here we go again (another race faker in academia)

[Diogenes]

She was also told these stories long before widespread consumer access to DNA testing.

[ciao_yall]

She also actively participated in the culture and advocated for Native communities. So it's not as though she decided one day she wanted to be Native because there was a good scholarship out there.

[apl68]

There seem to be literally millions of white people in America who have "family lore" of a Cherokee princess great grandmother.

I am one.  No joke.  There was what I came to recognize as horribly racist story of a great-great-great-something-grandmother from a Native American tribe in my ancestry on my father's side.  We believed it enough to see facial morphology in my grandfather that would indicate NA genetics.

Then my wife got me one of the DNA kits for Christmas, and my entirely European genealogy was laid bare.     

I never claimed anything at any time.

I live in a region where just about everyone says they are 1/16 Cherokee and descended from Scottish royalty. Because, of course, Scottish royalty got tired of all the luxury and decided to come here to work in coal mines. But I've learned not to point out that it's been quite the descent.

I've only ever met one person who has made such claims around here.  He was a local man who went into genealogy into a big, big way some years ago after he retired.  He used our library and staff as a major resource for his quest.  This was in the days when genealogy meant writing lots of letters and using inter-library loans, and poring over massive reference books on the subject.  We've got a whole room full of such material due to this patron and several other members of his generation who were huge genealogy fans.

Anyway, he decided he wanted membership in a variety of genealogy groups--for descendants of royalty, Mayflower descendants, etc.  And he did indeed succeed in proving such descent to the satisfaction of whatever gatekeepers these societies had.  Probably any white American whose ancestors came here from the British Isles two centuries or so ago could prove a tenuous royal connection, Mayflower connection, etc. if he or she worked hard enough at it.  Six degrees of separation, and all that.  He was still pursuing his research and talking about it when I knew him.

Sometime after this patron and his wife died, his son gifted us with several boxes full of this man's research.  It's amazing to see all the charts and correspondence and so forth it took to establish all these claims.  I can only imagine how much time and money and effort he poured into his genealogy hobby.  I suppose since it amused him in a harmless manner it was no better or worse than most other hobbies.  Something about the way the fruits of his passionate labor were casually discarded by an heir who evidently had not the slightest interest in it seems to me to speak volumes about the vanity of human pursuits and worldly legacies.

[apl68]

Phantom Cherokee ancestry is a pretty common claim around here as well.  I've heard the story told that a great-great grandmother on my father's side was half-Cherokee.  Which, given the region and its history, is by no means impossible.  We've never tried to follow up on the story--our family's not much into genealogy--or tried to construct an identity around it.  It's just a story, and not a detailed one--no wild stuff about "Indian princesses" and such.

I'm good friends with a local family who have a genuinely interesting genealogy.  They're an offshoot of a huge clan in Louisiana whose home territory in that state is said to be a place so insular that one almost has to have a passport to visit.  But they're not Cajuns.  They're documented descendants of criollo Spaniards who had one of the big colonial land grants issued during the period when Spain claimed Louisiana.  Rural America has lots of little insular communities like that with unusual histories.

[Ruralguy]

Without going into details, as it could be identifying (yeah, I know, some of you know who I "really" am anyway, but there you go), I had a family legend on my father's side, that we descended from some historically interesting (though not super famous) figures that were important to someone of our ethnicity (the ones who care about such things, that is). After some genealogical research that includes trips overseas, these stories proved to be true. Of course, I have other "legends" that have either not been proven either way, or are of very questionable veracity. I think it just goes to show that such things *could* be true, but you certainly shouldn't assume they *are* true, especially if you are going to seek some sort of relationship or gain as a results of embracing the legend. As an academic, she should have known that it made sense to do research!

As for the genealogy itself (for me that is), I know my wife and daughter don't really care that much, so the research is already 90% out there on the internet. The intermediate scratch notes and such and related books can be perused by my brothers or their surviving descendants if my wife and daughter don't have direct interest (or are no longer around themselves).

[kaysixteen]

I can see that white folks in and around Oklahoma, as well as in parts of the west, may well have a long history of claiming (and being told by family members) NA heritage (such as Massachusetts' own Okie Senator, who actually does have some of it, even by the standards of the commercial DNA testing regimen).  But even by 2023, these commercial services still do have, as Para noted, real deficits wrt their sample pools, esp for non-European-origin folks.   And, whatever is common amongst white folks in 21st c Oklahoma, it was indeed essentially an unknown thing amongst Irish Catholics in 1900-ish Downstate NY and MA, to claim NA heritage that one did not know for certain one had.   Like it or not.

[FishProf]

I wonder how much of this is driven by a desire for a touch of the exotic (but just a touch, mind you), or a desire to separate from the oppressor narrative (I'm not responsible for what happened to NAs, I'm partially one myself.

I myself am part Cherokee and part Blackfoot, according to my (slightly racist) mom, but according to two different genetic tests, I'm as white as the driven snow (in Iceland, even).  I confess to a small pang of disappointment at those results.

Mom has since declared she never said the above claim, but my sister is in total agreement with my recollection.

[Stockmann]

I wonder how much of this is driven by a desire for a touch of the exotic (but just a touch, mind you), or a desire to separate from the oppressor narrative (I'm not responsible for what happened to NAs, I'm partially one myself.

I myself am part Cherokee and part Blackfoot, according to my (slightly racist) mom, but according to two different genetic tests, I'm as white as the driven snow (in Iceland, even).  I confess to a small pang of disappointment at those results.

Mom has since declared she never said the above claim, but my sister is in total agreement with my recollection.

Genealogy =/= genetics. Depending on which markers are used, and whether they were inherited or not by each generation, you absolutely could have X ancestry but not the particular marker for that ancestry used by a given test. Basically every generation is a genetic lottery as to whether any given marker will be passed down, especially once you consider mutations (well, seemingly except for my grandmother's dry skin, which seems to be a curse passed down without fail from generation to generation until the end of time) and even with full blood siblings, one could inherit a given marker but not the other, even though they'd have the exact same ancestry.
None of this means the stories of being a distant descendant of a Cherokee princess or whatever are true, of course - but such genetic test results merely make it less likely, they don't completely rule it out.

[FishProf]

Yes, that is all true.  But two different tests are less likely to give the same wrong answer.

We've done these tests in my class to show genetic data reliability.  I've had students test as positive for a specific marker (say Azkenashi Jew) when neither of the parents had that result.

That student chose to repeat the test with another provider (to rule out the least acceptable hypothesis) and her 2nd results matched up with her parents.

[marshwiggle]

I wonder how much of this is driven by a desire for a touch of the exotic (but just a touch, mind you), or a desire to separate from the oppressor narrative (I'm not responsible for what happened to NAs, I'm partially one myself.)

That's it x1000! "See, I'm not a vile filthy oppressor like YOU!"

[Anselm]

One relative told me that I have ancestors who were Brass Ankles Indians, a tri-racial isolate.   Genealogies connect me to some Cherokees in Tennessee but other online information disputes the existence of one ancestor, Chief Aaron Redbird Brock.  DNA tests do confirm some non-European ancestry.  Regarding the Brass Ankles, there are numerous groups that claim native ancestry but have no federal recognition.  The largest may be the Lumbee Indians in North Carolina.  I don't want any benefit from this. I just want some royalty connection and the rights to a castle in Scotland.

This woman in question seems to have been just honestly mistaken.

[dismalist]

Looks like family lore, genealogies, and even DNA testing are insufficient to determine identity in this identitarian world. We need something more reliable. Skull measurements anyone?

[jimbogumbo]

I wonder how much of this is driven by a desire for a touch of the exotic (but just a touch, mind you), or a desire to separate from the oppressor narrative (I'm not responsible for what happened to NAs, I'm partially one myself.)

That's it x1000! "See, I'm not a vile filthy oppressor like YOU!"

Disagree. I think the "touch of the exotic" is the driving force.

[apl68]

I wonder how much of this is driven by a desire for a touch of the exotic (but just a touch, mind you), or a desire to separate from the oppressor narrative (I'm not responsible for what happened to NAs, I'm partially one myself.)

That's it x1000! "See, I'm not a vile filthy oppressor like YOU!"

Disagree. I think the "touch of the exotic" is the driving force.

I'm sure it was when most of these old family stories originated.  Now it may be more the other. 

[kaysixteen]

My brother took the test.   We have the same parents.  If I had the same company test me, what should happen?