Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for President of the United States, said she was part Native American and the media began to tear her up. Her DNA test said that was so, but the percentage was not impressive. About the same time, I was contacted for some free advice by someone claiming to be related to a famous Native American.
I'm willing to coach people through a question or two without expecting payment but don't coach through an entire project as a volunteer. If I haven't seen the documentation, what I can tell someone could be minimal. In this case I suspected rumoring of the connection to the famous Native American because the person said to be related is not proofed.
Please, be aware that genealogies posted on the Internet are rarely proofed to show accuracy. For me to accept a genealogy, the person posting would have to show their entire process and all the documents they found. There are too many documents people can easily tweak these days so I suggest a skeptical mind set. (Consider all the composite photos that go undetected, such as often happens in magazines, where editors are putting a movie star's head on someone else's body or using art techniques to slim them down.) Why would a person give away thousands of hours of research which also have meant thousands of dollars invested?) Sometimes you can get wonderful leads on the Internet, but you just can't take a person's word for it even if they're a family member.
I explained to this person who may be connected to the famous Native American that in genealogy we start with the living (though we are sensitive of their privacy) and proof or document in as many ways possible going back generation after generation. After doing this, we'd focus on the branch in which the famous Native American is said to be attached to.
The person got back to me rather quickly and said she saw it all on the Internet.
So the answer to her next question, how to join the tribe, was simple.
CONTACT THE TRIBE YOU WISH TO JOIN AND ASK THEM WHAT THEIR REQUIREMENTS ARE FOR TRIBAL MEMBERSHIP. Generally they expect proof of 1/16th blood. (In other words, if Elizabeth Warren does not have document proof and must rely solely on the DNA test, she probably cannot get into a tribe. And since DNA tests are statistical analysis , the identifications of ethnicity might change as more DNA contributors join a site.)
That's not the whole story of being accepted as a Native American by a tribe. There are people who have tribal affiliation and casino rights who would not pass the typical 1/16th blood test. And when it comes to casino rights, people who have affiliation - "card carrying" Native Americans - probably don't care to split the proceeds further.
How can this happen? Easy.
Let's say that your ancestor - a White Man - married a Cherokee woman and had children with her and they cooperated with the special census of Native Americans and are on census together. Maybe the land they farmed is documented too. That's documentation. That's one scenario.
Another is that the White Man and his Cherokee wife and children decided to live on the reservation together and/or that the children were born on the reservation. At that point the children are 1/2 Native American. The White Man was probably said to have "gone Native," accepting the culture. If that family continues with the tribe, they are considered Native American.
Continue forward with the marriage of the children and grandchildren with other people who have done the same. In several generations (and until recently a "generation" was about every 25 years) you can come up with people who are card carrying and tribal affiliated but who are not 1/16th Native American. There is you, your parents (first generation), your grandparents (second generation), your great grandparents (third generation). That's about 75 years. It's 2019. To your great great grandparents (fourth generation) it's about 100 years. If you have one great great great grandparent who was recognized as Native American in 1919 you have a chance. (This is a simplistic explanation.)
We live in a time in which people are not born with their identity but relate to whatever race, religion, social class, gender, and so on that they feel an affinity with.
I've met a number of people with blond hair and blue eyes who do have Native American affiliation - be it officially or by affinity. Some of them cherish their long ago heritage and study the culture one of some of their ancestors lived decades ago.
C 2018 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot This post has been edited and expanded to be a bit more clear. Every situation is different. DNA tests are not the whole story.
