Liz Warren. Why the Cherokee rolls can be used to prove but NOT to disprove heritage.

[pnwmom]

Last edited Thu Jun 30, 2016, 03:40 PM - Edit history (2)

She has been mocked for being proud of her Cherokee heritage when an ancestral link to the nation hasn't been proven. However, those lists are not comprehensive. And even a sibling of someone on a list wouldn't be considered a Cherokee if they were not listed themselves. Many people descended from actual, living Cherokee people don't meet the standards the Nation uses today.

And DNA ancestry tests are also unreliable.

http://www.allthingscherokee.com/know-im-cherokee-prove/

It is one thing to know you have Cherokee ancestry, but it is quite another to prove Cherokee heritage. Unfortunately there were very few records kept of the Cherokee people prior to their relationship with the United States, and even then the records were hardly complete. As a result, finding proof of Cherokee heritage is very challenging.

SNIP

There were eighteen rolls which recorded the Cherokee and Cherokee Freedman from 1817-1949. The rolls were often taken as a result of land or money distribution due to new treaties or US policies relating to the Cherokee. These rolls, coupled with the Federal Census of Indian Territory in 1860 and 1900 and the Cherokee Nation Census of 1880, are the only official records of those people who lived in both eastern and western Cherokee territories.

Finding your ancestors on these rolls means that your family is Cherokee, plain and simple. However, nothing in Cherokee genealogy is that simple, and thus I arrive at the complicated part — if you do not find your ancestors on these records it does not mean that you are not Cherokee. Err…that was a triple negative and poorly worded. In a nutshell, these records were not complete.

Why? Well, many Cherokee moved away from the Nation for various reasons (intermarriage, immigration, treaties…). Because they were not living within the boundaries of the Nation, they would not be recorded on the Cherokee rolls. Also, some Cherokee who were living within the Nation boundaries decided not to enroll on later rolls because they’d grown weary of the broken treaties and false promises that often accompanies them.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/dna-ancestry-tests-are-meaningless-your-historical-genealogy-search-244586

Genealogy tracking has become big business, with many companies charging up to $300 to trace your DNA to specific historical figures or ethnic groups in the distant past by analyzing ancestry tests.

A group of scientists now offers a public warning that these ancestry tests have little scientific backing, and are often so unreliable and inaccurate that they amount to "genetic astrology."

Though advertisements for some ancestry testing companies give the impression that your unique DNA genealogy can tell you a specific story about your ancestry, the scientists say that the same history you get could be given to thousands of other people with a similar ethnic background, and that any number of different possible interpretations could come from your DNA results.

[kimbutgar]

1. How about DNA testing?

That would shut up you know who.

[pnwmom]

2. I would assume that has an error rate, too, and she only thinks she has a

small percent of Cherokee heritage.

[Demonaut]

6. a DNA test would prove "Native American" percentage but probably not the tribe

on edit, I have 23% Native American DNA but know one in the family knows the tribe

[pnwmom]

8. But how accurate is the test? Are you sure it can reliably pick up the small

amount of Cherokee heritage that Warren thinks she has?


http://www.medicaldaily.com/dna-ancestry-tests-are-meaningless-your-historical-genealogy-search-244586

Genealogy tracking has become big business, with many companies charging up to $300 to trace your DNA to specific historical figures or ethnic groups in the distant past by analyzing ancestry tests.

A group of scientists now offers a public warning that these ancestry tests have little scientific backing, and are often so unreliable and inaccurate that they amount to "genetic astrology."

Though advertisements for some ancestry testing companies give the impression that your unique DNA genealogy can tell you a specific story about your ancestry, the scientists say that the same history you get could be given to thousands of other people with a similar ethnic background, and that any number of different possible interpretations could come from your DNA results.

[Demonaut]

11. I did the 23andme and the Ancestry DNA...like I said, probably not the tribe

and the test results differed somewhat, 23andme gave me a 21% native american but I think the ancestry is more accurate as they have checked a larger pool of dna samples globally

[Bad Thoughts]

3. It makes a difference between quaint family story and solid public identity

When Republicans like Trump call someone Pocahantas or do the Tomahawk Chop, they are clearly being racist. They are operationalizing tropes that use negative stereotypes of Native Americans, reinforcing them, while belittling someone.

That said, it's not worth it for Warren to say anything about her Native American heritage beyond telling the quaint story her grandmother told her. Too often individuals have claimed to be "1/16th Indian" in order to claim special privileges. I am not surprised that tribal governments, the Cherokee in particular, can be touchy about people making false claims. ETA: I'm sure Warren had no intentions of deceiving if her information was wrong, but it would show great maturity to take a measured approach to her claim.

Now if Warren paid for genetic testing, her claim would have more currency. I took one. It showed that I was about 5% Native American, a little more than I suspected, but not a surprise given my mother's family roots in New Mexico.

[pnwmom]

4. She wasn't ever trying to establish a "solid public identity." She was attacked

when she ran for the Senate because decades ago, on some listing of law professors, she indicated she had some Cherokee heritage. She says she did it because she was hoping to meet other people with tribal roots, and the people who hired her at Harvard said they weren't even aware of it.

One of my relatives did the exact same thing because he was proud of it --not because he had anything to gain from it. But he didn't become a politician decades later, so it has had no ramifications in his life.

And the Cherokee nation should be well aware that the tribal lists are incomplete. There are many reasons -- including marriage and migration -- that a Cherokee's name wouldn't appear on a roll. Even an unlisted person who was a full sibling of someone on a roll wouldn't be an "official" Cherokee today.

[mwrguy]

5. If she identifies as part Cherokee then that is good enough for me

end of issue

[Arkansas Granny]

7. Elizabeth Warren was born in Oklahoma. Most people born in that state assume that somewhere back

in their ancestry, there will be some Native American heritage. It's a fairly common story.

An old Cherokee woman once told me that because there was a bit of a stigma attached to marrying a full blood Native American, many NA women who had married white men were told by their husbands to go register for the roll, but to claim the least amount of NA blood possible to still get benefits. That means that their descendants may be on the roll with the incorrect percentage of NA ancestry.

[Motley13]

9. Oh good grief

Now the xenophobes want you to PROVE your heritage.

I want dementia don to take a DNA test to prove he is not an orangutan, sorry, I meant no offense to orangutans, they have much better hair.

You only know what you have been told by your family.


I have thought of getting a DNA test, which ones have you all used & do you think it is reliable?

[csziggy]

10. Some branches of my family claim Native America blood

But unlike Elizabeth Warren's family the branch I came from had no stories and no specifics. While it is possible there is an ancestor who was of Native American descent, there is no documentary evidence.

The most likely path would be from Cherokees - our ancestors on my Mom's side came from South Carolina through Tennessee and ended up in the part of Alabama that had just been "cleared" by Andrew Jackson in the 1810s. One ancestor had a pass to travel through Indian territory between South Carolina and Tennessee - but I have researched that branch and there is no possibility that there is any NA blood there. That is not the branch that is most often rumored to have NA blood.

When my sister got a DNA test done through the National Geographic’s Genographic Project, her results came back with a trace of Native American. I had my DNA tested with Ancestry and my results showed no NA traces.

As a genealogist it would be interesting to have proof of Native American blood in my family but it wouldn't make a difference to anything at all in my life.

For those wondering about whether DNA tests could prove a link to specific tribes - most NA groups have objected to DNA testing. That is one reason the research into the origins of Kennewick Man was such an uphill battle. When the Northwestern NA groups were finally persuaded to allow DNA testing, it proved that Kennewick Man WAS NA. Previously some anthropologists had thought the skull morphology indicated a different origin for the remains.

The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man

Kennewick Man, referred to as the Ancient One by Native Americans, is a male human skeleton discovered in Washington state (USA) in 1996 and initially radiocarbon dated to 8,340–9,200 calibrated years before present (bp)1. His population affinities have been the subject of scientific debate and legal controversy. Based on an initial study of cranial morphology it was asserted that Kennewick Man was neither Native American nor closely related to the claimant Plateau tribes of the Pacific Northwest, who claimed ancestral relationship and requested repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The morphological analysis was important to judicial decisions that Kennewick Man was not Native American and that therefore NAGPRA did not apply. Instead of repatriation, additional studies of the remains were permitted2. Subsequent craniometric analysis affirmed Kennewick Man to be more closely related to circumpacific groups such as the Ainu and Polynesians than he is to modern Native Americans2. In order to resolve Kennewick Man’s ancestry and affiliations, we have sequenced his genome to ~1× coverage and compared it to worldwide genomic data including for the Ainu and Polynesians. We find that Kennewick Man is closer to modern Native Americans than to any other population worldwide. Among the Native American groups for whom genome-wide data are available for comparison, several seem to be descended from a population closely related to that of Kennewick Man, including the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (Colville), one of the five tribes claiming Kennewick Man. We revisit the cranial analyses and find that, as opposed to genome-wide comparisons, it is not possible on that basis to affiliate Kennewick Man to specific contemporary groups. We therefore conclude based on genetic comparisons that Kennewick Man shows continuity with Native North Americans over at least the last eight millennia.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v523/n7561/full/nature14625.html

[Runningdawg]

12. To understand how the rolls can be so incomplete

you have to understand why people did not want to be listed on them.
Research Native American Boarding Schools. Just a few generations ago if you admitted to being NA, your children would be taken from you by the government. If they returned it was as young Christian adults with all trace of their heritage, culture, language and religion beaten out of them.
Most people are familiar with the Cherokee Trail of Tears, where the majority of Cherokee were removed from their native lands. Fewer people know there is more than one band and the band that stayed behind to fight removal are label Eastern Band Cherokee. Different rolls. There is a third group, that even fewer people have heard of, the Cherokee who left on their own, before forced removal. These are the Western Band Cherokee. Another roll. The WB Cherokee were trying to stay hidden, they weren't going to volunteer the information that they were Native, many claimed to be Spanish.
My blood quantum comes only from my fathers side, as none of my mothers family were ever registered. My fathers maternal side was not registered, only his paternal side, so for all legal intents and purposes, I had only one NA ancestor to trace my lineage from.
To sum it up, there is no easy answer and more than one correct answer to the question-are you Native American.

[pnwmom]

13. Thank you so much for this information, Runningdawg. It makes perfect sense

that many Native Americans wouldn't have been included on those lists for a variety of reasons -- but your story really makes it clear.