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Finding out your Ancestry
9 years ago
So, while growing up I was told I was 1/4 Cherokee. My mom 1/2 and her father 100%. Her dad was an ass, there was a divorce, tl;dr I never met him.
I don't know. It all seemed legit. I myself wasn't too dark but my mom was fairly dark and her brother was even darker. We were never full-blown going to pow-wows or anything. But we had several books and there was that, I guess standard romanticism going on with native american culture.
By my teenage years I dropped most of it. I never really cared too much of what I was and being Cherokee wasn't like a huge part of my identity or anything.
In my 20s, my mom started trying build a legit family tree. This was going on for years, formally requesting birth certificates and everything. She started with her maternal side. Her dad, who is currently still alive, was still a huge asshole and was being very tight-lipped about his ancestry, which made investigating the paternal side very difficult.
She tried to investigate anyway, and things were looking very shady. Like... Not Native American at all.
This past year, my mom's brother, the brownest of us, took a DNA test from ancestry.com that came back 50%+ Scandinavian.
Him and my mom refused to believe it and thought it was some kind of fluke. I convinced my mom to get a DNA test from 23andMe. The results came in today and here's the result:
Northwestern European 95.2%
(which is comprised of the following)
British & Irish 48.2%
French & German 13.0%
Scandinavian 4.0%
Broadly Northwestern European 30.0%
In comparison:
Native american (what we were told we were) 0.2%
I'll be honest, I don't really know how I feel about it. I still don't understand how some of my family is so very brown if this is accurate. Otherwise, I have noticed similarities in my features with Scandinavians so, I dunno.
I guess I'm more worried about what it implies about my maternal grandfather? Why call himself Native American? If he was Irish, which is really the only other thing I could think of that he would be ashamed of, then why is he so brown (I've seen photos)?
At the end of the deal, the realization that this is all 'real' and 'legit' is just weird. Like. I guess it explains why I like the cold and rain and don't like Hawaii much??
But otherwise it's just like.
".....Oh."
Whatever I am (as I'm sure those percentages are all estimates), I'm a little saddened I never got to grow up learning about that culture.
Instead I got... Dream catchers (which aren't even Cherokee? LOL).
It's just. Interesting. I guess.
Anyone have a similar story?
I don't know. It all seemed legit. I myself wasn't too dark but my mom was fairly dark and her brother was even darker. We were never full-blown going to pow-wows or anything. But we had several books and there was that, I guess standard romanticism going on with native american culture.
By my teenage years I dropped most of it. I never really cared too much of what I was and being Cherokee wasn't like a huge part of my identity or anything.
In my 20s, my mom started trying build a legit family tree. This was going on for years, formally requesting birth certificates and everything. She started with her maternal side. Her dad, who is currently still alive, was still a huge asshole and was being very tight-lipped about his ancestry, which made investigating the paternal side very difficult.
She tried to investigate anyway, and things were looking very shady. Like... Not Native American at all.
This past year, my mom's brother, the brownest of us, took a DNA test from ancestry.com that came back 50%+ Scandinavian.
Him and my mom refused to believe it and thought it was some kind of fluke. I convinced my mom to get a DNA test from 23andMe. The results came in today and here's the result:
Northwestern European 95.2%
(which is comprised of the following)
British & Irish 48.2%
French & German 13.0%
Scandinavian 4.0%
Broadly Northwestern European 30.0%
In comparison:
Native american (what we were told we were) 0.2%
I'll be honest, I don't really know how I feel about it. I still don't understand how some of my family is so very brown if this is accurate. Otherwise, I have noticed similarities in my features with Scandinavians so, I dunno.
I guess I'm more worried about what it implies about my maternal grandfather? Why call himself Native American? If he was Irish, which is really the only other thing I could think of that he would be ashamed of, then why is he so brown (I've seen photos)?
At the end of the deal, the realization that this is all 'real' and 'legit' is just weird. Like. I guess it explains why I like the cold and rain and don't like Hawaii much??
But otherwise it's just like.
".....Oh."
Whatever I am (as I'm sure those percentages are all estimates), I'm a little saddened I never got to grow up learning about that culture.
Instead I got... Dream catchers (which aren't even Cherokee? LOL).
It's just. Interesting. I guess.
Anyone have a similar story?
I strongly suspect from the available evidence that I'm something like 1/16 Sac and Fox or Oklahoma Cherokee but nobody on that side of the family will admit to it.
More than likely, I'm something like 95% Western European though.
Like a bunch of families, there's always whispers about Native American heritage here or there, but I won't believe it until there's actually some proof. Even then, it's not like I knew those family members.
Then the rest is just presumed to be Irish, Scottish, whatever.