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They laughed from what I was told. One I discussed it with is 50% Choctaw and a member of a Federal Tribe. He's lived his entire life on the reservation. His entire history is there, no doubt he's indian. Yet the mail order DNA test said he was only 5% Native American.
No they are not reliable nor accurate. In fact, the Feds intervened so the company quit selling them for a year or so not too long ago. but unfortunately, I see it is back. Don't bother with them.
The feds made 23AndMe stop doing direct to consumer health reports derived from DNA testing. It had to do with questions about counselling concerning some of those tests, not the accuracy of the DNA test itself.
The DNA testing is reliable.
The ethnicity reports are very general. Identifying Native American ancestry depends on whether there are native ancestors in the data base. For some tribes there is none. If there are no people in the database to compare to, NA ancestry cannot be identified even if it is there.
Your Choctaw friend should encourage more tribal members to test.
My own 23AndMe test correlates very nicely with my paper trail for my family tree, but I am 99.99% European ancestry.
They laughed from what I was told. One I discussed it with is 50% Choctaw and a member of a Federal Tribe. He's lived his entire life on the reservation. His entire history is there, no doubt he's indian. Yet the mail order DNA test said he was only 5% Native American.
No they are not reliable nor accurate. In fact, the Feds intervened so the company quit selling them for a year or so not too long ago. but unfortunately, I see it is back. Don't bother with them.
Firstly, the FDA only intervened with 23andMe regarding health reports, NOT the ethnicity. This was over concerns regarding the company "giving medical advice" without a medical license. 23andMe continued to sell DNA tests for genealogy, there was never a total cease of sales of DNA kits, they just had to stop providing the health reports while they sorted out the legal issue over health reports.
Secondly, as I've probably explained previous in this topic, the Native American issue with the ethnicity report is a bit unique. While the ethnicity report on the whole is only an estimate and should not be taken literally, the NA results suffer from a particular issue. Tribes in the US are generally unwilling to supply samples for the reference population groups, which means most of the sample group for the NA category are from Latin America and Canada. That means consumer testers with NA ancestry in the US often won't match the sample group, or will have much lower results than expected. Want the results to be more accurate? Convince full blooded tribe members like your friend to supply samples!
Firstly, the FDA only intervened with 23andMe regarding health reports, NOT the ethnicity. This was over concerns regarding the company "giving medical advice" without a medical license. 23andMe continued to sell DNA tests for genealogy, there was never a total cease of sales of DNA kits, they just had to stop providing the health reports while they sorted out the legal issue over health reports.
Secondly, as I've probably explained previous in this topic, the Native American issue with the ethnicity report is a bit unique. While the ethnicity report on the whole is only an estimate and should not be taken literally, the NA results suffer from a particular issue. Tribes in the US are generally unwilling to supply samples for the reference population groups, which means most of the sample group for the NA category are from Latin America and Canada. That means consumer testers with NA ancestry in the US often won't match the sample group, or will have much lower results than expected. Want the results to be more accurate? Convince full blooded tribe members like your friend to supply samples!
An additional problem with the DNA samples taken and if more were taken is post-Columbian European DNA contributions. Most "full blooded" Native Americans these days actually probably have some level of European DNA due to the centuries of intermixing even at relatively low levels. More Native Ancient DNA would really be valuable (on top of more modern DNA), though that runs into tribal burial customs and issues that we've seen happen.
I'm all about respecting local customs, though I also really would love a lot more ancient Native American DNA, so it's a hard problem to surpass as well.
there is a small indian tribe in my area that can't get regonize by the state, so the whole tribe took dna, only one person had indian in him and it was less than 1%. this is a tribe about 200 people.
My family also has the Cherokee story. It never made sense to me that they went all the way over to grab on to Cherokee when there's a HUGE Choctaw reservation (Neshoba County, MS) right there next to us, lol, and Chickasaw was just up the road a bit.
Anyway, when I completed my DNA test I expected no NA ancestry (had long suspected the Melungeon lore was closer to the truth) and if it was present, it was likely Choctaw. I have a small amount of NA ancestry that I am kinda surprised is even there.
This thread reminds me... there was a recent Reddit thread (r/TIFU subforum for you redditors) where someone bought a DNA test for their dad for father's day. The dad had been raised to believe he had substantial Seneca ancestry, was deep into its culture, went to powwows, and so forth. Took the test (don't remember which), came back 0% NA. Dad pretty much had a mental breakdown.
Several people replying said to not take much stock in the results because of the lack of samples to compare to in the database. But, you know, the damage had been done - the intent of the son was innocent, but the dad was pretty torn up.
As someone who's pretty sure I have no NA whatsoever, I have no dog in this fight (my DNA test comparisons line me up with the expected surnames in the right places for multiple generations - guys and gals didn't stray much in either side of my family). But I think it's sort of sad that someone's self-identity can be shattered by one small test.
This thread reminds me... there was a recent Reddit thread (r/TIFU subforum for you redditors) where someone bought a DNA test for their dad for father's day. The dad had been raised to believe he had substantial Seneca ancestry, was deep into its culture, went to powwows, and so forth. Took the test (don't remember which), came back 0% NA. Dad pretty much had a mental breakdown.
Several people replying said to not take much stock in the results because of the lack of samples to compare to in the database. But, you know, the damage had been done - the intent of the son was innocent, but the dad was pretty torn up.
As someone who's pretty sure I have no NA whatsoever, I have no dog in this fight (my DNA test comparisons line me up with the expected surnames in the right places for multiple generations - guys and gals didn't stray much in either side of my family). But I think it's sort of sad that someone's self-identity can be shattered by one small test.
That is a sad story, but it is absolutely true that the father could have NA ancestors that the test could not pick up. The solution is to follow the paper trail and see what that shows up.
Anyone who does DNA testing has to be prepared to deal with unexpected results, including the big one: you were adopted and your adoptive parents never told you.
That is a sad story, but it is absolutely true that the father could have NA ancestors that the test could not pick up. The solution is to follow the paper trail and see what that shows up.
Anyone who does DNA testing has to be prepared to deal with unexpected results, including the big one: you were adopted and your adoptive parents never told you.
Or that you are the product of a sperm donor. I've read that a few times at 23andMe.
And ita, I tell everybody to be prepared for what you may find.
My Son's DNA came back from Ancestry and they had no mention of Native American (His Great Grandfather was a Native American.) but when loading the raw DNA data from Ancestry into GED Match, the American Indian showed up there.(It was under ten percent).
I am about 26% Native American and some "calculators" such as the Eurogenes Jtest, see it as "Siberian"
Kind of weird.
I guess Native Americans are Siberians.
See below:
Here is my Eurogenes K13:
Population
North_Atlantic 19.97
Baltic 7.56
West_Med 17.63
West_Asian 2.81
East_Med 9.84
Red_Sea 3.16
South_Asian -
East_Asian -
Siberian 1.84
Amerindian 26.94 <====
Oceanian -
Northeast_African 1.18
Sub-Saharan 9.08
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