The bigger problem with ancestry tests is that they create a very (western, white) misconception of what constitutes ethnicity. Ethnicity and race are constructs that depending on the ethnicity or race, don’t always line up neatly with genetics.
A humorous illustration:
The entire foundation of the Judaeo-Christian religion is from generations of oral traditions before someone finally wrote it down. Ironically, IIRC, Islam has the shortest time span from “spoken” to “written” down of all the Abrahamic (sp?) religions. Well… unless you count Mormonism.
I claim that history. I posted because of detail that I’ve found, something that doesn’t come from DNA testing. I know exactly how that history was lost, because of the stigma. The phrase means nothing, it’s the burden placed on the children that matters. I’m talking about my family, and know that things were far worse for the cousins, who didn’t have the option to assimilate into white society, but did keep the culture alive. I can speak because I’ve learned so much about my family.
I would never use the phrase for someone in the here and now, but it erased us back then, which is exactly what so many people wanted.
I probably count as Metis, because my family was in Red River. One of these days I will apply, though some won’t like it. And I’m aware that Metis are often treated as second class, the name mattering less than being that “other”.
I embrace all this precisely because of the damage done. There’s not a cool factor here, some vague but safe family story about a native ancestor. Henrietta and her siblings suffered, but not nearly as much as Tina Fontaine, pulled out of the Red River four years ago. How could she be treated so badly when Red River had been a Metis place? Why wasn’t she protected by streets named for Henrietta’s siblings, the children of Sarah Timentwa, Syilx? Because it was erased.
But… you just did, repeatedly.
Some friends of mine have kids who are 1/4 Japanese, and yet they look not even slightly Asian (all blonde or red hair, one has something of an eye fold but not very pronounced) much like the girl on the right. And one of my roommates in college was half Chinese, but people tended to think he was Greek for some reason.
Yeah, race is such a weird human construct.
I knew a lady who was half Korean and half black. (I think he was Somali, but don’t quote me.)
If you had to guess her ethnicity you might think Greek. She had olive skin and long curly black hair. Thing was, I had no idea who her parents were until I went to the wedding. Funny how genetics works.
My friend’s kid is half Filipino and half white Jewish, but she look mainly Filipino, though she is very tall for her age.
And if it was acceptable 164 years ago, it must be inoffensive now!
DNA report here: https://mk0elizabethwarh5ore.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Bustamante_Report_2018.pdf
This is about as good as it gets from legitimate DNA tests and those that purport to provide more detailed information are likely blowing smoke up your ass.
This thread has now given me a Cher earworm, of a song I thought I’d managed to forget long ago.
Let’s see how Trump and his minions move the goal posts now. I’ve already read claims of “junk science” from the Trump camp even though they were the ones asking for a DNA test to begin with.
This statement baffles me because the releasing of her DNA test proves nothing other than “yes, she likely had a Native American ancestor many generations ago”. Nobody’s saying, “ah, yes, this is the conclusive evidence we’re looking for and now she must be given tribal benefits” or anything.
All statement this is doing is once again moving the goalposts and further muddying the waters while giving more talking points to the Trumpists.
Take a dig through First Nations activist twitter today. The irritation with Warren’s actions is fairly universal.
It was also entirely predictable; I saw this coming the second that the story appeared. It’s rather obvious that Warren did not consult with the First Nations / Native American community before doing this.
Keep in mind that from their perspective, this is not a case of “Democrats good, Republicans bad”. Both parties are colonisers, both are bad; remember who was President during Standing Rock.
Clearly I’m missing something here – I’m not sure how presenting some evidence that you likely had an indigenous relative many generations back is now construed as some sort of huge slight against First Nations peoples.
(Don’t get me wrong – there’s definitely evidence that Warren has used this tenuous link in the past in sketchy ways, and I’m not defending that at all.)
It’s not a huge slight, it’s more a case of “goddamn it, we have to deal with this fucking ignorant White shit again?”.
Well, yeah – that’s pretty much a given.
I don’t see this like that at all, it seems to me like its about protecting themselves from cultural appropriation, they must say that they do not recognize her heritage because not doing so can weaken their moral hold on being keepers of said heritage.
And things being what they are, they’re right, and that is very sad.
Here’s the thing though - they are saying Warren’s ancestry goes back 6-10 generations. You share half of your DNA with your parents, a quarter with your grandparents and so on. So if she had one Native American ancestor 6 generations ago, that would work out to about 1.5625% of her genome. Go back 10 generations and that is about 0.098%, well within the range you cited.
Trump shouldn’t be using Pocahontas as a slur, but I was just trying to point out that the whole idea that one’s ancestry can be easily partitioned is dubious.
You can claim whatever is in your heritage as being part of you. Some of us don’t have any one thing as much of a much anyway.
You can’t claim economic and social disadvantage due to that part of your heritage if you haven’t publicly identified as such over a significant period of time, was seen by others (edit - and the group) as part of that group and were treated as part of that group.
