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I have a registration number issued by the BIA in the year I was born, indicating that I have Native American.
My great grand parents and my grandfather are on the US census records as living on the reservation with the tribe from as far back as when they started the US census. My grandparents and my mother are all buried on the reservation.
Yet, my tribe continues to deny my enrollment as a tribal member.
This means several things, I can receive any Federal assistance for things like medical or schooling, but these are limited. I can not be buried on the reservation next to my mother, should I have wanted that, my sister does want that. I can not get insurance, housing, allotments or anything available to tribal members.
Politics and Greed are more important then Heritage and Family.
A good half of my hometown in northern Vermont was. The French Canadian populations intermarried with the Native American populations a lot. So in places near Quebec (the northern New England and New York counties), many people with French last names are at least 20% native American.
I think a large % of Americans have at least a tiny percentage of Native American blood. Not sure I do though. Mostly Eastern European-descent steel workers and Scottish-descent coal miners.
I'm 1/32 Native American (NA) but have no cultural affiliation with any tribes and don't look NA. We are a big family and the genes are spread wide. So I think the number of Americans with some NA genes is fairly high.
On a side note, my niece was married last weekend to a guy 1/2 NA. I very much enjoyed the tribal "friendship dance" and wonder if the small piece of NA in my genes was triggered.
Family mythology claimed Cherokee (from both sides). I took the test with Nat'l Geographic's Geno 2.0 and it showed nothing but European (from the Haplogroups Irish/British - which is no surprise). I think the majority of Southerners of white ancestry claim some Indian blood, but in our case it wasn't true.
I have a registration number issued by the BIA in the year I was born, indicating that I have Native American.
My great grand parents and my grandfather are on the US census records as living on the reservation with the tribe from as far back as when they started the US census. My grandparents and my mother are all buried on the reservation.
Yet, my tribe continues to deny my enrollment as a tribal member.
This means several things, I can receive any Federal assistance for things like medical or schooling, but these are limited. I can not be buried on the reservation next to my mother, should I have wanted that, my sister does want that. I can not get insurance, housing, allotments or anything available to tribal members.
Politics and Greed are more important then Heritage and Family.
The BIA provides you with a "Certified Degree of Indian Blood" (CDIB), which is as you know, computed from your ancestors. As long as lineage can be proven, you will be issued a CDIB card. Once you present this to your tribe, if you don't meet the criteria (i.e. Blood Quanta), unfortunately, you cannot enroll if a tribe requires you to be for example 1/2 Apache in lineage and you are 1/8 in proven lineage. Many tribes are strict at 1/2 or 1/4 "tribal blood." There are fullblooded Indians who cannot enroll because they are so inter-tribally mixed they fail in blood quanta...however, there are Indians ethnically just very mixed ones tribally. You are not the only one in this position. It's a bad system, I know.
So people don't misinterpret here....Reservation Indians and/tribes were not recorded on the US Population Census. The first US Census was 1790 and did not include tribes or Indians. Indians were recoreded on an Indian census or Rolls or Tribal Base Rolls. If they were with the tribe living on a "federal" reservation they should be on "tribal rolls." BIA only deals with federally recognized tribes.
Family mythology claimed Cherokee (from both sides). I took the test with Nat'l Geographic's Geno 2.0 and it showed nothing but European (from the Haplogroups Irish/British - which is no surprise). I think the majority of Southerners of white ancestry claim some Indian blood, but in our case it wasn't true.
It become a part of the mythology of this country for people to claim to be part Native American. Only in many cases it wasn't true. I'm Black and my family also alleged Cherokee from both sides of the family. I found out from Africa I'm genetically from (Benin/Togo, Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, Cameroon/Congo, Ghana, and Senegal), Indian/Pakistani/South Asian, and European (English, Spanish, East European, Northern Russian, Scandinavian, Italian, and Irish). There was no Native American in me. I also looked at the census records. Everyone was classified either Black or Mulatto.
Often people tell tall tales in families and people accept them as fact (especially if they are kids hearing them from adults). Once you investigate things, not everything will turn out to be true. Some things in my family history were true, and others were fiction.
What's factual about that? "White" is an artificial construct. Unless you're descended from recent Northern European immigrants, have fully researched all branches of your familytree back to the Old World or had a DNA admixture test done, I'd take your claim of being "all white" (whatever that means) with a grain of salt.
Are you saying only Northern Europeans are white?
If you are native to Europe then you're white, simple as that. Doesn't matter if you are from south or north.
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