11
Jul
Proudly African AND Native American – Really?
How many times have you heard someone say – or maybe you’ve even said yourself, “I’m half Cherokee;” “I’m three-quarters Navajo on my mother’s side;” “I got Indian blood in me?” When African Americans make these claims, I wonder what the assertions are based on? Is it that high cheekbones run in their family? Was great great Big Momma’s black hair so long she could sit on it? Or is the belief that it’s more exotic to be descended from potential Indian chiefdom rather than African royalty?
I became interested in this topic most recently when in my capacity as an advisory board member for www.africanancestry.com, I was asked to reveal the DNA test results of several African American notables living in Los Angeles. In advance of the invitation-only ceremony, I learned that the DNA findings for one, linked them to Native American lineage.
Hearing the news, the organizer of the event panicked. Gina Paige, president and co-founder of www.africanancestry.com offered comfort, assuring us that “no one is ever disappointed by Native American results.”
Really?
Not doubting Gina, but curious to learn more, I conducted my own unofficial poll, quizzing people who had taken the DNA tests. Those whose results came back as Native American were not only ecstatic with the news as Gina Paige had forecast, but a number of people have been disappointed that Native American lineage was not found, but was expected.
It’s no wonder. According to several historians, most African Americans today who believe they are of Native American heritage are misled. Dr. Rick Kittles, a geneticist and co-founder of www.africanancestry.com who has performed DNA testing on over 30,000 African Americans offers, “If you ask ten African-Americans if they have Native American ancestry, eight of them will say ‘yes,’ but when we actually test them, it’s less than 10 percent.”
Interestingly, as far back as the 1920s, Dr. Carter Woodson (known as the father of Black History) posited that a third of most African Americans have Indian blood. Research since DNA genetic testing confirms that 5% of all African Americans have at least 12.5% Native American ancestry, equivalent to a great grandparent.
So, what about our storied legends who over the years have claimed dual (Native American and African) lineage: Frederick Douglass, Crispus Attucks, and poet laureate Langston Hughes, who supposedly traced his lineage back to Pocahontas? Were they misled?
(top row) from left to right: Frederick Douglass, Crispus Attucks, Langston Hughes. (bottom row) Pocahontas.
And what about you?
If you’ve always believed that you have Native American roots, you may want to take a DNA test to confirm your lineage. The results may surprise you.
Parenthetically, the person I revealed at the event in Los Angeles who was of Native American heritage on her mother’s line was not surprised. She’s proud of the legacy but anxious to now trace her paternal line and hopefully pinpoint her African roots.
If you’ve taken the test and found that you were of Native American lineage, I’d love to know your thoughts on this topic. Drop me a line at sneal@africanancestry.com. And if you haven’t yet traced your roots, there’s no time like the present. Visit www.africanancestry.com to learn how. Until then…
Amani (peace)
I haven’t taken a test yet but I know, for A FACT that I am. My historian cousin even found my great great great grandmother’s name. She was a whole Native, but we’re not sure what tribe she was from? Her maiden surname was of the county, I’m assuming? that she was from in Alabama, Bibb.
Hello,
I don’t think it’s so much we want to be Native American. I think it may be a preference because we know the history. I recently did a DNA to find out if I was mixed and I wasn’t surprised to find European and Asian. What surprised me is that there wasn’t any Native American. However I remember talking to you when I wanted to find my african roots and you told me it’s probably the European you’re seeing in your family and this was correct. I mean it’s not a real big percentage (25%) however it was a little bit more than I thought. I thought it would be about half of that.
Thanks,
Paula Payne
I have a cousin who did some historical/genealogical research and discovered a native american answer on my grandfather’s side. Yet, when I did an admixture test, it detected no native american dna. So, go figure. Sometimes historical records can be wrong I guess.
oops, that should say “native american ancestor”, not answer.
I appreciate this article and Im glad that this whole “My Grandmother was part Cherokee” myth is finally being questioned. Let’s remember genealogy is based on fact not assumption. Like Henry Louis Gates says “How could so few Native Americans have children with so many African Americans”?
Light skin, long, black hair and high cheek bones do not equal Native American.
By the way, Native Americans aren’t the only ethnic group to have the highly coveted “high cheekbones”, that is an African feature as well.
Do your research (for yourself), dont rely on stories passed on from generation to generation or someone else’s unproven research or speculation as fact.
All that’s true, but there ARE some of us who ARE. Just to name a few infamous people proven through DNA; and I’m NOT talking about one’s who’s Earliest identifiable male or female ancestor is either, just like Puerto Ricans: Oprah Winfrey, James Earl Jones, Jesse Jackson, Ananda, Jaques Boulard, and others. We may be only 5% of African Americans as a whole, but we ARE here and do exist!
Of course there are exceptions to every rule. I just hope folks are doing their research and putting in the work to accurately identify their ancestry, be it Native or anything else. Genealogy is my passion and its very hard for me to take someone elses word on what I may and may not be, I have to prove it for myself.
Do u have a tribal card??? If you are able to prove significant Native American ancestry you can check to see what percentage of ancestry your tribe requires to obtain a tribal card.
I hope people are aware that Native Americans owned slaves too, a lot of them also returned runaway slaves seeking refuge back to the slaves owner, dead or alive. Blacks and Natives were not all on good relations contrary to popular belief.
It is my understanding that unless your Native ancestor was recorded on the Dawes Rolls, they were recorded as a free person of color ( before the civil war ) white, other or mulatto.
To all those who are disappointed-after taking a genetic test to trace ancestry-that they didn’t find greater or 0% Asian, native American, European in the DNA test results, I am sorry to disappoint you even more….All people regardless of phenotype can trace their genetic lineage to African forebears…..
To all those who are disappointed-after taking a genetic test to trace ancestry-that they didn’t find a greater % of, or 0% Asian, native American, European in the DNA test results, I am sorry to disappoint you even more….All people regardless of phenotype can trace their genetic lineage to African forebears…..
How do James Earl Jones and Jesse Jackson know for sure they are part Native American? Oprah Winfrey was “8% Native American and 3% East Asian” (o% European,I wonder if they had tested Oprah’s mother would she had been 0%European still) on the very flawed and now outdated Ancestrybydna test
My maternal grandmother did the very flawed and now outdated Ancestrybydna 2.5,formerly from the late Sarasota,Fl company Dna Print Genomics now for the Dna Diagnostics Center(she did it after it went to DDC). It said “74% African”, “21%European” and “0% Indigenous American” but “5%East Asian”. We don’t know if it is really Indigenous (some people on the test who really had Native would get East Asian percentages or both. And this test had what are called confidence intervals,like ranges of error,my grandmother’s confidence intervals for both Indigenous American and East Asian were high,above 10,but we don’t know if that really means anything) or if it is a mistake, which is something that folks need to know about what do they mean about “5% of African Americans have 12.5%Native American ancestry” and “58% of African Americans have 12.5% European ancestry”. They did studies on people years ago using this flawed test and earlier versions of it,if anybody got a result in the single digit numbers,they were not sure if the admixture was real.A white person could get “2% African” and it could be a mistake aka “noise”.If some body got atleast “12.5″ something,then it was more sure that the admixture was real (though the percent would change on a more accurate test). More than “58%” of African Americans have European ancestry,probably around 70%,and more than “5% of African Americans have Native American ancestry,probably a little more than 10%.
I hope one day I can get my maternal grandmother to take a more updated test like Familytreedna’s Populationfinder or Ancestry.com’s Ancestrydna. I’m not very sure about 23andme’s AncestryPainting because I’ve read that just about everybody who’s black whether African Americans or Africans from Africa get “Asian” percentages on 23andme’s test whether or not they actually have Native American ancestry or actual Asian ancestry because 23andme has only one African reference population which is Yoruba,though I have read about a man named Dr. Doug Mcdonald who can analyze 23andme and Familytreedna’s admixture tests. It should make a difference for folks who do autosomal tests to have who ever in their family who is still living to get tested because they are closer in generations to that ancestry,if my grandmother’s “5% East Asian”,which could be Native American is real, it would not have shown up on later generations results.
I read that AfricanAncestry’s Gina Paige had “8% Native American” on the short lived myDNAmix what’s your mix? test. I’d like to know where her family is from because there are certain places where black folks could have had interracial contact with Native Americans that could have been absorbed back ito the black gene pool. We know that in some parts of Alabama there were Creek Indians who not only didn’t go on the Trail of Tears,but instead of hiding out in the woods married into white society and also owned slaves ( all five of the Civilized Nations owned slaves but just about all of those slaves had left with most of the Civilized members on the Trail of Tears)who would have joined with other slaves owned by white people after slavery ended, like William Weatherford.This also happened to a smaller degree in Mississipi with Greenwood Leflore.I’ve read that there were also white slaveowners somewhere in Mississipi who took in remnant poor Choctaws (the Choctaws had the largest nummber of members who didn’t go on the Trail of Tears) who could have done interracial with the blacks on the plantations (imagine seeing a mixed black and Native girl and a mixed black and white girl talking about one another’s hair?). My grandmother’s maternal grandfather was from Alabama somewhere according to census records (I asked my granmother exactly where he was from and she didn’t know)so if my grandmother’s result is real then maybe his parents could have been one of those slaves.
@Alseta just wondering where is your family from and how did you cousin know or believe that your grandfather had Native American ancestry? Also,you got to know that no matter how accurate an admixture test is it is best when you have whoever is the oldest generation living tested,if possible.You maybe too many generations away. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have absolutely no Native ancestry,you can still have very little and not enough to detect.Can you say what company’s test you took anyway?
I don’t know about Frederick Douglass or Langston Hughes(Pocahontas descendant,yeah right) but Crispus Attucks really did have a Native Natick mother from back in the early slavery days (1600s and early 1700s)especially up north where whites laveowners would have Algonquin Indians (and other white folks) working alongside blacks(this also happened in the caribbean with not only Tainos but Indians captured and brought from what was to become the U.S.) but it’s likely that when the north ended slavery most of the mixed blackAlgonquins would have went back to their tribes rather than blend into the general free northern black population and for the mixed black Algonquins who did blend into the general free northern black population it would have been so long ago that it would not be detectable on admixture tests now.
It seems that there’s more to our history here in the Americas than being descendants of slaves. There were African explorers who sailed to the Americas like Malian king Mansa Musa and his half brother Abubakari over a hundred years before Columbus. Abubakari sailed over to America around 1311 AD. They mainly used the Canary and Guinea currents as a means of making a safe travel to the other side of the Atlantic.
What I also find interesting is that when you look at the earliest “Native” Americans, they look pretty Africoid in features like the Olmec heads in Mexico with wide noses, thick lips and even plaited braids at the back of the heads. Scholars Ivan Van Sertima and Runoko Rashidi explain deeply about the lesser known aspects of the African presence in the Americas that was intact long before European explorer or the institution of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. There was even a African explorer named Pietro De Negro who assisted Columbus in sailing to the Caribbean Islands.
So what I think is not fully understood is what really is the genetic makeup of the Native Americans. When we look at the Native Americans that we mainly see today, are they a race of their own, or are they an admixture? The textbooks say that Native Americans are mainly of Asian descent that crossed the Bering Strait. So why is it that there are pictures of Native Americans that look Asiatic/Chinese in appearance but have reddish brown skin? Where did that reddish brown skin come from? There is even a painting of Mayans that have reddish brown and dark brown hues with jaguar skins and feathers that look strikingly similar to the way Africans dressed in Egypt, even among many of the tribes in West Africa such as the Dogon.
So it seems that the original Native Americans were African, some of whom may have never mixed up to this day which may explain why some don’t have so-called ‘Native’ American ancestry because the root origin of the Native Americans goes back to Black. There’s even pictures of Black Hawaiians in the 1800s in Hawaii and this was during the time when Hawaii was unoccupied by American hands and wasn’t either a FREE or SLAVE state because it wasn’t instituted to the union until the late 1950s. So when it all adds up, the Native Americans seen today are an ADMIXTURE of West African, Chinese and some East Indian as well as a noticeable amount of European ancestry such as Spanish and French.
@David saying that Native Americans have very very ancient African ancestry(if that is true) is not talking about Native American ancestry in African Americans,lol
And ALL human beings, no matter how far back that their distinct ethnicity appeared, goes back to Africa. And everybody is born with a pineal gland(our centers)-which is BLACK.
Ancestry DNA testing is still in its infancy said some researchers. And many that got asian results it was said that it could actually be native American. So many so called pure native americans were killed and many of today are so intermixed with others races so how can they get many samples of pure native americans. There is recently anthropological evidence of ancient black people in america it is believed they are the real native americans. Look at the tribal dress and culture of many africans compared to Indigenous Americans “native americans.” Indians owned slaves and being in a tribe wasn’t always by blood it was a nationality and some definitely had children together and intermarried. And several people mentioned that they had to do several test before their native american ancestor was found. So my advice is not to be so quick to renounce your oral history of having native american ancestry, it may take more research, some time for advancement in this technology, and more DNA testing with a variety of companies or other relatives to be tested! In one case one sibling’s results was asian while another was native american! One of my test came out asian, so I’m planning a re-test because I have oral history of having native american ancestry. I found so many things that my foreparents have said to be true once I searched the records so I believe what they told me about my “indian” ancestors now I need only to find the proof with the help of God.
@Carl What company’s test did you take?
Yeah, check out Black Indian Inn’s website if it’s still up? I know about them and the Asian results, I’d already commented on African Ancestry’s facebook page before ALL of my comments were deleted by somebody and am blocked from posting since? I wrote that not all native american’s have the same origination after ALL human beings common two Original Watusi tribe parents(Adam and Eve). Some crossed the Bering Strait as the people in my geneology, C3 related to Mongols. Some have what registers as European DNA such as Cherokee. And others, escaped from a lost continent off of South America called Lemuria.
Lol thats part of the programming that Afrakans have been thru. Everyone is part something other than Afrakans. Most Afrakans really believe that they are 3/5 of a human and say their part European or Asian makes them complete. I took up an…thropolgy in college. You are what you are. My mother is a woman and everyone in the world starts off as a female. I am not half woman half man. Even if you did have an Asian as an ancestry, you are you. If you are trying to use a lineage line to say I am this and that. It all still goes back to Afraka. And when was the last time a Asian showed up to your family reunion. And do you hear any other race say I am half or part Afrakan. No one because they got good sense. All that 3/4 nonsense is Scientific Racism. Look it up. It’s just like calling yourself mulatto. Most of the time even if the parents are of different races one parent gene dominates racially. I say the same them Leakey said “We are all Afrakans
Also the same thing with Afrakans in the Americas. You would whether call yourseleves “Black”"Negro” or in other terms colored. All Afrakans dont look alike and never have. It has never been a pure race. No such thing a race of nothing but …twins. Afrakans are myriads of brown,red, albino and yellow. (Khoi-Khoi,Amhara) So why downgrade us to a single color. Afrakans truly have a self hate toward themselves physically,mentally, and spiritualy. We don’t want to learn an Afrakan language, but will pick up French or Spainsh. Whenever their is a real call to team up. ” I don’t like working with a bunch blacks” They hate we produce is from within.
It’s your issue if you want to be or if you are 100% negro. I’m not the one that takes issue with WHAT IS.
Now I would love to drop this subject because you and others obviously have your own issues with other “African Americans” with issues of identity(crisis)? Not knowing FACTS which I ALWAYS hated, but this women’s Earliest identifiable mom came to be Native American and she didn’t know it. She looks just like my mom’s father’s mom. Now by your commentary, I’m a black self hater-? and you don’t know me and seem to think that you hold a trump card on how to be black physically, mentally and what it is or isn’t? I’ve been to Senegal when I was thirteen, and The Nation of Islam doesn’t even come like that?!
http://www.racematters.org/ruthjsimmons.htm
Please read Where have all the Indians gone…DNA explained…forget the author. Many actually did or do still have Indian ancestry but it was “swamped”, by other more recent or more incidences of dnas…..many Africans share a common lineage with Indians and whites after we all arrived in the States, this includes some Jewish individuals also!!
I took the ancestry.com dna test a couple of weeks ago and received the results yesterday. 79% West African (expected, was hoping for even higher % here), 10% uncertain (whatever that is) and 11% British Isles (not expected to be that high since my 20+ year genealogical research showed only one potentially white ancestor – reportedly an Irish Jewish male waaayyy down the tree and then pre-Civil War). How very disappointed I was, in part because I see absolutely no evidence of what was supposed to be more recent Native American ancestry. Both my grandmothers and one grandfather claimed some where in our ancestry there was Native American blood – two claimed their grandmothers were ‘half Indian’ and the other claimed a great-grandparent was ‘part Indian’. Thought I’d have at least 12% Native American. Mad and feel as if I’ve ‘wasted’ my $99, which is what I paid to take the test.
By the way to those talking about ‘self hate’ if you take dna test to determine your ethnic make-up: I know who I am. I am African-American! I have been reading and studying African-American and African history since I was 8 years old and first became curious to learn where I came from, who were my people were, and what their achievements were. Since I didn’t see myself reflected in what I was being taught in school and my parents didn’t know, I practically lived in libraries. I minored in African Studies in college, have many African friends, used to be deluded into thinking I was African until my African friends told me otherwise (i.e. told me I was more a ‘cousin’ to them than a ‘sister’, hmmph) plus I took studied both Hausa and French, and, yes – when I was told as a college sophomore that I could not study in Nigeria at the University of Ibadan because I was an undergraduate student – I chose to study in France where I met many of my Senegalese, Gabonese, and Gambian friends who were also studying there. I’ve also been researching my genealogy for 23 years, more than half my lifetime AND I have been able to go back 10 generations on my side, 7 generations on my husband’s side so that our son and other children in our combined families know from whom and whence they came!
The worst thing you can tell an African American is that they look Black. Many would rather hear they looked mixed or looks like they “got indian” in them. White folks never catch feelings being told they look White or a Puerto Rican that they look Latino.
Most monoracial are trying to get on this pop multiracial and multicultural pop bandwagonn, “I’m a mixed person.” A mixed person to me are people that have households with parents that are ethnically and culturally different. Most African Americans grow in househoulds of parents that both identify as African American.
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[...] would likely say they have Indian blood flowing in their veins, DNA testing suggests that fewer than 10 percent of black people are of Native American ancestry. To be exact, 5 percent of African-Americans have at least 12.5 [...]
[...] would likely say they have Indian blood flowing in their veins, DNA testing suggests that fewer than 10 percent of black people are of Native American ancestry. To be exact, 5 percent of African-Americans have at least [...]
[...] would likely say they have Indian blood flowing in their veins, DNA testing suggests that fewer than 10 percent of black people are of Native American ancestry. To be exact, 5 percent of African-Americans have at least 12.5 [...]
I’m proud to say that I’m black and native American. I have four kinds of indigenous traits running through my blood: Cherokee, Cherokee Red, Red Hawk and Black Hawk. My cultures are very apparent in my facial structure, skin tone, hair texture, build of body and so on. When you are what you are, you just are what you are. I would be proud to say that I’m African American, if that is all tha I was, but I’m both, so I proudly claim both. For years, I denied my native American heritage, but why should I? My grandmother is half- Cherokee. I’m corned either way.
I was brought up with knowledge of being of black/Cherokee/and German decent.
We identified as black or black Indian, growing up.
I think oral history is important, but you should also seek to find the proof. To me DNA test are better than even the paper trail, because it is your blood, and no one can dispute it, It is either there or it isn’t. There are many white people who think they have native ancestry and don’t, so you have to go into it truly wanting to find out who you are, not who you were told you are.
Recently we have had taken dna test which has covered my mother and my fathers line.
We took two different test, with different companies, the results were the same for both.
The results are as follows: I am black, Asian , European, Arabic, and South American Indian.
European: German, Jewish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Scottish, Italian, Irish, Welsh, Spaniard, and Portuguese.
Asian: East Indian, Sri Lanka Indian, Chinese (Chinese Muslim decent) Mongolian, Vietnamese.
Arabic: Iranian, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabian, and Yemen.
African: Nigerian, Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Kenyan, Tanzania, and South, Mozambique.
South American Indian blood lines: Mexican, Panama, Mayan , Amazonian Indian (Venezuela, and Amazon coastal areas), as well as Puerto Rica Tainio native American ancestry.
Because I am of a brown complexion I am not what people or at least black people would think of as being someone this mixed, but I am black, Asian, European, Arabic, and South American Indian.
I was surprised, especially when it cam to the Jewish, Latin, south American Indian, Asian and Arabic, I am grateful to find out who I am, where I am from, and who my ancestors are. And live to honor them all as best I can. I still identify as black but I also identify as black/ Asian/ European/ Arabic/and South American Indian as well.
since that is what I am.
I find it so funny that it is a problem to want to claim or be proud of every culture in your family. Myself being multicultural, I often get ridiculed for being proud! And unlike many I do have actual proof of my race and background. Niether one of my grandmothers are African American, my fathers mother is Filipino and my mother’s. Mother is 100% native American. But my fathers father is black and my mother’s. Father is West Indian, and I am very proud to be apart of every race and culture. But a lot of African Americans seem to have a problem with me being proud of my other races.
I am an African american male who is EXTREMELY proud to be black. However,in my mom’s side of the family,they do claim Native American heritage(Blackfoot tribe to be exact). They say that my great great grandmother was a “full blooded” Blackfoot Native American who’s parents were from Montana,but I think they could be telling a myth.I would like to take a DNA test to make sure if this is a true story. Because it’s better to learn the truth than to live a delusional lie.
Funny, all the claims and revisions of history blacks have recently made. I believe it’s indicative of a form of inferiority complex
I am African American, and I have these myths in my family. My grandmother (mothers side) claims that her grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee, and my grandfather (also mothers side) claimed that his grandmother was a full blooded Seminole. I am highly skeptical of these claims, because 90 percent of the time they are myths and are just excuses to hide the prevalent amounts of European blood in African American families. Also, my grandad had very light skin, freckles and red hair, and so did most of his brothers and sisters. From what I have read, if these traits show up in black families they probably come from Europe. My grandmother has a picture of her grandmother, who she claims is Cherokee Indian. When I saw the picture of her she was definitely 100 percent non-African, she looked 100 percent Native, but I am still not sure.
I was always told that my mother’s paternal grandmother was “part Cherokee”. Did some research, and the man who I believed fathered my great-grandmother was listed as I (for Indian) in the 1880 census and B (for Black) in the 1870 census. Also, in another family line, family members told me that my great-great-grandmother was “half Indian”. Yep..I got the “hair so long she sat on it” story, too. Come to find out, her father was white, and an elderly 103-year-old relative remembered the white father’s name. Since he had a name, I am prone to believe him versus the “half Indian” story. When my DNA was tested, it was 1.2% Asian/Native American. Does this mean that I probably had one Native American ancestor far far down the line?
I have just gotten back my DNA results from ancestry.com. I was born and raised in America as an African American as were my parents and their parents (period). My results were surprising…I am 94% West African, 6% undetermined (numbers are so low, that no specific ethnicity could be specified). I wasn’t surprised at the location in Africa, based on history. I was extremely surprised with the high percentage. It took me 24 hours to fully process it. My first reaction was “How is this possible”? Even the cousins that I’ve been matched to have only as high as 90% (only 1). I cannot express how proud I was. I, like many other blacks heard the native american stories growing up, and quite frankly, didn’t buy it even as a young girl and never repeated it. Furthermore when I’d hear other blacks saying they had some native american heritage etc. I felt sorry for them. It was as if it wasn’t good enough to be just black/AA. Call it spirit, intiuition or self awareness but somehow I knew what was truly within me even before the DNA results came back.
My name is Toni.And I know for a fact I am part Native American,white,and african.And a host a few more nationalities.My great grandmother was the daughter of a stolen native american and her master a white man.She passed her self off as white.It wasn’t until she had my grandmother the african american and more native american was produced.My great grandmother still taught us about our native american history.I traced it back to the plantation in Alabama where our white family still owns and operates it currently.They also gave information to my great grandmother’s native hertiage.Her mother was taken at the age of two. I am currently working with two tribes that recoginize my great grandmother as native american and getting the proper documentation for my entire family.My great grandmother who died at the age of 97 and her brother who also died at 107 are both noted as native american and white.
I was six weeks old when I was taken from my mother. I have seen my biological family, and they are brown skin, and some of my family is bright skin. I was not told what other nationality I am. our last name is Radcliff. Is there any way that I can take the test to find out where I belong.
Why does it matter? Your so called race vs what race or ethnicities your dna finds can be different. That says alot about people want to be believe. If the notion of race is so concrete then why can your expressed race be different than your dna’s indication of race….
My brothers dna tested as asian, mongolian. My dads great gradmother however is from morrocco. Were black.
For those of you that might be interested, watch the National Geographic’s documentary Human Family Tree…. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-family-tree/. This was the film that prompted me to get the DNA test. It is a wonderful piece on DNA, Ethncity and Race. It explains why what is seen on the outside (preceived race/ethnicity) is not necessarily what is revealed in one’s DNA. Very informative and entertaining.
African Americans are The Hebrews. We are Yah(lord) chosen people that who we are. Native Amreican Indian DNA is of black orgin. I knew A full blood cherokee who complexion was the same as mine. My mother father was cherokee and I am part cherokee, but My DNA is of the Igbo Tribe of Nigeria of West Africa. We need to do a thorough investigation before we make a statement. Your investigation should start in the bible you will find out who the African American are. Start with Amos 9:7 knowledge is power. If you want more proof email me if you are not afraid of the truth. Until you know the truth you will still be a slave.
I forgot to mention, you are only multi-cultural if you are in fact, raised in multiple cultures. My children are enrolled members of my tribe, they have tribal recognition, state recognition and federal recognition as being Native Americans. They speak my tribal language and know our history and customs. They do not call themselves “black” (they are still working out how people are categorized anyways, and very confused, lol) they identify with being “from suqʷamš syayaʔ”, which means they are Suquamish and a part of the larger extended family of Suquamish (our whole tribe is literally related in some way or form) they also know that “daddy Ja” (what they call their biological father” is from Africa, and that their family in Africa speaks Mandinka. They are very much so, bicultural. Also, many do not realize -legitimate- Native Americans (as in, citizens of federally recognized tribes) have separate identity numbers from other Americans similar to a social security number. They are called CDIB numbers -issued by the federal government upon birth- and enrollment numbers, issued by your respective tribe upon time of enrollment. We are dual citizens between our tribe and the U.S. government. We are the only “race” of people in the U.S. that has this type of classification. Our lineage is clearly documented and kept. In the past as well as the present, there have been people who made the conscience choice to break away from their tribes and not raise their children in tribal communities. When they do this, they chose to no longer culturally identify as native americans. There are people who live on my reservation who are 1/32 Suquamish. Yet they are VERY much a part of our tribe and culture, because they were born here, raised here, and KNOW their culture. We also have tribal members who are 1/2 native who couldn’t point out our reservation on a map. I do not consider them culturally or ethnically a part of our tribe, and neither does anybody else. Some of them are not even enrolled members. If you do not have a CDIB, are not a part of a contemporary, in-tact tribal nation, how can you possibly presume to be of “Native American Culture”?
P.S…for those interested, I have round cheekbones, short brown hair, light olive skin (not much sun in my region of the U.S.) and come from a long line of natives with short brown hair and rounded (oval is more descriptive I suppose), olive complected cheeks. My daughter has a full-on afro’, paired with my face and a deep, dark skin tone. My son also has a fro and dark skin. Most never know he is tribal (until they see him standing with my family and recognize how much he looks like my dad). The point is that your family photos prove nothing. Absolute squat. Anybody looking at my kids would just assume they are your average African American…and hardly any would guess they are speakers and carriers of an ancient Native American language and culture.
@Noel, Well, You may have the luxury of knowing what tribe your descendants are from, but many African Americans don’t know what African or native tribes they belong to. I think that’s obvious.