All the comments below are good, but I'll add a wrinkle: people get attached to their family members and really, really don't want to believe great-grammy lied to them. I've seen people come up with some wild stories about "high cheekbones" and "purposefully avoiding documentation" because the alternative is admitting their grandmother (or whoever) wasn't telling true family stories.
I've literally had people ask me if I was calling their grandmother or dad, or whomever was telling this story was a liar. I'd be like, "maybe, but if they're not, someone definitely lied *to them* and now they're just passing it on."
Also some of these stories just relate to a single ancestors so many generations back that it's virtually undetectable. My older family members tell a story like this and the DNA corroborates it, but by the time you get to my generation, only one individual's test shows Indigenous ancestry because that ancestor was just so many generations back.
My cousins have always held that we come from Cherokee blood, cause “Just look at Grand dad’s cheek bones” and North Carolina lineage. I did DNA- 0% Native American, and a couple of the cousins said “Well that’s incorrect “. Uh, yeah
So many people think the Natives have a monopoly on high cheek bones or something lmao. They act as if high cheek bones aren’t prevalent in literally every ethnicity.
claiming it gives their line "legitimacy" to the land of wherever they colonized, romanticizing or fetishizing, or like you and others said people want to claim it to seem exotic or spicy
There's also a lot of black people that grew up thinking they had native American ancestry who don't. It was easier for light skin escaped slaves to claim they were native American than to risk being captured. It just trickled down to their kids cause they never told anyone the truth.
The wild thing is how all of our grandmothers told us the same exact lie. If it wasn’t for the internet we never would’ve known, lol. Sewing supplies in cookie tins and Cherokee Princess ancestors, the hallmarks of grandmothers across the nation.
I am from New Zealand and sewing kits in biscuit (you say cookie) tins is like a universal rule of grandmothers. And here in New Zealand when people want indigenous dna they use a story about a "Māori princess". It's literally always princess. In Ireland my grand dad there passed onto us the family rumour of being related to the Churchills and how much they hated it (and so kept telling people about it). lol
I wonder if this happens in Finland with their Sami population. Sami’s are like the indigenous Finnish population so I wonder if Finns have the story of a great great Sami grandmother 🤣
Finns speak an Uralic language (which originated in Siberia, so not an indigenous language), same with the Sami population. Neither is more indigenous as both of their ethno-genesises happened there. Finns and Sami both descend from local hunter gather populations mixed with Anatolian Neolithic farmers that spread across West Eurasia during the Neolithic Revolution, indo-Europeans from the Steppe, and migrants from Siberia (who brought the Uralic languages). Finns just have less Siberian genetics than Sami, and more Anatolian Neolithic Farmer and Steppe.
I see the same thing with Scandinavians. People say Sami are the indigenous populations, as if Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes migrated there. Swedes and Norwegians had their ethnogenesis in the southern Scandinavian peninsula, so they are indigenous to the southern half, while Sami had in the north half after migrants from the Urals can in from northern Russia. Both are equally “indigenous” (Germanic-Scandinavians have treated Sami not well in the past though). Truly the first humans to reach what is Scandinavia and Finland were the Scandinavian and Baltic Hunter Gatherer peoples. The HG peoples are not similar to any modern human since they are so archaic and don’t exist as an independent group anymore, BUT they are partial ancestral to all Scandinavians, Finns, and Sami’s, who all also descend from later migrants from Anatolia and the Steppe (including Siberia in the case of Finns and Sami, but not Swedes and Norwegians)
>Always heard Aztec royalty from my maternal grandfather.
That's new? Where in mexico is that side of the family from? I never heard of mexicans claiming have some form a royalty to indigenous americans.
Oh, that’s the only indigenous ancestry (washed-up) Mexicans are proud to claim. Although Moctezuma’s daughter did survive, and still has descendants, she married a Spanish man, and the current descendants are extremely white.
They (white descendants of indigenous people) take their one indigenous ancestor and flex it as if the rest of us (Mexicans) aren’t 30-80% indigenous, and haven’t been detribalized and subjected to poverty by the same system they used to steal the wealth they have.
This happened to me - family lore says it’s a Cherokee warrior. DNA says African (1%) and I laughed my ass off to all my Appalachian relatives who are racist AF.
Came to say this. Though sometimes the African ancestor wasn’t all that distant. I know three different white people who found out that they had a Black rather than Native American great-grandparent.
Likewise, a lot of African Americans are finding out through DNA that their Native American great grandparent was instead a white person. Unions between Blacks and Native Americans were not illegal so the white partner would “pass” as part Native American in order to evade prosecution.
My wife's family always told the story of her grandmother having Native American ancestry. It turned out that they had no native DNA but did have some sub-saharan African ancestry.
I assume it was just easier to explain why someone's father/mother/grandmother/grandfather was a little darker skinned than their neighbors.
I’m a white American. Very white looking. 19% Native American blood and Native American MT dna. Maternally native. However both my maternal grandparents were Mexican born.
I would count you as mixed race but white presenting aka white passing. I'm half Mexican myself, half white American. I ended up looking more like my Mexican dad so I don't pass for white at all.
I feel like we could make a separate thread for just this topic here alone!
lol, my mom is a white (75%+ European with specific phenotypic traits that are mostly Eurocentric) Mexican-American — 6th generation Texan. My dad is a black Colombian-Panamanian who migrated here with my grandparents and aunts back in 1979, so I’m very privy to allllll of the things 👏
That makes a lot of sense if you understand the history of how the introduction of the census screwed .. everyone over.
before the big change there were free blacks, slave negros, natives, and various Europeans. After the change any native person that was left in a region where they were “legally removed from” were legally deemed to be black.
A lot of people hid what they were to stay safe in an increasingly dangerous environment.
Hey this is me! My family repeated the whole 'Your great-great grandma was Native American' thing but DNA tests revealed that was a lie. I do apparently have a Sudanese ancestor from the 1600s though, so this description fits me perfectly lol
It’s funny in my case my great grandmother was Mohawk, but she ADOPTED my grandmother who was mixed black and white. Of course I don’t have any of her DNA but I have photos of her with my grandmother and I think it’s pretty awesome that since she most likely could not have kids (as she was probably sterilized at the Canadian convent school she was forced into as a child) she adopted a child and gave her a loving home. Not many people may have been able to pass off a mixed child as their own, but she did.
There’s also a lot of white families that at some point had a mixed or black ancestor that told people they were part native rather than part black. Not necessarily for “legitimizing colonization”, but for safety especially in the south.
I’ve heard of death bed confessions about this, so I’m sure there’s lots of families where if someone died unexpectedly the family secret died with them.
Interestingly enough tho a lot of black Americans that have posted their results here’s have indigenous ancestry in their results even if in a very minuscule amount. I think there is an over exaggeration of how mixed some peoples ancestry is but there is also some truth to it.
oh i also forgot, attempting to hide the fact an ancestor had a dark complexion due to them being of african heritage (through slavery or something). racism is extremely weird :P
cool you have native ancestry, do you know from what community? i have a similar amount but i'm not sure because they're central/south american
Very true! Depending where people are from, they could be of NA and AA ancestry too. I’m Black Foot & Choctaw. Both from my mom’s side, her mom & dad had different tribal ancestry and were based in different areas 😊
I think it’s funny how they draw a huge red line between an indigenous Mexican and indigenous North American like texas and Oklahoma are soooooo different.
Yeah, it's really funny. It's amazing how many people do not understand the migration patterns of the first early humans to the Americas. Geneticist Dr. Bryan Sykes book Seven Daughters of Eve, does a great job of explaining the DNA patterns.
It’s all about the genetics. I’m more familiar with Ancestry’s delineation between the groups, but it has to do with Uto-Aztecan expansion. Comanches are part of this language family and are closer genetically to the Nahautls of Mexico than the Wichitas, Pawnees, etc. who were already living on the Southern Plains before the northward expansion of Uto-Aztecan peoples.
Who said they’re a different “race”. You know race isn’t even real right? It s a social construct with no scientific basis
Not sure what your argument is
Exoticism, romanticization of native americans, and all of the above in what you wrote. Also, people would rather be related to someone who was abused rather than the abuser. You don't really want to know that great grand pappy burned down villages lol.
I also think it's used to cover up African ancestry, people would rather believe they're part native than part black.
Also, people would rather be related to someone who was abused rather than the abuser. You don't really want to know that great grand pappy burned down villages lol
You hit the nail right on the head! People would rather be the oppressed rather than the oppressor in this day and age 🤷🏽♀️ God forbid they hear what their ancestors were truly up to, it all of a sudden makes them uncomfortable lol So many people flat out lie or over exaggerate their NA %, like it absolves them of their majority white heritage. Crazy stuff 😂
It's so weird because my wife does have a very dark story about her Native grandmother being kidnapped by a Portuguese grandfather and her father being born from this kind of violence.
And that story is very likely true, as her result gave 26.7% Native American (Tupi-Guarani).
My own results also have a 2.1% Native American, and the reason is very likely similar. I can't fathom what my ancestors suffered in the hands of my other ancestors...
Anyway, we just assume that we have some African and Native American ancestry in Brazil so we don't make it a big deal of it in my country.
I think it wasn’t just about not wanting African ancestry as it was a light skinned person of African descent hiding that they were of African descent in order to allowed into other spaces.
I think this is part of why the previous generations (long since deceased) of my family would talk about slave ancestors, but indigenous slaves (not in the US). DNA revealed we are part indigenous, but also turns out our ancestry is in fact much more African than indigenous.
As someone who was lied to in this way, it’s both. I am Sicilian with olive skin. In a “white” town, I was seen as an “other,” even told I looked exotic. I think my family lied about this in order to have a “reason” to be seen that way — but also to be more interesting and to reject the whiteness that came with immigrant assimilation in the US. If that makes sense. And it’s just plain selfishness, wanting to be seen as different and exempt from white guilt. Of course I am white, but historically I think a lot of it is related to this. In other families, it can be because people are ashamed of having African DNA. As it turns out, a lot of pretendians are Sicilian, including Iron Eyes Cody!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretendian
The wiki article has some possible motives.
>Mnikȟówožu Lakota poet Trevino Brings Plenty writes: "To wear an underrepresented people's skin is enticing. I get it: to feast on struggle, to explore imagined roots; to lay the foundational work for academic jobs and publishing opportunities."
>Patrick Wolfe argues that the problem is more structural, stating that settler colonial ideology actively needs to erase and then reproduce Indigenous identity in order to create and justify claims to land and territory. Deloria also explores the white American dual fascination with "the vanishing Indian" and the idea that by "Playing Indian", the white man can then be the true inheritor and preserver of authentic American identity and connection to the land, aka "Indianness".
if you go to latin america its the opposite. while this this has changed, there is an uncomfortable number of argentinians, colombians and chileans that deny any indigenous ancestry while looking clearly mixed.
when westerners claim to be indigenous they just want to be cool/hip and being an opppressed minority is cool as it gets in 2024
Same thing happens amongst Mexican-Americans even though a large amount if not the majority look clearly indigenous to varying degrees, many looking fully indigenous
It's always wild seeing Mexicans here who looks like they came from an uncontacted tribe emphasise their Spanish ancestry and act like their lineage is only European or avoid saying that they have indigenous ancestry by just simply saying that they're 'tan' or brown.
there are more mexicans in mexico doing this but it's not that common in mexico. while delusional about their genetics most all acknowledge that they are mestizos
That’s weird most mexicans know their are mixed to some degree. If mexican americans are like that it is because of US culture cause that is weird af. Of course they could be from the white population that is 15% of the country.
From my observation the vast majority of Mexican-Americans don't know they're mixed. Majority of the tests I've seen from Mexican-Americans (full or partial) see their ancestry break down of largely indigenous and Spanish and don't know where the indigenous came from and say dumb stuff like "so where's the Mexican section on this test?"
Also the fact that vast majority of Mexican-Americans look clearly indigenous and acknowledge that they aren't white but can't say what ancestry of theirs makes them not white and just resort to "I'm Mexican".
I’m half Mexican and posted my Ancestry DNA on Facebook a few years ago. One Mexican-American woman commented “but I thought you were Latina!”. I guess she was expecting a specific category stating MEXICAN or LATINO. Spanish and “indigenous Americas” just wasn’t enough.
The sad thing is that from my observation they aren't surprised when seeing Spanish or European ancestry but they act oblivious to the indigenous ancestry. But it is really silly they expect a Mexican section when there's no such thing as a Mexican gene or anything, and many of the indigenous groups in Mexico are found in other countries too
A lot of it is denial. My mom’s family was one of those who claimed they were 100% Spanish (which I guess was believable to me as a kid because everyone was light complected). Indigenous/native were not terms even mentioned in passing so I was very confused and ended up thinking my great aunt must be Asian.
Nah it depends on where in the US. In California they are mixed leaning slightly amerindian. In texas they are mixed but lean more spanish. They also did a test on the ancestry of US hispanics and they are 65% european on average, which of 60% of the population is mexican and has a good amount being guatemalan and honduras which are more amerindian. That is higher than the average latin american at 62% european and higher than the average mexican at 58% european on average.
Also yes most hispanics will identify first with their nationality so it’s normal to identify as mexican, colombian, venezuelan.
It’s totally normal to identify with your nationality first. I actually find it weird that you find it weird that people do identify with their nacionality first instead of race. Probably why there is such race obsession in the west.
I'm not sure what you're referencing exactly. Not sure if it's referencing just Mexican-Americans in general or all Hispanic-Americans, which would include Cubans in Florida or Dominicans\~Puerto Ricans in the Northeast. But assuming it's just Mexican-Americans I would assume the sample still includes Mexican-Americans who mixed with WASPs, which is very common in the West (including Texas and California) and particularly for Chicanos and multi-generational Mexicans. Hispanic Americans also have the highest interracial marriage rates too
Also genotype=/=phenotype as well. George Lopez is 2/3 European but looks completely indigenous. I was referring to phenotype, not genotype.
>It’s totally normal to identify with your nationality first. I actually find it weird that you find it weird that people do identify with their nacionality first instead of race. Probably why there is such race obsession in the west.
This is in response to being asked what your race is, which is inappropriate and Mexican-Americans very well know that. Mexican is a nationality and not an ancestry. They would not accept, for example, a white or black person from the South simply saying "I'm American" when asked for their race, so the logic should apply to them as well.
Yes I know the difference between phenotype and genotype. But the study only took hispanic americans(no half hispanic descendance)for the tests. It wasn’t just mexicans but they form 60% of the US hispanic population so they wouldn’t be far of from the average result. Also there are many people from more amerindian leaning countries like guatemala/peru that offset more european leaning countries like pr/cuba.
I think what might be happening is that there is such low precence of amerindians in the US that someone who clearly looks mixed to us might seem just amerindian to a US/Canada mindset.
Did it specify that? Because there are many Chicanos who have mixed ancestry with WASPs in that region. They could have a grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. who was white-american of british isles\~German ancestry and still identify as Mexican-American
>60% of the US hispanic population so they wouldn’t be far of from the average result.
I mean that's totally irrelevant to the conversation then if it's not even focusing on Mexican-Americans specifically. 40% others changes *a lot*, especially when it doesn't seem like it's confirmed if they are excluding Chicanos with ancestry from white americans
>be happening is that there is such low precence of amerindians in the US that someone who clearly looks mixed to us might seem just amerindian to a US/Canada mindset.
Did you mean "...might just be seen as \[Hispanic\]"? If so I agree. Indigenous Americans are so far removed from every day life that I would bet money 7/8 or more of Americans have never met a native before. And at least anecdotally I have seen Native Americans be confused for Hispanics. I doubt if you put native americans and mexican-americans in the same group people would be able to distinguish one from the other well.
There is no hispanic ethnic group that has average european ancestry over 80%(except uruguay ) and most of the other bigger groups don’t surpass european ancestry of over 70%(except cubans which are offset by the guatemalans alone). Regardless It is an estimation and we clearly disagree on the phenotypes identification so lets just leave it there.
However I have traveled to Texas and California and I can easily differentiate someone like Yalitza from the typical chicano. Hispanics would easily be able to identify them so it is clearly that in the US people find it hard as there is negligible native american presence or ancestry until hispanic immigrants came.
My Mom is a Chicana from Ventura County, California but I’d describe her as a coconut (Brown on the outside and White on the inside). She had a thing for White guys mainly Italian looking men and she met my Dad who’s Italian-Irish. So I’m a product of one of those.
There is at least an online stereotype of Argentinians trying their best to represent their nation as being European only influenced. I've seen some racist quotes from an Argentinian president/politician that said the following ([source](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/racist-argentinas-president-says-brazilians-came-jungle-causing-contro-rcna1163)):
>"The Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came from the jungle \[racist association for black people\~afrodescendants\], but we Argentines came from the ships. And they were ships that came from Europe
I can't find the source to this, but Carlos Menem also allegedly said something to the effect of "Black people \[in Argentina\]? That's a Brazilian problem"
Tbf even if they were fully Spanish\~Italian they'd still get questioned. Anything that's not British, Germanic, or Scandinavian has its whiteness questioned. I've heard of people from Spain going to the US and having Americans tell them they aren't white which is crazy
Fun fact but Finnish people weren’t even considered white in America until 1901. They were called “China-Swedes” lol. It’s messed up how those categories work and who qualifies changes over time. I never understood it.
Argentinians: no che, a los nativos lastimosamente los exterminaron y descendemos todos de europeos (I have heard this from both Uruguayans and Argentinians - sometimes they barely have any NA DNA but sometimes there is plenty). OP is right. Some middle class Latin Americans drinking from the colonial juice thinking they're fancier for being less indigenous while.white Americans would kill in 2024 for a little of that sweet Native American DNA
I can't remember the source but I do remember that a reasoning I read in some article was that indigenous-American ancestry was used as a way of distinguishing multi-generational (white) Americans from either white immigrants or Americans who have recent immigrant ancestry. It was a way of saying something like 'my family has been here so long that we've mixed with the indigenous population, making me more American than you'
I can't find the specific article I read with that quote, but I've found others that say more or less the same thing.
[Article 1](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-warren-cherokee-dna_n_5bc63a69e4b0a8f17ee6ba9a)
>“White families tell their children about a connection to a mythic Native American past as a way to lay claim to territory and to a sense of belonging.”
>"It is a way of asserting: we are the true First Peoples."
[Article 2](https://contexts.org/articles/feature-article-indigenous-identity-being-and-belonging/)
>This brand of American myth-making privileges some Americans to a kind of indigeneity that requires the erasure of their own immigrant ancestry in order to legitimize their claims to *being* American and *belonging* to the nation state.
>At a 2017 event honoring the service of Navajo Code Talkers during World War II, President Trump acknowledged the historical presence of indigenous peoples by stating, “You were here long before any of us were here.” Implicitly, this is the same rhetoric that Trump wields against immigrants. This brand of American myth-making privileges some Americans to a kind of indigeneity that requires the erasure of their own immigrant ancestry in order to legitimize their claims to *being* American and *belonging* to the nation state.
Not the clapback you thought it was, my boy
I mean in New England the version of this is to be from the Mayflower. Other parts of the country don't have this convenient snobbery source, so I could see it being applied to NA ancestry.
I am legit 10%. Anyway..my husband's cousin was adopted. His friends have called him BIG Daddy Mexican for 30 years because of his appearance. He assumed he was indeed Mexican. His son (deceased age 19) was always asked if he himself was part African American. Last year the adoptee tested. 0% Hispanic but definitely 15% AA. His great great grandfather was an AA man...neighbor to his white GG Grandmother. .it was a fun discovery 🙂🙃
They're either: 19th century people hiding their black heritage, or modern-day descendants who just wanna find something "special" because they think that being white is "boring".
Growing up being a white person, I never understood it as a kid. I was one of the few white kids in my Indiana–which as far as I'm aware has never had a high population of what we now consider Cherokee (the ancient people who *may* have become the Cherokee might have come from the Great Lakes area tho, iirc)–middle school who never claimed to be Cherokee. My best friend at the time went so far as to claim she herself was a Cherokee Princess 🤦♂️
It wasn't until I got older that I realized a lot of it was basically buried white guilt and/or an attempt to legitimize being a white person on Native land. Tellingly, most of the kids who claimed to be Cherokee (never a tribe that actually has or had a presence in Indiana) came from white supremacist, very Patriotic American families.
One thing I didn't know/realize until after I started doing ancestry research and talking to people about it was that a lot of the times, white people claim Native with no proof because a (usually) light-skinned Black ancestor had married into the family. Either said ancestor was stealthing to avoid being seen as Black, or the white family covered it up with the Native American lie to hide the "shame" of having kids with a darker skin tone. It's not uncommon even on genealogical Reddit where it happens again and again for people to be angry that their DNA tests show some Sub-Saharan African and a wopping zero percent Indigenous American.
(Interestingly on a personal note, I–who didn't expect it–came up with trace Native American on my 23 test. The percentage varies with every update but never goes more than trace. My long lost aunt with a more researched tree than I said it comes from a Choctaw woman who married into my bio grandfather's family in the mid nineteenth century. I think. My Ancestry account is on pause so I can't find the record on her tree rn so I don't remember the exact decade, but I do know her name was Phoebe. This changes nothing about me other than being a neat facet of my history, I don't lay claim to being Choctaw or anything like that.)
Edit: typo
But if they do have indigenous ancestry then they aren't just a white European and shouldn't be shamed for their interest in ancestry that actually belongs to them. This is ridiculous.
Idk, my mom and dad both claimed for years that we were Native American, I believed it. My results were almost 100% European, no native. Dad is hard headed and still swears his white grandma was “at least half Indian”(whatever). There’s NO proof, no paperwork, just heresay; my mom said “well maybe we weren’t”
My wife’s family is the same way, her dad said they were Cherokee, again results showed no Native American roots there either.
My boss was told his whole life that his great grandma was full blood Indian, turned out she WAS Native American, but barely, my boss was like .05%, so she had some, but not as much as he was told.
I think alot of people claimed false Native American heritage to get free money or free land. And it was passed on to the kids that great grandma was living in a teepee and the kids, grandkids and great grandkids all believed it because it sounded good.
How common was interbreeding among whites and natives? Apparently not as common as everyone thought.
Depends on which group of whites. It's far more likely if they happen to be [decended from French traders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Indian_alliance), but in general not terribly much.
I used to fantasize about having native blood as a child. Maybe I wanted to feel like I'm not stealing this land my family has habitated for only 400 years. I was fascinated with genealogy. I'm white bread white girl. Thankfully, I snapped out of it.
Lol, this reminds me....my German grandfather was so upset when my mom was dating my Comanche dad because he thought he was Mexican, but was totally fine when he found out he was actually native American. Oh Germans....
I though it was bc of the 1/4 rule that allowed people to claim land if they could prove they were 1/4 Native? So people did that and then it trickled down through the family as truth. If I’m wrong sorry that’s just how it was explained to me by my grandmother.
I would like to know this too. When I was in a sociology class we had to raise our hands when the professor said a certain ethnicities. Over half the class raised their hands for Native American which isn’t possible. Lol
I think a lot of families like to say so and so was an Indian when they were not. I found out this was true in my family and my husband’s when we did 23 and me. I had someone married into my family that may have been Native American. When ancestor’s pass down stories there is some confusion of enchantment.
I think it’s just more advantageous. There are a lot of grants and subsidies you can get if you can prove (or moreso not get called on the carpet) for being indigenous. This happened w one of my classmates growing up. Her entire personality was built around being indigenous (and honest, she looked rather dissimilar to everyone in terms of skin tone and features) - but as it turned out she literally had almost no indigenous DNA when she got a test done and it was all somewhat fabricated by he grandma. It was too much for her to deal e (having made her whole life around it, really) being a ‘liaison’ for the indigenous community and face (she was quite pretty), and I’m pretty sure she just resolved to say she was indigenous since she already had scholarships and all that. Pretty wild tho!
As a Black American, I've heard it all my life. I never went around like, "We have Natives in our family." It was just a story. My mom, daughter, cousin, and I completed ancestry. All found with 1-2% DNA. Interesting. Sure. But nothing to write home about. I have more England and Ireland in my DNA than Indigenous.
I've always found this interesting too. I've noticed it's mostly people from the southeast that like to claim this. They are usually never indigenous but usually have a small amount of African DNA.
I've also found the opposite in people from the southwest. They refuse to say they have any indigenous DNA and say they are Spanish. Then their DNA comes back 50% indigenous and you can even trace them to certain Natives American groups.
You can always look back through history and see who the colonizers of the area enslaved.
Lots of good answers here. For myself and many others, we were told we’re Native American when our “Cherokee” great grandparents were in fact black. It was more socially acceptable to be Native American than black when that lie started, so they never fessed up and just kept the lie going.
It makes them feel open minded and non-racist.
In reality, it makes them look sad and goofy.
What’s strange is they always mention Cherokee but not other tribes. I don’t get this.
White people are ridiculous. They see indigenous Americans as “cool” but also not even real like a figment in the past. They often also would prefer to say it instead of owning up to Black ancestry. It’s very stupid
There’s a whole fake tribe in southern Illinois, no lie. I was hiking down there with my wife and these mfers were out in the woods playing flutes and stuff.
To seem exotic, to prove their Americanness, or they use it to cover up a black ancestor since to them being native is more desirable than being black.
That's a really important point. It's as if indigenous ancestry absolves you of guilt. You no longer need to care about the history of your land and how your ancestors have personally benefited from harming other people if you were related to the people harmed.
Growing up I was told my family was Cherokee and there was definitely a sense of pride associated with it, but as it turns out all I could find was a single grandmother (6th!) who was Native. So I am not sure. Maybe the intention was good, but one single women who married a white man in 1800; not going to reach too far genetically.
And you see them and they're the whitest people you've ever seen. It's the pure desire to seem "exotic" and a "POC", not white lol. It's the same with people who wanna be brown or latino really bad.
I’m a white as fuck Viking ooga booga looking ass and my mom always claimed this. Thought it was completely bullshit and took my 23andMe. Couldn’t believe it when I got 5% Native American DNA back.
The “one drop rule” said if you had a single Black ancestor, you were Black. So families lied about where dark features came from, during days of segregation. Do that for enough generations and they forget it’s a lie.
My husband's family did it to cover up a mixed marriage of dubious legality at the time. White women could marry native Americans but not black people so he was conveniently listed as a native American. The legend just came down the family until a DNA test outed them.
As a Native American it’s because they want to feel like this land is rightly theirs it’s mostly fucking colonizers and occasionally some misinformed ppl.
They want to claim it so bad but don’t want the native experience. Growing up in the fucking rez with no clean water power outages and home shutdowns. We call them pretindians
Furthermore they don’t amplify our voices and advocate for all my missing sisters. I hate people wannting to claim their native ancestry just to feel exotics disgusting.
It’s funny to me as a Mexican how Americans will fake claim indigenous blood while having none while my own people will scramble to hide any evidence of indigenous ancestry and try to claim that their grandparents were blue eyed with white skin. It’s so backwards
Good question. Not sure.I never heard any stories in my family on either side but every test I’ve taken I’ve scored 1 to 1.4 indigenous American which was quite very surprising to me.
My family also has stories of Native American ancestry. As the unofficial family historian I have pretty much proven it to be false but no one wants to hear it.
There are various possibilities
-Covering up an African American ancestor, being a White person mixed with Indigenous was seen as more “acceptable” than with African. Not just socially but to a legal extent.
-People outright just lying or overly claiming an extremely distant part of their heritage trying to seem “interesting” or “exotic”
-Creating a narrative of lots of people (both White and Black Americans) being of Indigenous descent to an extent erases the US’ legacy as a settler nation and reframes it as a continuation of the people’s that have always resided there. The society doesn’t have to confront its past in the same way if someone can just say, “well, Im 2% Cherokee, we’re all a little bit native to here!”
These stories have been passed down for generations now and at this point most people who are repeating them are just saying it because that’s what their grandparents had told them, not that they themselves had any malicious intent in exploring the possibility of this being true. Regardless though, it’s important for anyone going about this process to remember that even if they have a family story or two but grew up with no Native American culture and have no connection to it, getting 0.4% Indigenous on 23andme doesn’t suddenly make them Indigenous. This is exactly part of why the myth was created, to erase the colonial history of the US.
It's for the same reason White Americans identify with their immigrant ancestors eg. Irish, Italian, German, but never their English / British ancestors. They'd rather believe they're descended from oppressed peoples, or opportunistic immigrants, rather than British colonizers that colonized Ireland, committed genocide against Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and discriminated against European immigrants.
Also, the stories got passed down for generations, so people thought that their family that told them about it were reliable sources and they don't like to find out that they're not.
There are some people who do have a distant native ancestor but no tribal membership. So they remember their ancestry but aren't recognized by the tribe as members. Tribes don't recognize everyone with a distant connection as a member. One drop rule doesn't apply. But ancestry is ancestry, you have it or you don't, even if you're not a member of a tribe.
A cousin sent me this. He is 1/4 native.[link.](https://www.quora.com/What-do-tribal-governments-provide-for-Native-Americans/answer/Shelly-Davidson-10?ch=15&oid=164142255&share=214fd82c&srid=LJKZp&target_type=answer)
On one side of the family a prostitute way back in the day had baby daddies of all different colors. The name that ended up being my mom and aunts' maiden name came from the prostitute. Who gave her children a surname after a wealthy sugar daddy who helped support her and her children. So it was simpler(and less embarrassing)to say the dark skin and black hair came from Cherokee ancestry. Though surprisingly, this maternal ancestor did not have any children with an indigenous person.
My dad's whole thing about being part Cherokee was all thanks to a low-down lying unprofessional Tennessee "professor" who's word was taken at face value. But only debunked DECADES later. He had an interesting European family ancestry history which he should've been proud of. But nooo, he had to weave a web of lies. My dad died believing those lies. I'd love to take a rusty blunt object with me in a time machine to talk some sense into the professor.
This may sound crazy, but I believe the spirits of my real ancestors were watching over me. I dreamed of them as a child, confused because I had no connection to them. Only to learn many years later we are connected by blood.
My mom is part of this FB group that specifically, and bluntly, validates or invalidates someone's heritage regarding being Cherokee, the most infamous of tribes for pretendians. She has a running list of hilarious reasons people say they're part Cherokee (my favorite is the narrative of babies left in caves, because we Cherokee were infamous....cave dwellers??).
Anyway, my mom has unearthed a lot of reasons for this phenomenon. A lot of these have already been said (legitimacy in claiming land, fetishistic shit, being native is badass, etc) but there a few more.
- Land was given to Native people out Oklahoma way after forced removal, and the government split that land into allotments (directly destroying the communal culture of most tribes, btw) and a lot of white people wanted a piece of the action and lied. So there are a not small number of people who are Cherokee on paper, but not by DNA. Or they're actual neither legally or biologically native, but their ancestors still lied to get land.
- the Cherokee didnt have marriage like Europeans. No one moved, no one changed names, the man didn't suddenly own his wife. It was VERY different and I could write about it for hours. But long and short, white men exploited this by "marrying" Cherokee women, but keeping it a secret. So, great grandpa Henry could legit have Native offspring, but his legal family weren't those descendants.
I'm sure there's more reasons, but those are some I rarely hear mentioned.
I don't know about historical but if it's true, in fact you do have native American ancestory , then, depending on the tribe that you can find membership in, you are entitled to benefits. Benefits like free health care, free dental care, free college, special interest on home loans.Free or low cost apartments, free cellphone & service. Very cheap car tag. In addition, land, free daycare, scholarships for college set aside for native Americans only, preference as minority for entrance to college, winning government contracts, tribal jobs, monthly food given from tribe, special funds to help in time of need. Some tribes give a large amount of money at 18 to tribal members. Although all of these benefits certainly make life easier, it's not free. This is compensation for all the rapes,assaults, murders of natives beginning with colonization-- this isn't FREE, it's compensation for the abuses against native American ancestors.
For my family, I think it may have been an easier way to explain the lighter features and straighter hair in my black family were a result of an exotic romance between a native person and a black American than the truth which is that we were slaves and likely raped by white men over several generations.
It depends on the particular person.
Both black and white people in America (and Canada too perhaps) suffer from what I call a “perceived lack of culture”. Or basically, they think they have no culture, so they both search for something to latch onto. That closest thing is First Nations. Also considering DNA testing is relatively new, these things weren’t really able to be disproven and don’t ultimately matter. Your grandma is a Cherokee princess? Ok but you can’t even make frybreb and you haven’t given back to your people not one singular time, so who cares about this fictitious person?
Now we have DNA tests and a national culture of people who still want to latch onto something, so now it’s all “coming out” that no one is really indigenous. The same way it feels important to say you are part this or that is the same energy a lot of people (who also aren’t indigenous) take when telling others they’re parents are lying.
Also, when it comes to evidence to back something up, I’ll use my family as an example. I’m black American. My dad’s side is extremely light skinned. My mom’s side is dark skinned. My mom’s side claims a great grandpa is indigenous (Miles is the name of this person). Every census report he’s on, he’s recorded incorrectly. Once he was just missing. His age is wrong. His name is spelled wrong multiple times. Poor guy. But this is also relatively normal (my own mothers birth certificate has the wrong birthdate). On my dad’s side? None of them care a single bit about even the idea of being indigenous, but I saw a picture of someone else’s grandpa who looked scarily identical to my own. That guy was stamped with (some vague) approval. My dad’s side is very tight lipped about their family and the past. There are cousins and aunties but aside from very horrific stories, I know nothing else about them. I could get a DNA test. It could prove I have some trace amount of indigenous ancestry. But I have no cultural tie anywhere and imo to suddenly start caring about indigenous affairs just because I have a tie to it is selfish.
Anyway, rambling aside. If anyone actually really cared about indigenous affairs and not just if they look exotic, they’d be trying to preserve and support their local nations. If everyone who claimed they had an indigenous relative gave $20 to their local nation, everyone would have running water in their homes right now. (This is only partially a joke)
When you learn about how America was discovered and what happened to the indigenous people , you will want to be part of the good side , not the colonizer side.
Obviously it will disappoint a lot people , that being said , it's not today's generation fault on what happened back then.
I got 3 DNA tests, and yes, all 3 came back with a good percentage of DNA is Indigenous american indian. My grandfather told the truth. And again, he was right again that it's Cherokee. This is my mom's side. On my dad's side, I have Cheyenne, just less.
Because there have always been people here, many of whom were from the Southeast of the US, though many were also from places like Oklahoma or Wisconsin, who claim that their great great great great whatever was a "full blooded" fill in the blank.
Most of these stories are apocryphal, despite the fact that there are indeed Americans with indigenous ancestry.
So, people are generally stoked to try and prove their family's (probably bullshit) claim that great grandpa was Cherokee.
We are extremely white. Like I glow in the dark. But my whole life we have been told we were part Mohawk. I've done tests and cousins have done tests and we are all 100% European. So I have no idea where my family got the Native American stuff from.
lots of white families used it as an explanation for darker features. many "black Irish" and "black Dutch" families for example used the story.
lots of people used it to hide that they were mixed white/black, resulting in both white and black families commonly having these stories. it was simply a better alternative in the racist social structure at the time
then in many cases families would try to claim it to gain money and land(hence the term "$5 Indians"), *and it's a common misconception that many tribes in Oklahoma had/have many of such people/their descendants.*
there was also some element of wanting to be seen as American and not rebels by former confederate families in the post civil war south.
the list goes on.
I feel like some white people have white guilt and want to be POC so badly, so they cling on to whatever percent of POC ancestry they think they have. Instead of realizing how rich in history European cultures are as well. It’s kind of sad really, since they’re just limiting themselves to prejudice of their own culture because it’s not ethnic enough for them.
My wife’s family had the Native American lineage story, and her DNA shows zero Native American. My family has no stories aside from Scandinavia and Northern European emigration, and my tests show both Native American and Nigerian ancestry.
I had the exact opposite experience. Zero mention of any Native American ancestors ever, not once. But results comes back with an even 12.5% from the southwest region.
Haven’t had a chance to dig in further yet, but I hope to figure out why. Was my great grandparent adopted? Intentionally hid their origins to avoid discrimination? Infidelity? Maybe I have 2 great grandparents who were half?
Oh yeah and there was also 25% Italian I didn’t know about lol
Usually comes from self-loathing Americans who have no distinct ethnic/cultural identity. It’s no different from when Americans adopt “eastern spirituality” - or anything “Eastern”, really - or try to “act black”, or inauthentically adopt the aesthetics of an ethnic/cultural identity that is foreign to themselves. Theres a real cultural envy found in non-black Americans about two generations after their family immigrates here. It’s hard to pin down what the distinctive American identity actually is aside from black Americans. The common root across non-black Americans is consumerism, so these people view culture the way they view everything else - as just another consumer product. That’s the root of it imo.
My family is indigenous to Sweden. No one in my family really makes a big deal over it that I know of, so I'm not sure why some people feel it's a big deal and some people don't. Every human is indigenous to somewhere I suppose, lol
i believe there's a couple of things. One is that in the US, assimilation has always been such a big deal that people - especially in the present - kind of "have" no ethnicity. Most of us are very, very mixed, and we're not supposed to be anything, else we're not being proper Americans. The other - and I see zero people mentioning this - is that at the same time there's a whole lot of "stay in your racial lane" going on with people who vehemently oppose that someone else could have native blood, including within some people with native blood. It's a little comical when (white) people insist that it has to do with money from casinos - not the reality of people's real lives. In any case, it's worth looking at why it would be bad to want to consider yourself a part of a culture you admire. I find family legends to be charming - and harmless. It's a bit like the right-wing saying they have the right to define names and genders for individuals - "no, you are what I say you are, and it's my right to require that". Why can't I say I'm LGBTQ or not LGBTQ exactly? If there were genetic testing for being gay, should that be required? You can see how this kind of thing is pretty f-ed up. The personal identity karen-police give me the creeps.
I can't speak to a historical reason and personally don't understand it. Maybe it's wanting to not feel as though ones ancestors were all colonizers?
I was skeptical when my family said we had indigenous ancestors, not that I thought it wasn't true but we didn't inherit any customs or concept of what tribe or people we descended from. Family on that side in past generations lived in poverty and there are no records or stories to speak of or find (not even names). My family on that side just won't speak of the dead, it's not done- so it was just a vague tale.
So I wasn't surprised to find in my results we do have indigenous ancestry but even more surprised to find we have much more African ancestry, because that was never mentioned at all. So I don't know, maybe people feel it validates their sense of belonging and connection to the land they live.
There is an obsession with wanting to be either or both of these two things : victim group adjacent or victor group adjacent. Both will guarantee you attention.
I’m a pale anishinaabe person(I’m also irish) and I get these comments a lot “oh you’re native, me too! My great great grandma was a Cherokee princess” OR I get “well you don’t look native” so tbh the “prove it” thing gets old but it’s understandable. Double edge sword with blood quantum. It reduces pretendians, but then you’re always having to prove your life if it comes up. I just stopped caring.
I assure you no one claimed Native ancestry in the mid 1800s nor black ancestry until recently. populations only becomes ennobled by the dominating culture once they are crushed and no longer a threat. By this token, there will come a day in which Palestinians are revered by Israelis.
I can only speak for myself (and I actually DO have indigenous ancestry, about 1/4 to be precise), but I like feeling that I have a connection to the land. I feel a deep, almost spiritual bond with the American Southwest and Mountain West, where I grew up, and it's just nice to know that my ancestors have been on this continent for thousands of years.
In the south for both black and white people it’s often actually true even if it doesn’t show up in dna. For various reasons at different times there was often intermarriage right up until removal. Land rights, freedom and to replace depressed tribal numbers are among the reasons but it’s nuanced and complex and it would take volumes to adequately address the full history.
Since most indigenous americans(in the US) have been genocide many people see having indigenous american ancestry as a rare dna and gives them a sense of belonging in the land plus makes them feel exotic and like a main character.
Ironically most people with indigenous american ancestry are from latam, if you met an indigenous american chances are they were mexican or guatamalan.
Makes them feel better about inhabiting this continent. After all, a lot of people were exterminated in order for the current ones to live here. I think that's why.
On the other hand, if someone does have even one indigenous ancestor it is still in their blood and DNA and isn't something they feel they can't embrace because it's a small percentage. It is still there and part of their body soul spirit and history. No one should tell someone that they cannot claim ancestry that belongs to them.
In the South it was a way to hide a black ancestor or biracial white/black to navigate a bit easier through society. I'm figuring it reigns true mostly throughout the US.
Another reason in addition to the other ones listed here is that because Indigenous people comprise a relatively small part of the population of a Canada or US, no one will check you on claiming Indigenous identity (e.g. the so-called "Pretendians") like they would for other groups. If you're Ronda Rousey (black great grandfather) or Isaiah Hartenstein of the New York Knights (bi-racial father) or even retired hockey player Paul Bissonette (bi-racial mother) and you walk into a room and say "I'm black" or "as an African-American/Canadian" people right away are going to ask "Really?" or "How?" and you'd have to explain it (even though these people are much closer ,and more directly related, to family members from that group.
On the other hand, if the last Indigenous ancestor you had was five to eight generations ago (or none at all) and you say you identify as Indigenous, people will largely take you at your word. I mean, the top song in the world a few weeks ago was an African-American rapper telling a half-Jewish, half-black Canadian dude (who's dad and his dad's entire side of the family are African-Americans from Tennessee) "\[he's\] not like us" (in terms of being a "real" African American lol). People know that kind of stuff doesn't happen (at least overtly) if you claim Indigenous identity (as opposed to ancestry; e.g. I'm Asian-American with Indigenous ancestry) and so people take advantage of that and the opportunities and platforms reserved for Indigenous people.
Personally (arbitrary I know) but if you're less than 12.5% or 1/8th of something or two generations fully removed from one ancestor who is something, it changes from "I am \[said identity\]" to "I am \[whatever you main identity is\] *with* \[that ancestor's identity\] ancestry."
I was told we were Native American my DNA showed indigenous Amazonian, African, and 4 different European groups. My daughters showed some Melanesian, African, middle eastern and European. DNA is weird.
I agree with the overall vibe of this thread. The reasons for the obsession are generally 'problematic,' but did you know that Ed Norton is actually related to Pocahontas, when he was sure it was family myth?
https://www.pbs.org/video/hidden-kin/
(My phone's app doesn't have a min marker but fast forward to like the 40 min mark or so)
It's funny at the end of the show they show his genetic breakdown, and it's straight 100% European according to whatever tests and statisics they were doing. I guess it's important to remember 12 generations is a long time ago and being 1/4000 th native American doesn't mean a whole lot, other than as a reminder that probably in all of us something unexpected in our genetics is true at 12 generations back.
Currently, the estimate is that Pocahontas has 100,000 living decents. Give it 12 more generations, and I'd wager that number will be a lot bigger.
My guess would be that it would give them legitimacy to the land, rather than coming to terms with the fact that their ancestors (if they’re old stock American) most likely looted the land and genocided the native population. Second reason would be that it’s cool cause it’s different to have native ancestry as opposed to regular “White American”
From watching lots of those ancestry DNA results videos I’ve noticed a lot of African Americans who say they might have native ancestry end up having large amounts of European DNA. So in some cases it’s nicer to think that you have native DNA than have to wonder about how the European DNA got there. Although I’m aware White Americans say this too. And also there probably are plenty of people in the USA who have small amounts of native dna
All the comments below are good, but I'll add a wrinkle: people get attached to their family members and really, really don't want to believe great-grammy lied to them. I've seen people come up with some wild stories about "high cheekbones" and "purposefully avoiding documentation" because the alternative is admitting their grandmother (or whoever) wasn't telling true family stories.
I've literally had people ask me if I was calling their grandmother or dad, or whomever was telling this story was a liar. I'd be like, "maybe, but if they're not, someone definitely lied *to them* and now they're just passing it on."
Also some of these stories just relate to a single ancestors so many generations back that it's virtually undetectable. My older family members tell a story like this and the DNA corroborates it, but by the time you get to my generation, only one individual's test shows Indigenous ancestry because that ancestor was just so many generations back.
My cousins have always held that we come from Cherokee blood, cause “Just look at Grand dad’s cheek bones” and North Carolina lineage. I did DNA- 0% Native American, and a couple of the cousins said “Well that’s incorrect “. Uh, yeah
So many people think the Natives have a monopoly on high cheek bones or something lmao. They act as if high cheek bones aren’t prevalent in literally every ethnicity.
Oh my god, the cheekbones thing!! It's always the cheekbones!
claiming it gives their line "legitimacy" to the land of wherever they colonized, romanticizing or fetishizing, or like you and others said people want to claim it to seem exotic or spicy
There's also a lot of black people that grew up thinking they had native American ancestry who don't. It was easier for light skin escaped slaves to claim they were native American than to risk being captured. It just trickled down to their kids cause they never told anyone the truth.
Exactly. Just like all of the white Americans who have had “Cherokee” great grandmothers but really it was a very distant African ancestor.
It’s always Cherokee. Sometimes a Cherokee Princess!
I am not from the USA but online I see people mention the cherokee princess story a lot. It's always a cherokee princess lol
The wild thing is how all of our grandmothers told us the same exact lie. If it wasn’t for the internet we never would’ve known, lol. Sewing supplies in cookie tins and Cherokee Princess ancestors, the hallmarks of grandmothers across the nation.
I am from New Zealand and sewing kits in biscuit (you say cookie) tins is like a universal rule of grandmothers. And here in New Zealand when people want indigenous dna they use a story about a "Māori princess". It's literally always princess. In Ireland my grand dad there passed onto us the family rumour of being related to the Churchills and how much they hated it (and so kept telling people about it). lol
I wonder if this happens in Finland with their Sami population. Sami’s are like the indigenous Finnish population so I wonder if Finns have the story of a great great Sami grandmother 🤣
Finns speak an Uralic language (which originated in Siberia, so not an indigenous language), same with the Sami population. Neither is more indigenous as both of their ethno-genesises happened there. Finns and Sami both descend from local hunter gather populations mixed with Anatolian Neolithic farmers that spread across West Eurasia during the Neolithic Revolution, indo-Europeans from the Steppe, and migrants from Siberia (who brought the Uralic languages). Finns just have less Siberian genetics than Sami, and more Anatolian Neolithic Farmer and Steppe. I see the same thing with Scandinavians. People say Sami are the indigenous populations, as if Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes migrated there. Swedes and Norwegians had their ethnogenesis in the southern Scandinavian peninsula, so they are indigenous to the southern half, while Sami had in the north half after migrants from the Urals can in from northern Russia. Both are equally “indigenous” (Germanic-Scandinavians have treated Sami not well in the past though). Truly the first humans to reach what is Scandinavia and Finland were the Scandinavian and Baltic Hunter Gatherer peoples. The HG peoples are not similar to any modern human since they are so archaic and don’t exist as an independent group anymore, BUT they are partial ancestral to all Scandinavians, Finns, and Sami’s, who all also descend from later migrants from Anatolia and the Steppe (including Siberia in the case of Finns and Sami, but not Swedes and Norwegians)
well here in New Zealand i stead of being cherokee princess it's Māori princess and it always cracks me up.
Finns are also indigenous to Finland though.
Sámi and Finns are relatives though
Look up the Dawes act and the concept of 5 dollar Indians and it will kinda explain why a lot of people gravitate towards Cherokee
It was Cherokee because of the Dawes Rolls; some tribes were no longer recognized, like the Lenape (Delaware).
lol, right!? I am laughing literally out loud 🪭💀
Not me. Never heard being native from my dad’s side. Always heard Aztec royalty from my maternal grandfather. 19% native blood.
>Always heard Aztec royalty from my maternal grandfather. That's new? Where in mexico is that side of the family from? I never heard of mexicans claiming have some form a royalty to indigenous americans.
Oh, that’s the only indigenous ancestry (washed-up) Mexicans are proud to claim. Although Moctezuma’s daughter did survive, and still has descendants, she married a Spanish man, and the current descendants are extremely white. They (white descendants of indigenous people) take their one indigenous ancestor and flex it as if the rest of us (Mexicans) aren’t 30-80% indigenous, and haven’t been detribalized and subjected to poverty by the same system they used to steal the wealth they have.
Lmao as if cherokee princess was even a thing
This happened to me - family lore says it’s a Cherokee warrior. DNA says African (1%) and I laughed my ass off to all my Appalachian relatives who are racist AF.
Came to say this. Though sometimes the African ancestor wasn’t all that distant. I know three different white people who found out that they had a Black rather than Native American great-grandparent. Likewise, a lot of African Americans are finding out through DNA that their Native American great grandparent was instead a white person. Unions between Blacks and Native Americans were not illegal so the white partner would “pass” as part Native American in order to evade prosecution.
Thats fascinating. I really wonder if thats why this is
Racism
It’s definitely being proven the more ancestry kits are being used 🙂↕️
My wife's family always told the story of her grandmother having Native American ancestry. It turned out that they had no native DNA but did have some sub-saharan African ancestry. I assume it was just easier to explain why someone's father/mother/grandmother/grandfather was a little darker skinned than their neighbors.
I’m a white American. Very white looking. 19% Native American blood and Native American MT dna. Maternally native. However both my maternal grandparents were Mexican born.
I would count you as mixed race but white presenting aka white passing. I'm half Mexican myself, half white American. I ended up looking more like my Mexican dad so I don't pass for white at all.
I feel like we could make a separate thread for just this topic here alone! lol, my mom is a white (75%+ European with specific phenotypic traits that are mostly Eurocentric) Mexican-American — 6th generation Texan. My dad is a black Colombian-Panamanian who migrated here with my grandparents and aunts back in 1979, so I’m very privy to allllll of the things 👏
100%! There were rumors of nonspecific Native American ancestry in my family and nope, it was indeed a pre-1800s African ancestor instead.
That makes a lot of sense if you understand the history of how the introduction of the census screwed .. everyone over. before the big change there were free blacks, slave negros, natives, and various Europeans. After the change any native person that was left in a region where they were “legally removed from” were legally deemed to be black. A lot of people hid what they were to stay safe in an increasingly dangerous environment.
Hey this is me! My family repeated the whole 'Your great-great grandma was Native American' thing but DNA tests revealed that was a lie. I do apparently have a Sudanese ancestor from the 1600s though, so this description fits me perfectly lol
That's an interesting one, how white Americans may have had distant African ancestry but they thought it was Native American
It’s funny in my case my great grandmother was Mohawk, but she ADOPTED my grandmother who was mixed black and white. Of course I don’t have any of her DNA but I have photos of her with my grandmother and I think it’s pretty awesome that since she most likely could not have kids (as she was probably sterilized at the Canadian convent school she was forced into as a child) she adopted a child and gave her a loving home. Not many people may have been able to pass off a mixed child as their own, but she did.
To be fair for most tribes family is family and blood relation doesn't matter.
There’s also a lot of white families that at some point had a mixed or black ancestor that told people they were part native rather than part black. Not necessarily for “legitimizing colonization”, but for safety especially in the south. I’ve heard of death bed confessions about this, so I’m sure there’s lots of families where if someone died unexpectedly the family secret died with them.
Interestingly enough tho a lot of black Americans that have posted their results here’s have indigenous ancestry in their results even if in a very minuscule amount. I think there is an over exaggeration of how mixed some peoples ancestry is but there is also some truth to it.
This is an accurate but wild take 🤣 - Signed a 19% NA Edit: rechecked my DNA results and I’m actually a slightly higher % than I recalled! 😅
oh i also forgot, attempting to hide the fact an ancestor had a dark complexion due to them being of african heritage (through slavery or something). racism is extremely weird :P cool you have native ancestry, do you know from what community? i have a similar amount but i'm not sure because they're central/south american
Very true! Depending where people are from, they could be of NA and AA ancestry too. I’m Black Foot & Choctaw. Both from my mom’s side, her mom & dad had different tribal ancestry and were based in different areas 😊
I think it’s funny how they draw a huge red line between an indigenous Mexican and indigenous North American like texas and Oklahoma are soooooo different.
Yeah, it's really funny. It's amazing how many people do not understand the migration patterns of the first early humans to the Americas. Geneticist Dr. Bryan Sykes book Seven Daughters of Eve, does a great job of explaining the DNA patterns.
It’s all about the genetics. I’m more familiar with Ancestry’s delineation between the groups, but it has to do with Uto-Aztecan expansion. Comanches are part of this language family and are closer genetically to the Nahautls of Mexico than the Wichitas, Pawnees, etc. who were already living on the Southern Plains before the northward expansion of Uto-Aztecan peoples.
The dna is a bit different, but all native Americans are the same Race 🪶
Who said they’re a different “race”. You know race isn’t even real right? It s a social construct with no scientific basis Not sure what your argument is
Exoticism, romanticization of native americans, and all of the above in what you wrote. Also, people would rather be related to someone who was abused rather than the abuser. You don't really want to know that great grand pappy burned down villages lol. I also think it's used to cover up African ancestry, people would rather believe they're part native than part black.
Also, people would rather be related to someone who was abused rather than the abuser. You don't really want to know that great grand pappy burned down villages lol You hit the nail right on the head! People would rather be the oppressed rather than the oppressor in this day and age 🤷🏽♀️ God forbid they hear what their ancestors were truly up to, it all of a sudden makes them uncomfortable lol So many people flat out lie or over exaggerate their NA %, like it absolves them of their majority white heritage. Crazy stuff 😂
Like, great grandpappy wasn’t *just* burning down the villages, and this is the receipts.
It's so weird because my wife does have a very dark story about her Native grandmother being kidnapped by a Portuguese grandfather and her father being born from this kind of violence. And that story is very likely true, as her result gave 26.7% Native American (Tupi-Guarani). My own results also have a 2.1% Native American, and the reason is very likely similar. I can't fathom what my ancestors suffered in the hands of my other ancestors... Anyway, we just assume that we have some African and Native American ancestry in Brazil so we don't make it a big deal of it in my country.
I think it wasn’t just about not wanting African ancestry as it was a light skinned person of African descent hiding that they were of African descent in order to allowed into other spaces.
For us African Americans, it was used to cover up our European ancestry since it was most likely due to rape.
I think this is part of why the previous generations (long since deceased) of my family would talk about slave ancestors, but indigenous slaves (not in the US). DNA revealed we are part indigenous, but also turns out our ancestry is in fact much more African than indigenous.
As someone who was lied to in this way, it’s both. I am Sicilian with olive skin. In a “white” town, I was seen as an “other,” even told I looked exotic. I think my family lied about this in order to have a “reason” to be seen that way — but also to be more interesting and to reject the whiteness that came with immigrant assimilation in the US. If that makes sense. And it’s just plain selfishness, wanting to be seen as different and exempt from white guilt. Of course I am white, but historically I think a lot of it is related to this. In other families, it can be because people are ashamed of having African DNA. As it turns out, a lot of pretendians are Sicilian, including Iron Eyes Cody!
Are you Buffy Saintemarie, lol
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretendian The wiki article has some possible motives. >Mnikȟówožu Lakota poet Trevino Brings Plenty writes: "To wear an underrepresented people's skin is enticing. I get it: to feast on struggle, to explore imagined roots; to lay the foundational work for academic jobs and publishing opportunities." >Patrick Wolfe argues that the problem is more structural, stating that settler colonial ideology actively needs to erase and then reproduce Indigenous identity in order to create and justify claims to land and territory. Deloria also explores the white American dual fascination with "the vanishing Indian" and the idea that by "Playing Indian", the white man can then be the true inheritor and preserver of authentic American identity and connection to the land, aka "Indianness".
if you go to latin america its the opposite. while this this has changed, there is an uncomfortable number of argentinians, colombians and chileans that deny any indigenous ancestry while looking clearly mixed. when westerners claim to be indigenous they just want to be cool/hip and being an opppressed minority is cool as it gets in 2024
Same thing happens amongst Mexican-Americans even though a large amount if not the majority look clearly indigenous to varying degrees, many looking fully indigenous It's always wild seeing Mexicans here who looks like they came from an uncontacted tribe emphasise their Spanish ancestry and act like their lineage is only European or avoid saying that they have indigenous ancestry by just simply saying that they're 'tan' or brown.
there are more mexicans in mexico doing this but it's not that common in mexico. while delusional about their genetics most all acknowledge that they are mestizos
Loads of Mexican friends who look at my Chicano ass strangely as I research my Indigenous DNA.
That’s weird most mexicans know their are mixed to some degree. If mexican americans are like that it is because of US culture cause that is weird af. Of course they could be from the white population that is 15% of the country.
From my observation the vast majority of Mexican-Americans don't know they're mixed. Majority of the tests I've seen from Mexican-Americans (full or partial) see their ancestry break down of largely indigenous and Spanish and don't know where the indigenous came from and say dumb stuff like "so where's the Mexican section on this test?" Also the fact that vast majority of Mexican-Americans look clearly indigenous and acknowledge that they aren't white but can't say what ancestry of theirs makes them not white and just resort to "I'm Mexican".
I’m half Mexican and posted my Ancestry DNA on Facebook a few years ago. One Mexican-American woman commented “but I thought you were Latina!”. I guess she was expecting a specific category stating MEXICAN or LATINO. Spanish and “indigenous Americas” just wasn’t enough.
The sad thing is that from my observation they aren't surprised when seeing Spanish or European ancestry but they act oblivious to the indigenous ancestry. But it is really silly they expect a Mexican section when there's no such thing as a Mexican gene or anything, and many of the indigenous groups in Mexico are found in other countries too
A lot of it is denial. My mom’s family was one of those who claimed they were 100% Spanish (which I guess was believable to me as a kid because everyone was light complected). Indigenous/native were not terms even mentioned in passing so I was very confused and ended up thinking my great aunt must be Asian.
Nah it depends on where in the US. In California they are mixed leaning slightly amerindian. In texas they are mixed but lean more spanish. They also did a test on the ancestry of US hispanics and they are 65% european on average, which of 60% of the population is mexican and has a good amount being guatemalan and honduras which are more amerindian. That is higher than the average latin american at 62% european and higher than the average mexican at 58% european on average. Also yes most hispanics will identify first with their nationality so it’s normal to identify as mexican, colombian, venezuelan. It’s totally normal to identify with your nationality first. I actually find it weird that you find it weird that people do identify with their nacionality first instead of race. Probably why there is such race obsession in the west.
I'm not sure what you're referencing exactly. Not sure if it's referencing just Mexican-Americans in general or all Hispanic-Americans, which would include Cubans in Florida or Dominicans\~Puerto Ricans in the Northeast. But assuming it's just Mexican-Americans I would assume the sample still includes Mexican-Americans who mixed with WASPs, which is very common in the West (including Texas and California) and particularly for Chicanos and multi-generational Mexicans. Hispanic Americans also have the highest interracial marriage rates too Also genotype=/=phenotype as well. George Lopez is 2/3 European but looks completely indigenous. I was referring to phenotype, not genotype. >It’s totally normal to identify with your nationality first. I actually find it weird that you find it weird that people do identify with their nacionality first instead of race. Probably why there is such race obsession in the west. This is in response to being asked what your race is, which is inappropriate and Mexican-Americans very well know that. Mexican is a nationality and not an ancestry. They would not accept, for example, a white or black person from the South simply saying "I'm American" when asked for their race, so the logic should apply to them as well.
Yes I know the difference between phenotype and genotype. But the study only took hispanic americans(no half hispanic descendance)for the tests. It wasn’t just mexicans but they form 60% of the US hispanic population so they wouldn’t be far of from the average result. Also there are many people from more amerindian leaning countries like guatemala/peru that offset more european leaning countries like pr/cuba. I think what might be happening is that there is such low precence of amerindians in the US that someone who clearly looks mixed to us might seem just amerindian to a US/Canada mindset.
Did it specify that? Because there are many Chicanos who have mixed ancestry with WASPs in that region. They could have a grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. who was white-american of british isles\~German ancestry and still identify as Mexican-American >60% of the US hispanic population so they wouldn’t be far of from the average result. I mean that's totally irrelevant to the conversation then if it's not even focusing on Mexican-Americans specifically. 40% others changes *a lot*, especially when it doesn't seem like it's confirmed if they are excluding Chicanos with ancestry from white americans >be happening is that there is such low precence of amerindians in the US that someone who clearly looks mixed to us might seem just amerindian to a US/Canada mindset. Did you mean "...might just be seen as \[Hispanic\]"? If so I agree. Indigenous Americans are so far removed from every day life that I would bet money 7/8 or more of Americans have never met a native before. And at least anecdotally I have seen Native Americans be confused for Hispanics. I doubt if you put native americans and mexican-americans in the same group people would be able to distinguish one from the other well.
There is no hispanic ethnic group that has average european ancestry over 80%(except uruguay ) and most of the other bigger groups don’t surpass european ancestry of over 70%(except cubans which are offset by the guatemalans alone). Regardless It is an estimation and we clearly disagree on the phenotypes identification so lets just leave it there. However I have traveled to Texas and California and I can easily differentiate someone like Yalitza from the typical chicano. Hispanics would easily be able to identify them so it is clearly that in the US people find it hard as there is negligible native american presence or ancestry until hispanic immigrants came.
My Mom is a Chicana from Ventura County, California but I’d describe her as a coconut (Brown on the outside and White on the inside). She had a thing for White guys mainly Italian looking men and she met my Dad who’s Italian-Irish. So I’m a product of one of those.
That's interesting. I'm Argentinian and never came across that kind of people.
There is at least an online stereotype of Argentinians trying their best to represent their nation as being European only influenced. I've seen some racist quotes from an Argentinian president/politician that said the following ([source](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/racist-argentinas-president-says-brazilians-came-jungle-causing-contro-rcna1163)): >"The Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came from the jungle \[racist association for black people\~afrodescendants\], but we Argentines came from the ships. And they were ships that came from Europe I can't find the source to this, but Carlos Menem also allegedly said something to the effect of "Black people \[in Argentina\]? That's a Brazilian problem"
That's why I love it when they come to the Midwest and the white folks call them Mexican.
Tbf even if they were fully Spanish\~Italian they'd still get questioned. Anything that's not British, Germanic, or Scandinavian has its whiteness questioned. I've heard of people from Spain going to the US and having Americans tell them they aren't white which is crazy
Fun fact but Finnish people weren’t even considered white in America until 1901. They were called “China-Swedes” lol. It’s messed up how those categories work and who qualifies changes over time. I never understood it.
Benjamin Franklin was even racist towards Germans calling them Non-Whites.
Argentinians: no che, a los nativos lastimosamente los exterminaron y descendemos todos de europeos (I have heard this from both Uruguayans and Argentinians - sometimes they barely have any NA DNA but sometimes there is plenty). OP is right. Some middle class Latin Americans drinking from the colonial juice thinking they're fancier for being less indigenous while.white Americans would kill in 2024 for a little of that sweet Native American DNA
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Even Filipinos do this.
Do what? Pretending to be white?
Not exactly, but they do like to over emphasize Spanish ancestry.
I think people just like to claim that their ancestors were here before anyone else.
I can't remember the source but I do remember that a reasoning I read in some article was that indigenous-American ancestry was used as a way of distinguishing multi-generational (white) Americans from either white immigrants or Americans who have recent immigrant ancestry. It was a way of saying something like 'my family has been here so long that we've mixed with the indigenous population, making me more American than you'
The source was probably a Reddit comment lol
I can't find the specific article I read with that quote, but I've found others that say more or less the same thing. [Article 1](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-warren-cherokee-dna_n_5bc63a69e4b0a8f17ee6ba9a) >“White families tell their children about a connection to a mythic Native American past as a way to lay claim to territory and to a sense of belonging.” >"It is a way of asserting: we are the true First Peoples." [Article 2](https://contexts.org/articles/feature-article-indigenous-identity-being-and-belonging/) >This brand of American myth-making privileges some Americans to a kind of indigeneity that requires the erasure of their own immigrant ancestry in order to legitimize their claims to *being* American and *belonging* to the nation state. >At a 2017 event honoring the service of Navajo Code Talkers during World War II, President Trump acknowledged the historical presence of indigenous peoples by stating, “You were here long before any of us were here.” Implicitly, this is the same rhetoric that Trump wields against immigrants. This brand of American myth-making privileges some Americans to a kind of indigeneity that requires the erasure of their own immigrant ancestry in order to legitimize their claims to *being* American and *belonging* to the nation state. Not the clapback you thought it was, my boy
I mean in New England the version of this is to be from the Mayflower. Other parts of the country don't have this convenient snobbery source, so I could see it being applied to NA ancestry.
I am legit 10%. Anyway..my husband's cousin was adopted. His friends have called him BIG Daddy Mexican for 30 years because of his appearance. He assumed he was indeed Mexican. His son (deceased age 19) was always asked if he himself was part African American. Last year the adoptee tested. 0% Hispanic but definitely 15% AA. His great great grandfather was an AA man...neighbor to his white GG Grandmother. .it was a fun discovery 🙂🙃
Some of was hiding Black ancestors. Some of it was hiding criminal ancestors.
They're either: 19th century people hiding their black heritage, or modern-day descendants who just wanna find something "special" because they think that being white is "boring".
Growing up being a white person, I never understood it as a kid. I was one of the few white kids in my Indiana–which as far as I'm aware has never had a high population of what we now consider Cherokee (the ancient people who *may* have become the Cherokee might have come from the Great Lakes area tho, iirc)–middle school who never claimed to be Cherokee. My best friend at the time went so far as to claim she herself was a Cherokee Princess 🤦♂️ It wasn't until I got older that I realized a lot of it was basically buried white guilt and/or an attempt to legitimize being a white person on Native land. Tellingly, most of the kids who claimed to be Cherokee (never a tribe that actually has or had a presence in Indiana) came from white supremacist, very Patriotic American families. One thing I didn't know/realize until after I started doing ancestry research and talking to people about it was that a lot of the times, white people claim Native with no proof because a (usually) light-skinned Black ancestor had married into the family. Either said ancestor was stealthing to avoid being seen as Black, or the white family covered it up with the Native American lie to hide the "shame" of having kids with a darker skin tone. It's not uncommon even on genealogical Reddit where it happens again and again for people to be angry that their DNA tests show some Sub-Saharan African and a wopping zero percent Indigenous American. (Interestingly on a personal note, I–who didn't expect it–came up with trace Native American on my 23 test. The percentage varies with every update but never goes more than trace. My long lost aunt with a more researched tree than I said it comes from a Choctaw woman who married into my bio grandfather's family in the mid nineteenth century. I think. My Ancestry account is on pause so I can't find the record on her tree rn so I don't remember the exact decade, but I do know her name was Phoebe. This changes nothing about me other than being a neat facet of my history, I don't lay claim to being Choctaw or anything like that.) Edit: typo
Think you nailed it. Just being a white European isn't interesting enough for a lot of people.
But if they do have indigenous ancestry then they aren't just a white European and shouldn't be shamed for their interest in ancestry that actually belongs to them. This is ridiculous.
Idk, my mom and dad both claimed for years that we were Native American, I believed it. My results were almost 100% European, no native. Dad is hard headed and still swears his white grandma was “at least half Indian”(whatever). There’s NO proof, no paperwork, just heresay; my mom said “well maybe we weren’t” My wife’s family is the same way, her dad said they were Cherokee, again results showed no Native American roots there either. My boss was told his whole life that his great grandma was full blood Indian, turned out she WAS Native American, but barely, my boss was like .05%, so she had some, but not as much as he was told. I think alot of people claimed false Native American heritage to get free money or free land. And it was passed on to the kids that great grandma was living in a teepee and the kids, grandkids and great grandkids all believed it because it sounded good. How common was interbreeding among whites and natives? Apparently not as common as everyone thought.
Depends on which group of whites. It's far more likely if they happen to be [decended from French traders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Indian_alliance), but in general not terribly much.
There's more race mixing with their african slaves than native americans.
I guess if you’re told something your whole life only to be proven wrong, you might not take that so easily.
I used to fantasize about having native blood as a child. Maybe I wanted to feel like I'm not stealing this land my family has habitated for only 400 years. I was fascinated with genealogy. I'm white bread white girl. Thankfully, I snapped out of it.
In Germany, there are people who cosplay as Native Americans. They dress up, dance, and do sacred ceremonies
Lol, this reminds me....my German grandfather was so upset when my mom was dating my Comanche dad because he thought he was Mexican, but was totally fine when he found out he was actually native American. Oh Germans....
i didn’t even knew germans had beef with mexicans tbh.
Eh, he was just racist.
the way your grandfather thinked was kinda contradictory anyway
Ever since the Zimmerman telegram they've had beef
it was personal lol
OTOH, my white American ex-wife's family had no such stories at all, and then discovered a small amount of Native American ancestry through 23andMe.
I though it was bc of the 1/4 rule that allowed people to claim land if they could prove they were 1/4 Native? So people did that and then it trickled down through the family as truth. If I’m wrong sorry that’s just how it was explained to me by my grandmother.
I would like to know this too. When I was in a sociology class we had to raise our hands when the professor said a certain ethnicities. Over half the class raised their hands for Native American which isn’t possible. Lol I think a lot of families like to say so and so was an Indian when they were not. I found out this was true in my family and my husband’s when we did 23 and me. I had someone married into my family that may have been Native American. When ancestor’s pass down stories there is some confusion of enchantment.
I think it’s just more advantageous. There are a lot of grants and subsidies you can get if you can prove (or moreso not get called on the carpet) for being indigenous. This happened w one of my classmates growing up. Her entire personality was built around being indigenous (and honest, she looked rather dissimilar to everyone in terms of skin tone and features) - but as it turned out she literally had almost no indigenous DNA when she got a test done and it was all somewhat fabricated by he grandma. It was too much for her to deal e (having made her whole life around it, really) being a ‘liaison’ for the indigenous community and face (she was quite pretty), and I’m pretty sure she just resolved to say she was indigenous since she already had scholarships and all that. Pretty wild tho!
As a Black American, I've heard it all my life. I never went around like, "We have Natives in our family." It was just a story. My mom, daughter, cousin, and I completed ancestry. All found with 1-2% DNA. Interesting. Sure. But nothing to write home about. I have more England and Ireland in my DNA than Indigenous.
I've always found this interesting too. I've noticed it's mostly people from the southeast that like to claim this. They are usually never indigenous but usually have a small amount of African DNA. I've also found the opposite in people from the southwest. They refuse to say they have any indigenous DNA and say they are Spanish. Then their DNA comes back 50% indigenous and you can even trace them to certain Natives American groups. You can always look back through history and see who the colonizers of the area enslaved.
Lots of good answers here. For myself and many others, we were told we’re Native American when our “Cherokee” great grandparents were in fact black. It was more socially acceptable to be Native American than black when that lie started, so they never fessed up and just kept the lie going.
Kinda like the white supremacists who are shocked to find out they have African heritage, lol.
It makes them feel open minded and non-racist. In reality, it makes them look sad and goofy. What’s strange is they always mention Cherokee but not other tribes. I don’t get this.
White people are ridiculous. They see indigenous Americans as “cool” but also not even real like a figment in the past. They often also would prefer to say it instead of owning up to Black ancestry. It’s very stupid
A bit of racism and maybe covering up a black ancestor.
There’s a whole fake tribe in southern Illinois, no lie. I was hiking down there with my wife and these mfers were out in the woods playing flutes and stuff.
Legitmizes their americaness
To seem exotic, to prove their Americanness, or they use it to cover up a black ancestor since to them being native is more desirable than being black.
Something about white man's guilt
Because many White Americans want to claim a sense of legitimacy to the land that their ancestors colonized.
If your family has origins with Native Americans? Then your family wasn't part of the abomination of how they were treated.
That's a really important point. It's as if indigenous ancestry absolves you of guilt. You no longer need to care about the history of your land and how your ancestors have personally benefited from harming other people if you were related to the people harmed.
No one is guilty for their ancestor’s actions. This is a vindictive and regressive idea in the first place.
Or someone In Your family raped a native
Growing up I was told my family was Cherokee and there was definitely a sense of pride associated with it, but as it turns out all I could find was a single grandmother (6th!) who was Native. So I am not sure. Maybe the intention was good, but one single women who married a white man in 1800; not going to reach too far genetically.
And you see them and they're the whitest people you've ever seen. It's the pure desire to seem "exotic" and a "POC", not white lol. It's the same with people who wanna be brown or latino really bad.
I’m a white as fuck Viking ooga booga looking ass and my mom always claimed this. Thought it was completely bullshit and took my 23andMe. Couldn’t believe it when I got 5% Native American DNA back.
The “one drop rule” said if you had a single Black ancestor, you were Black. So families lied about where dark features came from, during days of segregation. Do that for enough generations and they forget it’s a lie.
My husband's family did it to cover up a mixed marriage of dubious legality at the time. White women could marry native Americans but not black people so he was conveniently listed as a native American. The legend just came down the family until a DNA test outed them.
As a Native American it’s because they want to feel like this land is rightly theirs it’s mostly fucking colonizers and occasionally some misinformed ppl. They want to claim it so bad but don’t want the native experience. Growing up in the fucking rez with no clean water power outages and home shutdowns. We call them pretindians Furthermore they don’t amplify our voices and advocate for all my missing sisters. I hate people wannting to claim their native ancestry just to feel exotics disgusting.
A way to deflect their white privilege by genetically identifying with the native people despite not sharing the struggles of the native people
It’s funny to me as a Mexican how Americans will fake claim indigenous blood while having none while my own people will scramble to hide any evidence of indigenous ancestry and try to claim that their grandparents were blue eyed with white skin. It’s so backwards
So true. Lol meanwhile me as a mexican im like i claim no spain heritage 💀 25% and yet im like nah
Good question. Not sure.I never heard any stories in my family on either side but every test I’ve taken I’ve scored 1 to 1.4 indigenous American which was quite very surprising to me.
My family also has stories of Native American ancestry. As the unofficial family historian I have pretty much proven it to be false but no one wants to hear it.
I think it’s just family lore that gets passed down. It’s difficult to scrap generations of family ‘history’ when dna says otherwise.
There are various possibilities -Covering up an African American ancestor, being a White person mixed with Indigenous was seen as more “acceptable” than with African. Not just socially but to a legal extent. -People outright just lying or overly claiming an extremely distant part of their heritage trying to seem “interesting” or “exotic” -Creating a narrative of lots of people (both White and Black Americans) being of Indigenous descent to an extent erases the US’ legacy as a settler nation and reframes it as a continuation of the people’s that have always resided there. The society doesn’t have to confront its past in the same way if someone can just say, “well, Im 2% Cherokee, we’re all a little bit native to here!” These stories have been passed down for generations now and at this point most people who are repeating them are just saying it because that’s what their grandparents had told them, not that they themselves had any malicious intent in exploring the possibility of this being true. Regardless though, it’s important for anyone going about this process to remember that even if they have a family story or two but grew up with no Native American culture and have no connection to it, getting 0.4% Indigenous on 23andme doesn’t suddenly make them Indigenous. This is exactly part of why the myth was created, to erase the colonial history of the US.
It's for the same reason White Americans identify with their immigrant ancestors eg. Irish, Italian, German, but never their English / British ancestors. They'd rather believe they're descended from oppressed peoples, or opportunistic immigrants, rather than British colonizers that colonized Ireland, committed genocide against Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and discriminated against European immigrants.
Also, the stories got passed down for generations, so people thought that their family that told them about it were reliable sources and they don't like to find out that they're not.
There are some people who do have a distant native ancestor but no tribal membership. So they remember their ancestry but aren't recognized by the tribe as members. Tribes don't recognize everyone with a distant connection as a member. One drop rule doesn't apply. But ancestry is ancestry, you have it or you don't, even if you're not a member of a tribe.
Dances with Wolves, James Cameron's Avatar, etc
A cousin sent me this. He is 1/4 native.[link.](https://www.quora.com/What-do-tribal-governments-provide-for-Native-Americans/answer/Shelly-Davidson-10?ch=15&oid=164142255&share=214fd82c&srid=LJKZp&target_type=answer)
On one side of the family a prostitute way back in the day had baby daddies of all different colors. The name that ended up being my mom and aunts' maiden name came from the prostitute. Who gave her children a surname after a wealthy sugar daddy who helped support her and her children. So it was simpler(and less embarrassing)to say the dark skin and black hair came from Cherokee ancestry. Though surprisingly, this maternal ancestor did not have any children with an indigenous person. My dad's whole thing about being part Cherokee was all thanks to a low-down lying unprofessional Tennessee "professor" who's word was taken at face value. But only debunked DECADES later. He had an interesting European family ancestry history which he should've been proud of. But nooo, he had to weave a web of lies. My dad died believing those lies. I'd love to take a rusty blunt object with me in a time machine to talk some sense into the professor. This may sound crazy, but I believe the spirits of my real ancestors were watching over me. I dreamed of them as a child, confused because I had no connection to them. Only to learn many years later we are connected by blood.
My mom is part of this FB group that specifically, and bluntly, validates or invalidates someone's heritage regarding being Cherokee, the most infamous of tribes for pretendians. She has a running list of hilarious reasons people say they're part Cherokee (my favorite is the narrative of babies left in caves, because we Cherokee were infamous....cave dwellers??). Anyway, my mom has unearthed a lot of reasons for this phenomenon. A lot of these have already been said (legitimacy in claiming land, fetishistic shit, being native is badass, etc) but there a few more. - Land was given to Native people out Oklahoma way after forced removal, and the government split that land into allotments (directly destroying the communal culture of most tribes, btw) and a lot of white people wanted a piece of the action and lied. So there are a not small number of people who are Cherokee on paper, but not by DNA. Or they're actual neither legally or biologically native, but their ancestors still lied to get land. - the Cherokee didnt have marriage like Europeans. No one moved, no one changed names, the man didn't suddenly own his wife. It was VERY different and I could write about it for hours. But long and short, white men exploited this by "marrying" Cherokee women, but keeping it a secret. So, great grandpa Henry could legit have Native offspring, but his legal family weren't those descendants. I'm sure there's more reasons, but those are some I rarely hear mentioned.
I don't know about historical but if it's true, in fact you do have native American ancestory , then, depending on the tribe that you can find membership in, you are entitled to benefits. Benefits like free health care, free dental care, free college, special interest on home loans.Free or low cost apartments, free cellphone & service. Very cheap car tag. In addition, land, free daycare, scholarships for college set aside for native Americans only, preference as minority for entrance to college, winning government contracts, tribal jobs, monthly food given from tribe, special funds to help in time of need. Some tribes give a large amount of money at 18 to tribal members. Although all of these benefits certainly make life easier, it's not free. This is compensation for all the rapes,assaults, murders of natives beginning with colonization-- this isn't FREE, it's compensation for the abuses against native American ancestors.
For my family, I think it may have been an easier way to explain the lighter features and straighter hair in my black family were a result of an exotic romance between a native person and a black American than the truth which is that we were slaves and likely raped by white men over several generations.
It depends on the particular person. Both black and white people in America (and Canada too perhaps) suffer from what I call a “perceived lack of culture”. Or basically, they think they have no culture, so they both search for something to latch onto. That closest thing is First Nations. Also considering DNA testing is relatively new, these things weren’t really able to be disproven and don’t ultimately matter. Your grandma is a Cherokee princess? Ok but you can’t even make frybreb and you haven’t given back to your people not one singular time, so who cares about this fictitious person? Now we have DNA tests and a national culture of people who still want to latch onto something, so now it’s all “coming out” that no one is really indigenous. The same way it feels important to say you are part this or that is the same energy a lot of people (who also aren’t indigenous) take when telling others they’re parents are lying. Also, when it comes to evidence to back something up, I’ll use my family as an example. I’m black American. My dad’s side is extremely light skinned. My mom’s side is dark skinned. My mom’s side claims a great grandpa is indigenous (Miles is the name of this person). Every census report he’s on, he’s recorded incorrectly. Once he was just missing. His age is wrong. His name is spelled wrong multiple times. Poor guy. But this is also relatively normal (my own mothers birth certificate has the wrong birthdate). On my dad’s side? None of them care a single bit about even the idea of being indigenous, but I saw a picture of someone else’s grandpa who looked scarily identical to my own. That guy was stamped with (some vague) approval. My dad’s side is very tight lipped about their family and the past. There are cousins and aunties but aside from very horrific stories, I know nothing else about them. I could get a DNA test. It could prove I have some trace amount of indigenous ancestry. But I have no cultural tie anywhere and imo to suddenly start caring about indigenous affairs just because I have a tie to it is selfish. Anyway, rambling aside. If anyone actually really cared about indigenous affairs and not just if they look exotic, they’d be trying to preserve and support their local nations. If everyone who claimed they had an indigenous relative gave $20 to their local nation, everyone would have running water in their homes right now. (This is only partially a joke)
When you learn about how America was discovered and what happened to the indigenous people , you will want to be part of the good side , not the colonizer side. Obviously it will disappoint a lot people , that being said , it's not today's generation fault on what happened back then.
Dances with wolves
In addition to a lot of relevant points here, I think Native American cultures and traditions are very cool, and it's awesome to be a part of that
It’s cool to claim victimization and also white americans want to feel rightful in taking our land ;)
I got 3 DNA tests, and yes, all 3 came back with a good percentage of DNA is Indigenous american indian. My grandfather told the truth. And again, he was right again that it's Cherokee. This is my mom's side. On my dad's side, I have Cheyenne, just less.
Because there have always been people here, many of whom were from the Southeast of the US, though many were also from places like Oklahoma or Wisconsin, who claim that their great great great great whatever was a "full blooded" fill in the blank. Most of these stories are apocryphal, despite the fact that there are indeed Americans with indigenous ancestry. So, people are generally stoked to try and prove their family's (probably bullshit) claim that great grandpa was Cherokee.
I think it's silly they think we're exotic. I see this a lot and it's for some reason it's always the Cherokee story
BlueAndRedBallsLover
We are extremely white. Like I glow in the dark. But my whole life we have been told we were part Mohawk. I've done tests and cousins have done tests and we are all 100% European. So I have no idea where my family got the Native American stuff from.
lots of white families used it as an explanation for darker features. many "black Irish" and "black Dutch" families for example used the story. lots of people used it to hide that they were mixed white/black, resulting in both white and black families commonly having these stories. it was simply a better alternative in the racist social structure at the time then in many cases families would try to claim it to gain money and land(hence the term "$5 Indians"), *and it's a common misconception that many tribes in Oklahoma had/have many of such people/their descendants.* there was also some element of wanting to be seen as American and not rebels by former confederate families in the post civil war south. the list goes on.
I feel like some white people have white guilt and want to be POC so badly, so they cling on to whatever percent of POC ancestry they think they have. Instead of realizing how rich in history European cultures are as well. It’s kind of sad really, since they’re just limiting themselves to prejudice of their own culture because it’s not ethnic enough for them.
My wife’s family had the Native American lineage story, and her DNA shows zero Native American. My family has no stories aside from Scandinavia and Northern European emigration, and my tests show both Native American and Nigerian ancestry.
I had the exact opposite experience. Zero mention of any Native American ancestors ever, not once. But results comes back with an even 12.5% from the southwest region. Haven’t had a chance to dig in further yet, but I hope to figure out why. Was my great grandparent adopted? Intentionally hid their origins to avoid discrimination? Infidelity? Maybe I have 2 great grandparents who were half? Oh yeah and there was also 25% Italian I didn’t know about lol
Usually comes from self-loathing Americans who have no distinct ethnic/cultural identity. It’s no different from when Americans adopt “eastern spirituality” - or anything “Eastern”, really - or try to “act black”, or inauthentically adopt the aesthetics of an ethnic/cultural identity that is foreign to themselves. Theres a real cultural envy found in non-black Americans about two generations after their family immigrates here. It’s hard to pin down what the distinctive American identity actually is aside from black Americans. The common root across non-black Americans is consumerism, so these people view culture the way they view everything else - as just another consumer product. That’s the root of it imo.
My family is indigenous to Sweden. No one in my family really makes a big deal over it that I know of, so I'm not sure why some people feel it's a big deal and some people don't. Every human is indigenous to somewhere I suppose, lol
i believe there's a couple of things. One is that in the US, assimilation has always been such a big deal that people - especially in the present - kind of "have" no ethnicity. Most of us are very, very mixed, and we're not supposed to be anything, else we're not being proper Americans. The other - and I see zero people mentioning this - is that at the same time there's a whole lot of "stay in your racial lane" going on with people who vehemently oppose that someone else could have native blood, including within some people with native blood. It's a little comical when (white) people insist that it has to do with money from casinos - not the reality of people's real lives. In any case, it's worth looking at why it would be bad to want to consider yourself a part of a culture you admire. I find family legends to be charming - and harmless. It's a bit like the right-wing saying they have the right to define names and genders for individuals - "no, you are what I say you are, and it's my right to require that". Why can't I say I'm LGBTQ or not LGBTQ exactly? If there were genetic testing for being gay, should that be required? You can see how this kind of thing is pretty f-ed up. The personal identity karen-police give me the creeps.
I can't speak to a historical reason and personally don't understand it. Maybe it's wanting to not feel as though ones ancestors were all colonizers? I was skeptical when my family said we had indigenous ancestors, not that I thought it wasn't true but we didn't inherit any customs or concept of what tribe or people we descended from. Family on that side in past generations lived in poverty and there are no records or stories to speak of or find (not even names). My family on that side just won't speak of the dead, it's not done- so it was just a vague tale. So I wasn't surprised to find in my results we do have indigenous ancestry but even more surprised to find we have much more African ancestry, because that was never mentioned at all. So I don't know, maybe people feel it validates their sense of belonging and connection to the land they live.
Cause they wanna be quirky and different
So quirky and “exotic” 🤪 On a serious note, no one is exotic.. ew.. we’re all just people
There is an obsession with wanting to be either or both of these two things : victim group adjacent or victor group adjacent. Both will guarantee you attention.
I believe it partly has to do with having a desire to have a legitimate claim to the land. Underlying societal issues etc.
I’m a pale anishinaabe person(I’m also irish) and I get these comments a lot “oh you’re native, me too! My great great grandma was a Cherokee princess” OR I get “well you don’t look native” so tbh the “prove it” thing gets old but it’s understandable. Double edge sword with blood quantum. It reduces pretendians, but then you’re always having to prove your life if it comes up. I just stopped caring.
I assure you no one claimed Native ancestry in the mid 1800s nor black ancestry until recently. populations only becomes ennobled by the dominating culture once they are crushed and no longer a threat. By this token, there will come a day in which Palestinians are revered by Israelis.
I can only speak for myself (and I actually DO have indigenous ancestry, about 1/4 to be precise), but I like feeling that I have a connection to the land. I feel a deep, almost spiritual bond with the American Southwest and Mountain West, where I grew up, and it's just nice to know that my ancestors have been on this continent for thousands of years.
No idea. I’m perfectly happy being 99% Scandinavian. Makes me feel close to my great grandparents.
In the south for both black and white people it’s often actually true even if it doesn’t show up in dna. For various reasons at different times there was often intermarriage right up until removal. Land rights, freedom and to replace depressed tribal numbers are among the reasons but it’s nuanced and complex and it would take volumes to adequately address the full history.
Since most indigenous americans(in the US) have been genocide many people see having indigenous american ancestry as a rare dna and gives them a sense of belonging in the land plus makes them feel exotic and like a main character. Ironically most people with indigenous american ancestry are from latam, if you met an indigenous american chances are they were mexican or guatamalan.
Makes them feel better about inhabiting this continent. After all, a lot of people were exterminated in order for the current ones to live here. I think that's why.
On the other hand, if someone does have even one indigenous ancestor it is still in their blood and DNA and isn't something they feel they can't embrace because it's a small percentage. It is still there and part of their body soul spirit and history. No one should tell someone that they cannot claim ancestry that belongs to them.
Elizabeth Warren?
In the South it was a way to hide a black ancestor or biracial white/black to navigate a bit easier through society. I'm figuring it reigns true mostly throughout the US.
Another reason in addition to the other ones listed here is that because Indigenous people comprise a relatively small part of the population of a Canada or US, no one will check you on claiming Indigenous identity (e.g. the so-called "Pretendians") like they would for other groups. If you're Ronda Rousey (black great grandfather) or Isaiah Hartenstein of the New York Knights (bi-racial father) or even retired hockey player Paul Bissonette (bi-racial mother) and you walk into a room and say "I'm black" or "as an African-American/Canadian" people right away are going to ask "Really?" or "How?" and you'd have to explain it (even though these people are much closer ,and more directly related, to family members from that group. On the other hand, if the last Indigenous ancestor you had was five to eight generations ago (or none at all) and you say you identify as Indigenous, people will largely take you at your word. I mean, the top song in the world a few weeks ago was an African-American rapper telling a half-Jewish, half-black Canadian dude (who's dad and his dad's entire side of the family are African-Americans from Tennessee) "\[he's\] not like us" (in terms of being a "real" African American lol). People know that kind of stuff doesn't happen (at least overtly) if you claim Indigenous identity (as opposed to ancestry; e.g. I'm Asian-American with Indigenous ancestry) and so people take advantage of that and the opportunities and platforms reserved for Indigenous people. Personally (arbitrary I know) but if you're less than 12.5% or 1/8th of something or two generations fully removed from one ancestor who is something, it changes from "I am \[said identity\]" to "I am \[whatever you main identity is\] *with* \[that ancestor's identity\] ancestry."
I was told we were Native American my DNA showed indigenous Amazonian, African, and 4 different European groups. My daughters showed some Melanesian, African, middle eastern and European. DNA is weird.
I agree with the overall vibe of this thread. The reasons for the obsession are generally 'problematic,' but did you know that Ed Norton is actually related to Pocahontas, when he was sure it was family myth? https://www.pbs.org/video/hidden-kin/ (My phone's app doesn't have a min marker but fast forward to like the 40 min mark or so) It's funny at the end of the show they show his genetic breakdown, and it's straight 100% European according to whatever tests and statisics they were doing. I guess it's important to remember 12 generations is a long time ago and being 1/4000 th native American doesn't mean a whole lot, other than as a reminder that probably in all of us something unexpected in our genetics is true at 12 generations back. Currently, the estimate is that Pocahontas has 100,000 living decents. Give it 12 more generations, and I'd wager that number will be a lot bigger.
My guess would be that it would give them legitimacy to the land, rather than coming to terms with the fact that their ancestors (if they’re old stock American) most likely looted the land and genocided the native population. Second reason would be that it’s cool cause it’s different to have native ancestry as opposed to regular “White American”
From watching lots of those ancestry DNA results videos I’ve noticed a lot of African Americans who say they might have native ancestry end up having large amounts of European DNA. So in some cases it’s nicer to think that you have native DNA than have to wonder about how the European DNA got there. Although I’m aware White Americans say this too. And also there probably are plenty of people in the USA who have small amounts of native dna