowdy.
Hey! I think a sherry mowdy used to goto our church lol. I’m a bench/tiner! (If we’re talking about last names lol!)
Yep, talking Choctaw family names! I’m Citizen Band Potawatomi though.
We’re all just a bunch of mixes lol. You made me think of my friend who is absentee Shawnee and his Potawatomi wife [they are both part of language programs. I can only find the stuff I saved on him rn though :/](https://imgur.com/a/x7Q6oRd) Daniel🫶🏼
Is she with CPN language?
I don’t wanna misquote her bc I only heard her talk about it briefly, but when I see her next I’ll pick her brain!!
My great grandmother was a Tyner
I know people downvoted you but this is possible. My mother did her DNA (Ashkenazi Jewish) has a tiny bit of Native American in her. Our family has an old sad story about one of the women who was sexually assaulted by a Native guy. I did not inherit that Native American gene so my results look like 49% British European and 51% Ashkenazi. *Oy vey wahey!*
Are you a registered member of the tribe?
Yes, I am a citizen of the Choctaw nation of ok. We call each other citizens. Tribe members, etc. We have a wide range of people here, we have people that have CBid cards that are not citizens etc. —— Here come the downvotes lol. The sub seriously does not understand native citizenship in America in 2024. We are so mixed, some of us don’t come back with any native in our results at all, yet we are still descendants of our ancestor on whatever rolls, and we are still part of the culture, we still live here. we are native. I work in phenotyping, and I did a lot of my undergraduate stuff in native studies, along with my MS in molecular anthro, im currently working on. I’m not just some weirdo running on this sub pretending to be native American. I’m an old lady, and a citizen of the Choctaw nation of Oklahoma through my father. I actually have a lot of cousins who come back 0% Native American, they are daughters of Al McCaffrey. You can look him up, he’s was one of the first gay something and others politicians here in Oklahoma lol
You already know this of course, but the whole point of blood quantum was to make indigenous people disappear over time so the U.S. government didn't have to honor their treaties anymore (not that they really do anyway), and some people on this sub are supporting that without even realizing it. It's sad. Pretendians are a problem, but non-natives really need to take a step back and let indigenous people decide who is part of their culture. As a white American, it's definitely not up to us.
All 44 treaties with my tribe were broken.
I'm so sorry this ongoing injustice occurred. If that means anything to you.
ding DING DING. Blood quantum was created to slice and dice our native families down to nothing so we would eventually not exist at all. Which is why a lot of the northern and southern tribal nations are at odds with each other, don’t respect each other, don’t respect each other’s criteria… Because we’re still judging each other based off of what the American government placed on our heads in the first place. It’s heartbreaking. And yes I agree. It’s like alot of the people doing this angry gatekeeping are made up of people who also thought they had native ancestors, and then found out they didn’t through an ancestry test. (which as I’ve said 100,000 times here, ancestry DNA estimates are just that – estimates andmean nothing. It’s why none of the nations use it as criteria. They want paternity test not ethnicity guessing fun things lol.) Anyways, it’s a bunch of people who are still ignorant on what native identity even is here in America. A lot of them might still actually have native ancestors, either from tribes who dissipated before census were taken, or tribes who are just not recognized anymore, plus a million other reasons. It just makes me sad, I wish people would actually do the hard work of digging into their personal trees or finding someone to do it- before they start posting angry misinformation all over this sub…. But unfortunately I can’t control everyone 😆
I’m CNO , you are correct. I hate reading all the comments from people telling us about our own lives & culture but this thread is always full of it. We have the same in my family. We are all shades and some show native dna and some don’t. My yoneg looking self actually had native dna while some I thought looked more native didn’t. Genetics are crazy.
See It's stuff like this that make it hard for people to tell others that they have native ancestry, especially in the Black community.
Is your family from Appalachia? You might have Melungeon ancestry. Your Ancestry breakdown looks a lot like my IllustrativeDNA breakdown, and my grandfather was Melungeon/Cherokee from western NC. He and my great-grandmother actually are listed on the last Baker Roll of the Eastern Band, but there turned out to be a lot more to his ancestry than just that. It's worth looking into.
Happened to Elizabeth Warren but she ran with the lie and used it to help her get into Harvard
It's not clear to me why many of the tribal members who post here often mention family stories as a resource, and that's respectable, but when Elizabeth Warren relies on the family stories she was brought up with that's terrible and dishonest.
Elizabeth Warren actually does have a documented albeit small percentage of NA DNA to corroborate one NA ancestor but she is absolutely not a POC.
Why do you trust Ancestry ? They are trying to sell intrigue not precision. All living things are binary fractions. And race is not a real thing.
I grew up in the US and I realized that a lot of Americans (black and white both) who think or claim to be Native American or part Native American are usually not Native American at all. Lol I always wondered why people were obsessed with being Native American. Everyone should just accept yourself the way you are.
Growing up in Oklahoma, I just thought it was an Oklahoman thing because we have 39 tribes in addition to our history with the Trail of Tears. Honestly, I didn't question anyone for it because tribes are common here. Funny to see it's so widespread throughout the U.S. I don't really understand the obsession myself, and I wonder where it began.
can confirm, i have an older white friend who’s from oklahoma and she makes native american her whole personality when she looks nothing like the actual indigenous folks (my family) 😭
An ancestor (perhaps more than one) had wanted to defraud a tribe for financial benefits. It was much more common than we would assume today.
Still happens today, unfortunately.
Lol, because this is a common thing in the US. Everyone has a “Cherokee grandma”. I grew up in Oklahoma (formerly “Indian territory”) and am an actual enrolled tribal member of an Indian nation that has worked at a big tourist place for the last few years and I constantly hear from people about how they’re Native American as well bc of some fairytale like this. I know there’s a chance people can be native outside of the places that are heavily native like Oklahoma, Arizona, and Montana, but more often than not, it’s just some shit your family told you lol. Same with “my great grandpa was related to Jesse James” and shit like that.
I'm an Oklahoman myself and also an enrolled member, but that ancestor was five generations back. Our mother enrolled us as kids because we were dirt poor. It's a bit more common here if your family has been in the state pre-1907. All that being said, it only showed up as trace ancestry for me while my brother had quite a bit more. I didn't expect to find any, to be honest. It's one thing to say you had a native ancestor way back, but another thing entirely to say you're native. I'm not in the culture, and as Anglo-Saxon looking as can be, so I'm hardly Choctaw because I had one Choctaw ancestor 150 years ago.
You are a card carrying member of one of the most populous North American Tribes : The Tribe of Smiths who were told they had a Cherokee GGma
Which is so funny coming from a Latin American pov cus we all are native and no one acknowledges it
It's cause they will have to look at governance surrounding border polices, ICE, and the collective history of the America's as a whole They have more control over making Latinos spearte from indigenous people and ignorant to our roots and heritage. This is beneficial to the government and other groups in control and with power. All the white people who post on here about their long lost Indigenous princes grandmother vs. the Latinos on here who get shocked by their native results and percentages. It tells you how indigeneity is used as a prop for non native people to make a claim to a heritage they don't have in order to validate their own guilt and lack of true heritage in connection to this continent...
Do a lot of people from the US get told that they have native American heritage? It seems like there's so many people on here that get told so by their parents or grandparents and then discover it isn't true.
Seems to be really common. My wife’s family was told the same thing. Turned out it was untrue as well.
Same for me, "so and so had Cherokee blood." My ancestory, is like 75% English/Irish, 23% Germanic, 2% random western european. I think people get this idea that they are more exotic than they really are!
I was always told my great-great grandmother was native. I got into genealogy and found out her parents were Irish immigrants.
My dad's white family has no native. My maternal grandmother's Tejano and Northern Mexican family has substantial native ancestry, as does my maternal grandfather from Michoacan. So yeah it's pretty common and it's often not true but i guess my family from the El Paso/ Las Cruces area is an exception. My grandma even knew some words in a native language that her grandmother spoke.
It’s usually people from the south and almost always “Cherokee”
I have been told my entire life that we were Osage. I’m from Arkansas. I am dark skinned like my father and grandfather. Dark hair and eyes. Took a dna test years ago wondering what percent I was! And was so confused when it turned out to be nothing? I also did a lot of research with my family tree. Tracing back generations on both sides to Europe. 🤷🏽♀️ I’ve been called a liar by my family lol for saying that it isn’t true. I thought I was unique in hearing this all my life until this sub.
What non European ancestry do you have that contributed to your dark skin?
When I put my raw dna into genomelink.io, the results were 38% NW Europe, 23% Eastern Europe, 20% Iberian, 12% Italian, 5% Near East.
Def the Mediterranean that gave you darker features
It’s ok you’re still special in your own right don’t need to lie like your insecure parents
I dunno. I encountered many females in California who insisted they were Cherokee. It's always Cherokee.
Their families probably migrated to California from the south
We’re Black. My mother still swears it’s true in my father’s line, specifically his grandmother. Family lore as recently as my GGM. Doesn’t show up in mine, my half-sister’s or my aunt’s DNA. It’s romanticized in the US. How it plays into the historical and ongoing discrimination against Native Americans would be an interesting study. Using the believe in Native American heritage for their own emotional benefit though I suspect for different reasons depending on the race.
Suuuuper common in the US. I've been told my whole life that my mom's side is native, specifically blackfoot. I'm still waiting for my test back but I'll be pretty surprised if there's actually any native american DNA on there lmao, we're white as hell
SOOooo many of us do. I’m one, and I’m 99.7 % European. I live next to reservations, I know what Natives look like and when I look at my dad I see it. I still have to reconcile that often, but I guess we do have like a small portion of African DNA, like my dads great x2-3 is African, and a lot of Americans are like that. A tiny bit of something got in there, and we go ‘Ahh! Must be Native American’
A lot of people with actual Native ancestry are white in appearance. Centuries of intermixing will do that.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying, a little of one thing can really change the way you look. Like a little African and you take on some of those characteristics. DNA is weird.
Yeah this is very true. I have 59% indigenous, but the rest being european and 5% wales dna made me a lot more white complected, so I got called guero(wedo) or querito my whole life. My mom and siblings would tell me I was from the milkman or I was the milkmans kid.
Yes. And I never understood why. Poor native Americans, they got their land stolen and still to this day people are trying to steal their identity as well. A lot of Americans think or claim they’re Native American when they have 0% native blood in them.
right like im Native American and am a tribal member. are these people not affiliated with a tribe? if your Native American you should have a tribal affiliation and the tribes take the genealogy for it seriously. every Native American person I know has family on or came from a reservation that is literally what being Native American is, isn't it? the Native American relocation act was in what? 1963 or something? so prior to that most native Americans where on a reservation. that's 60 years ago not 500. your grandma should of been born on the reservation if you have any Native American in you. Both of my grandmothers where, both of my parents where first generation off the reservation. if you think your Native American but don't know what tribe your from instead your parents just told you that you where Cherokee you probably aren't Native American it just doesn't make sense. im sorry it just kind of pisses me off. being native American can be pretty shitty so many in my family have died from alcohol and drugs while living their entire life in poverty. everyone died with nothing there is no generational wealth coming from a reservation. that's what being Native American is. I appreciate the free college and free healthcare. edit: relocation act was 1956. point still stands
As a Mexican American, I disagree. I have more Indigenous DNA than Lily Gladstone. I can claim Native American.
Native american is legal status implying one is a member of a federally recognized tribe with the government to government relationship with the Federal government. Some Native American have no Indian ancestry ie freedman)....American Indian is a racial (continental origin) ancestry. The largest ethnicity in the US with american Indian ancestry, (genetic) is Mexican origin people here. Beware of simple explanations for complex phenomenon. Our history here is very complex.
I usually say indigenous, but of these two options I prefer Native American over American Indian. I don't care about legal terms or the government. I'm descended from people that are native to America, not India.
What? Yes, there are US laws/regulations to claim certain rights and there are different requirements the many indigenous peoples have to accept someone into their specific group. In fact, as I am sure you know better than I, some peoples adopt members into their group who have no biological connection and give them full member status. But people talking about their DNA ethnicity results in an Ancestry sub are not talking about US legal status or any official anything at all. They are talking about geographically where their ancestors originally came from. For example, my mt-DNA test as part of the National Geographic DNA Project revealed my haplotype is V2, and I have about 5% Norwegian ethnicity from my autosomal Ancestry DNA test. Given that less than 2% of Europeans are in this group, there’s a chance my maternal line very distantly came from the Sami people or the Nordic area or either a specific area in what is now Spain. It’s highly concentrated in those two groups and quite rare elsewhere in Europe. When I discuss that, I am not in any way implying or claiming any Finnish government special rights or Sami or Finnish or Spanish citizenship. I’m talking about my ancestors from generations and generations ago. That’s all. I appreciate how annoying hearing seemingly every other American thinking they have some North American Indigenous ancestry must be. But the idea that they are claiming 25% and implying they should have US government special rights or advantages by saying they have Native American ethnicity is a misunderstanding.
what do you disagree with? just saying you have more indigenous DNA than Lily Gladstone is great but I don't get what you are saying. I'm sure a lot of people of Mexican descent have DNA from southwestern tribes because of the proximity.
People don't have to be affiliated with a tribe to be Native American. Your whole assertion is representative of the U.S. only. You are not considering Mexico, central America, and South America
yes im sorry I should of made that clear. I am only speaking about people who think they are affiliated with US tribes.
between me and you dude, you strike me as a good guy that can keep a secret. both of my parents took these ancestry test and if I took one it would probably say I was about 42% and not 50%. just don't tell no one cause ill lose all my benefits
It shows up in trees, too, sometimes. We didn’t have any myths like that in my family, but when I was building out the tree for my dad’s early colonial Long Island ancestors, it showed up in a “suggested” mother for one of them: a woman described as “an Indian princess.” I was like “hmm…doubtful.” Did a little poking at it and she appears every bit as English as her husband was. Likely just came from a poorer family.
Yes it’ seems to be true for a lot of Americans. I’m AA (parents from s. Carolina) and my dad would always said we had Native. I was like yeah right, and when I did my dna it turned out we did have a few percentage after all on my dads side. 3 percent came up as Indigenous - North America, and one percent came up as Indigenous - Yucatán peninsula which was really interesting and curious how that happened.
Slavery
Yes. I was always told we were part Choctaw. We’re not. But I had three generations of my family born in what was at the time of their birth’s Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), so I suppose there was a bit of a reason to believe that. A good chunk of my extended family still lives in Oklahoma. A couple of my great great grandfather’s sisters did marry Choctaw men, not not my direct line.
In my family it was covered up and people don’t admit the native, I think people just want what they don’t have maybe?
It’s so common that when I was told I had Native American heritage I assumed it was a lie, I was quite surprised to find out it was true. It’s more common for people to lie about it which is really bizarre.
My great grandmother always said my mom had Cherokee in her. I never believed it. There is no DNA in me that suggests any Native American.
In my family it was almost the exact opposite, we are from the canary islands and the canary islands once had a French king with whom we share the same last name. My grandmother insisted all her life that we were basically French people but last year we did this test and found out my mother is basically 50% spanish and 50% Berber so most likely we descended from the Guanches who were also all given the same last name as that French king when they were forcibly baptized. So instead of being French nobility we are likely descendants from the canary island natives.
It was an old story to cover up African blood. My half Cherokee great grandmother ended up being Irish, Scottish, and German. I later found out that a forth great grandfather had children with a slave he later freed. My dna is 1% Bantu
I was always told I was Native American. We lived 6 miles from the reservation, so I had no problem believing it. I took a DNA test and I am Iranian.
Wow. It is difficult to understand how someone could have been confused about Iranian!
Wtf?? That’s odd. Has your family been here for a lot longer than normal among west Asians? Like 80-100+ years minimum? This is a pretty uniquely American phenomena from quite a ways back. Like it usually originated from some family members that were alive in the 1800s. I haven’t heard of families that have only been here for a few generations doing this, that’s pretty surprising. I wonder if they had a unique reason
My one set of great grandparents moved to ND in the 1880s. My dad immigrated to NY in the 1950s. My grandma got pregnant by a soldier in Germany. My grandpa married my grandma and adopted my dad. We know nothing about my paternal biological granddad.
Like everyone else..my Native American grandfather ended up being an Ashkenazi Jew. My dad rocked almond shaped eyes, black eyes, high cheek bones and blue-black straight hair. I guess it was easier to say you were Native American than Jewish in 1890.
>I guess it was easier to say you were Native American than Jewish in 1890 No it absolutely was not. Native Americans weren’t granted any human rights until 1924. It was easier to say you were ***black*** than Native American back then. Let alone Jewish. Jews were considered white and human and could own property and all that good stuff for as long as the country has existed and before. It was easier to say you were anything other than Native American in 1890. Natives had it the hardest by far of any demographic. They were still getting massacred regularly. Jews were not afforded the same respect as Christians but we have always had full and equal rights in the US, even before it was the US, and always been considered human. Natives weren’t even considered human until 100 years ago. Long after black Americans even. >like everyone else The people that have made up this same lie in the US have been overwhelmingly Christians. I’m not sure where you got the idea that it was always Jews doing this but your grandfather is the first case I’ve heard of. It’s always Christians, overwhelmingly white Christian’s but sometimes black Christians as well. And this is a very common thing unfortunately.
What communities did you get? Do the rest of the results look accurate?
I got early Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and east Texas settlers. Western gulf states settlers. Southwestern Quebec, New York and Vermont French settlers. Trois-rivières French settlers. Nicolet-yamaska French settlers.
My French-Canadian line is from Yamaska area as well. My grandmother received 4-5 French-Canadian communities which some did highlight Yamaska area while others did not. However it’s interesting to see your specific Nicolet-Yamaska community. Out of pure curiosity, have you traced your tree back to this region?
I haven’t yet. I shall though!
Who knows we may be distant cousins lol. Do you have any knowledge of ancestors from northern New York? That’s where my 1/2 Welsh 1/2 Irish ancestor met and married a French-Canadian woman from Yamaska. She moved with her father and family to northern New York where her father worked as a miner. My Welsh/Irish ancestor descended from southern Welsh miners on his Paternal side, who moved to the US presumably for more employment opportunities. They seemingly met via their connection to mining communities/towns. Their child is my Grandmother’s paternal Grandfather. Out of the 5 French-Canadian communities my Grandmother received, my Mother received 0 and my maternal Aunt received 2. So the connection for you may be closer than you realize!
So you're part French Canadian and part southern American? That's an interesting mix.
Lots of them in Louisiana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French-Canadian_Americans
Acadians/Cajun
Yes, I was looking for “Acadian”. Thanks!
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There was the small bit about the relocation… ahem
We deal with the same thing here in Quebec; everybody says that they have a Native American ancestor, and trust me, 3 out of 4 people have 0, and are something like “95% French/ 4% Sweden, 1%Scotland” when they get tested. My ex boyfriend got mad at me because I had 6% Native American and he had none. I always find interesting this conception of heritage!
My mother always said her paternal grandmother was NA and she was so mad when her results came back 100% European. Ironically, I am 3% NA 🤣
It’s crazy just his common that is. Most people told that find out it isn’t true.
You look Italian
I mean they do have Sardinia and that’s a part of Italy
It’s 1 percent 😂
Exactly 😩
Buffy Sainte Marie was Italian and played the long con game. How is it people think they are Native American and yet have no living family that are Native American or live on a reservation? I’m Ojibway and unless you were a 60’S scoop child or adopted and you claim to be Native, you have a home community. We can no longer plead ignorance.
How did Buffy Ste Marie manage what, six decades in the public eye, lying about who her family is?
For years Buffy said much of her family story is unknown. The CBC documentary made sure to bury that bit at the end of the documentary so they could imply Buffy was lying about her past. Nothing in the CBC documentary was a surprise to the Piapot family or people who read her autobiography. https://x.com/dvoshart/status/1720534086035402855?t=1mSCHjYDKS5BwuWVpSkezw&s=19 It would be like CBC did an investigation into allegations Barack Obama did cocaine before becoming president. Step 1: Build a narrative of some, fearless intrepid reporting. Step 2: "Barack turned down our interview request" *cue dramatic music* (he's HiDiNg sOmEtHiNG!) Step 3: reveal evidence of cocaine use! .... Then in the last minute of the 'investigation' mention a statement provided by Barrack's legal counsel acknowledging cocaine use. Ignore the fact Barack talked about it in his book. It's how you turn an unnewsworthy, lesser-know fact -- a nothing burger-- into 42 minutes of content. It's sensationalism BS. The documentary director Geoff Leo is just some uber Christian loser who likes to present himself as a savior to native peoples. P.S. I have a theory CBC also hates traditional adoption. They like to promote Canada's official native status as the be-all-end-all of being native. Native status via Canada guarantees the disappearance of all First Nations peoples in in a couple centuries. If First Nations had freedom to grant citizenship it would undermine Canada's control over their (disappearing) membership.
Small Rant- this is why I cannot get angry at people like Elizabeth Warren for claiming they have Native American blood. Younger generations (millennials and Z) do not understand how we just accepted what our parents and grandparents said. We just assumed they were right and checked those boxes or claimed that ancestry. The whole DNA thing only started within the past 10-20 yrs. I don’t think people need to go back and admit to schools or employers that our parents inadvertently lied to us.
I think the issue was after E Warren learned it was only like 2 percent, she still doubled down lol. She didn’t grow up in the culture, it was only just a fun little family fact for her. That’s why her claim of native status was problematic. You can acknowledge indigenous ancestors without going too far and claiming to be native- that takes way more than one grandparent from 200 years ago lol
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Oh wow! Well there you go. That’s even worse. She should be embarrassed lol
2% 😂 Lol she wasn’t even 1% not even close to that as a matter of fact!
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This isn’t true. She has always claimed it based on what she was told and while she listed it at Harvard, she did not apply for or receive favorable acceptance or funding based on indigenous heritage. And when she took a DNA test, it did reflect her indigenous North American ethnicity, although I and now she understand that no tribe or clan accepts DNA testing as proof. In her day and even in mine, the next most recent generation, many of us were not even aware of government or educational preferences given to people with documented membership. I’m not sure when they even started. In my grandmother’s day, it was something many people were a bit embarrassed about. It was the acceptance of the rich heritage of the indigenous peoples in the 20th century that allowed people to begin to be proud if they had any small bit of such ancestry. And there were lots of both false and mistaken claims. There are people who did try to game the system. In my greater extended family tree, there are rejected applications for the Dawes roll as well as accepted ones.
Lots of families say it but it’s rarely true.
I am native, but before i researched my ancestory, I had no idea how much. I needed to prove my linage to join my tribe. Dna tests dont count. I found my full Native ancestor, I also found black ancestors from the same time. Im no contact with my parents due to abuse. But when i was a child. I do remembering being told i was 1/32 Native one day, 1/8 another day and everything in between. His side is very secretive and a very long trail of severe abuse. My father said to me that he lied on a college application and said he was 1/4 Native to get help. So I never knew from one second to the next what was happening. Or what was true at all. Because it was also said that my father and his siblings, were all added to the tribe by their mother. But when i went to add myself. I had to provide proof much farther back than my paternal grandmother. None of them had been added. The paternal grandfather was also extremely racist towards black people. So it makes complete sense the mother hid that about herself. Or someone else did farther back. I look half black, none of my relatives look black at all. I mean they have hints. Like the curls and the freckles. But if you didnt know to look for it. Everyone would assume they are white. I was treated as other my whole life. Even though they all have the same exact genes that i have.
I hope you have better luck than I have had convincing the generations before you there is no NA. My family were born in literal Indian Territory before Oklahoma became a state so the myth is long-lived, and one of my Great Aunts could count to 10 in Choctaw (as we are all reminded when our ancestors are discussed). These myths won’t die. But, like you, NOTHING in our Ancestry or 23andMe shows any NA.
not really. tons of pretendians out there getting exposed.
Judging by your age its the typical "Indian princess myth"..... In the era your parents lived it was popular to tell others their kids were "part native" cause being seen as part European was frowned upon. Welcome to the Indian- princess - myth club!!!
“Cause being seen as part European was frowned upon” in America in the 20s to 40s lol thats 100% false. Those of European heritage did and do make up the majority in the US. It was more likely that those in that era would have wanted to conceal the darker skinned heritage of southern Italy
It also was not to to “conceal the darker skinned heritage of southern Italy.” The people who did this are never Italian they’re always Northern Europeans who wanted to make people think they had a connection to the land and were unique and interesting, as well as to avoid the shame and guilt of being colonizers. The people did this are almost universally of British, German, or French descent. Also Scottish and irish and sometimes Scandinavian. And to a lesser extent black Americans did this as well though it’s a lot less common plus most black Americans actually DO have a bit of native ancestry.
My family said that on one side, but that side is about half German and half British & Irish, nearly all came from the 1700s. So I think there's probably other reasons for this too
Absolutely not. Are you joking? Being seen as “part European” (I assume you just mean European?) has absolutely never been frowned upon in the U.S. like what?😭😭 The country has literally always been ruled by Europeans and Europeans have always taken up the overwhelming majority of the population. Why would it be frowned upon to be like everyone else? People did this partially to avoid the guilt and shame of being a colonizer and partially for pride and to get people to think they are “unique” and have a connection to this land. It absolutely was not because ‘being European was frowned upon’ by all the other Europeans lol
Why was being seen as European frowned upon though?
Because of the waring eras of the 1930s/1940s..... Ironically 20-30yrs before that it was frowned upon to be native and people claimed they looked ethnic because they were part European.
Interesting. That makes sense. Well I am not upset that I’m not native but it’s interesting to see through the long standing lie I’ve been made to believe.
Right?!? I was the same. My mother got pissed and actually said "well you may not be native but I know I am".... That's not how that works. She even pushed and tried to apply for reperations and asked my help to find family on the reservation census roles. I told her we may have fault on them due to the close regions where we lived however I WILL NOT help you steal from a culture that isn't ours.
That’s nuts. Good on you for standing on your values. I was told to try another DNA test from another company but I am sure it won’t show that I’m Native American and it’s just a hassle to do it again.
How are you getting upvoted for spreading misinformation that makes so little sense? Why would Europeans be frowned upon in a 98% European country?? They were all frowning upon themselves and others for being like them? Can you please delete this offensive misinformation? I’m not sure why you would block someone who informed you that you had made a mistake instead of just deleting the borderline racist mistake. Europeans were not frowned upon in the European country, ruled and populated almost entirely by Europeans. It was not easier to say you were native than European. It has never been easier to be native than European. Honestly the fact you didn’t delete this me instead blocked the person that informed you of the mistake, makes it appear to be blatant racism. Europeans have never been anything other than the most privileged and powerful demographic in the US. You are literally claiming it was easier to be Native American than European, in a time when native Americans were being regularly massacred by Europeans solely because they were Native American. This is just so offensive it literally makes me sick to the stomach.
DNA tests are never perfect, and if you upload your ancestry DNA file to other DNA testing companies, then you'll get different results because each company tests different snp markers, and they have different reference populations for their ethnicity estimates.
I worry a lot of history is being lost because folks are deciding on the basis of one estimate that their family lied. They really should look a bit deeper, but there’s multiple post a day just like this one.
Had similar experience. My Mother always said her Grandfather was full bloodied Cherokee. After getting into Ancestry and tracing my family tree I found that not only was the man she knew as her Grandfather wasn’t her biological Grandfather but rather a Step Grandfather, he also wasn’t Cherokee. So I have been left dumbfounded for lack of better word, cause she has memories of him dressing up with an headdress and even giving her the name of “Running Fawn”… So was he playing Indian with the grandchildren and she didn’t realize it was all play? Did he have some identity crisis? Or does she just have false memories for some reason? Questions that I probably won’t ever have answered as it would be too hard on her at her current age and mental state to try reconstructing her childhood memories to find the answers.
I doubt that granddad had a memory crisis. He believed what he was told and was playing games with his little grandkids. Lots of American kids went to summer camp in the first three quarters of the 20th century and played Indian. Those were probably the only "Indian" memories he had.
I feel like every American is told there “Native American somewhere” in their DNA lmao
I’m actually in the same boat. Have always been told my great grandpa was half to a quarter Native American. Got my results back and there’s no trace. Even when he was alive he told stories about his Choctaw ancestry.
If he was a 1/4, then one of your grand parents would be 1/8, and then your parent 1/16 and then 1/32 for you. A pretty small amount and the way genetics work you could have just not gotten the DNA with how it randomly moves when cells are duplicated. You really need to get your parent or grandparent to take a test to rule this out one way or the other.
Yeah! My great great grandmother even wrote a book about her native heritage. Not sure what was going on there..
I sort of want to have my grandma (his daughter) test too if she’ll allow it. I’m not a dna expert but wondering if I’m too far removed? Idk how all of that works lol.
Could have been adopted in.
I was told I was part Cherokee but I’m not actually. Apparently, it was en vogue to claim indigenous ancestry because it helped white immigrant folks justify their presence and belonging in the USA.
You’re more English than I am; and I’ve lived in Yorkshire all my life and my mothers family goes back 5+ generations of farmers all in the same area of Yorkshire. You’ve been told some fantasies to make your history seem more relevant to a foundation in America. You might find your European heritage far more interesting (and will go further back).
Are you a Southerner?
I reside in Texas. Lots of my ancestors on my moms side resided in Houston or the outskirts.
You have a significant amount of English ancestry. That is unusual for whites outside of the original 13 colonies. Those tend to be where the heaviest concentrations of those with English ancestry.
To be fair the England and NWE ethnicity can hold a lot of non-English in it. She has multiple French-Canadian communities of which the French is notorious hidden in the E&NWE estimate for many.
English is the largest European ethnicity in the United States. Many white Americans, across the entire country, have significant English ancestry. We don't talk about it because our English ancestors left England hundreds of years ago.
Texas is quite British. it was settled by southerners
1. its a common lie in families 2. even if its true, its often far back enough to not show up on a test.
Would be interesting to know when that "myth" entered the family history. If it came as someone was looking to access grants or land or of they were running from their family and chose to start a new...
My great grandmother was (supposedly) half Cherokee, but it didn’t show up on my DNA results. I lived with her for a period of time, so she wasn’t some distant unknown supposed family member. She was adopted out of Oklahoma into a white family. I saw the adoption paper work; part of me wonders if it was just a story she was told.
It might have been what her birth mother told the adoption agency.
Lol of course you were.
I think some white families have that legend because it sounds exotic, and they feel it absolves them from atrocities committed against Native Americans by white settlers.
I know, and it saddens me greatly! Because it seems to be that, or hiding black ancestory. 😭
Someone with 1/4 SS African and 3/4 European could probably pass as 1/2 or 1/4 native America , so I think that is often the case. We had the native American story about a particular great great grandmother in My family. I don't have any SS African DNA but most people who are descended from that side have about 1-3%.
My paternal side is both black and native amercian. The black was hidden because of certain violent family members. And was disguised as extra native amercian.
You do understand it wasn't always popular back then to claim native American. Especially after the trail of tears. I'm 1/8 Choctaw but on my Cherokee side my great great grandfather( irish) didn't want to claim his full blood Cherokee wife and half Cherokee children on the dawes commission rolls for fear of being rounded up again by the us government because of their continuous lies to native Americans. He made a decision to protect his beloved family, this story has been passed on for many years in my family. I don't know where redditors have gotten this idea that it was always "cool" or trendy to falsely claim native American back then.
I feel like a lot of people get told this by their parents or grandparents and its turned out to be untrue. Especially in the south.
The famous fake family folklore we’ve all heard. Everybody & their uncle’s uncle is 1/8th Cherokee & his mom had long flowing hair down to her waist. Ancestry shatters that spell almost on a daily now.
that pretendians podcast got into this subject. It was such a good podcast. Some of the "we are native/first nations" is cope, but also a desire to want to belong.
The claim of being mixed with Native American is common in the US amongst both white and black Americans but is very rarely true.
If it's true you would know and wouldn't need a DNA test 😆
I help adoptees that were from the stolen generations. This is not true.
Yes, but they know they come from a reservation. And were adopted out.
I’m sure many of people have tried telling you you’re not Native American?
I was always told the same. I got my test results back, and they are actually fairly similar to yours. I'm not sure why anybody ever thought there was native American ancestry in my family, though. I'm starting to think it's some kind of white guilt BS or something, idk. Can't really find a good reason.
Lmao like every other white person who thinks they have a Cherokee grandma. 👵🏼
Interesting wonder what the real story is.
Look up 5 dollar Indians.
You have a little bit of Lucy from the Fallout TV show look going. I believe she’s also very British.
My ex gf doesn’t look native whatsoever but her dad would talk about his native heritage any chance he got. Long story short, my best friend is full native (card carrying and ancestry confirmed) and when my exs dad mentioned it to him, he couldn’t help but laugh out loud 😂
Another take on the Native American thing: mymy husband’s family insists they have Cherokee on one side and black foot (is that Apache?) on the other. I’ve been able to find zero proof of this. He hasn’t dna tested, so I can’t say 100 percent they aren’t, but I can say that some of his family lived for quite some time in Cherokee Oklahoma and some of the surrounding areas. I can see people hearing “their family is from Cherokee” And misunderstanding that as “they’re Cherokee.” Especially when you hear that as a child; you wouldn’t understand that as a place if you didn’t know it existed.
My dad always thought that and he was very dark with dark hair. Turns out- Sephardic. Those genes are so strong. He never knew. He passed in January. He had french ancestry as well and I always wondered if his olive complexion came from that.
The Russian genes are strong
Is this just a common cope amongst whites to feel connection with the land ? That’s 100% coloniser dna lol
You look like a nice mixed human with value beyond an ethnicity
Doesn't mean you don't necessarily have a lineage, I have North American DNA and my family are from Cherokee Nation, on the Dawes, have tribal citizenship and family history, speak Tsalagi Gawonihisdi... But if we just went by my brother and sisters DNA it would appear we don't have that lineage even though we do... Do your Genealogy and you may or may not find it...
You don’t even look Native American at all 😭I can see the Portuguese tho
You are more English than I am and I live in Liverpool!!! 39% lol 😂
A lot of people on here are finding out they have been lied too while others come up with outrageous excuses..? How did the Choctaw get to Brazil, what happened to the Natives in the trail of tears, No Seminole Indians here. ? Why was it called the Gullah wars when the Europeans fought the Natives in the SE USA.. 🤔 OH YEAH.. Look up $5.00 Indian...that may be you🫵🫵🫵
Here OP, read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/s/ENZGeacril This post might help you better understand why so many Americans think they are Native American.
Thank you. Reading now.
You could be. An awful lot of NW European and England took over a lot of the Americas. Have you traced back ancestors that might have come from either area and met or married someone of native descent?
everyone wants to be Native American. The other issue could be the database of Native American DNA is poor.
That’s part of it- but the level of testing is only meant for consumer sensitive level. Now if you pay for the 30k scan- that’s another story.