Personal Histories

(A version of this was posted to my Tumblr)

I really like Roberta Estes's article about the myth of having a Native American grandmother, and how many times there's some truth behind the myth. I'm part Acadian, and mine is one of those families with a strong oral history of Native American ancestry, albeit several generations back. I have a pretty good paper trail already, but there are a lot of good resources mentioned. But I can't honestly write this post without talking about "Native American Grandmother" trope, explained fully in Stuff White People Do:

These are the white searchers (sometimes called "pretendians") who hope to fill up a certain emptiness in their bleached-out, whitened identity, but want little part of actual, ongoing Native American struggles. Many of them will never go to a reservation to experience the results of white genocidal practices, even if they do find Native American blood in their DNA. They're rarely willing to fight for treaty rights, nor help with such contemporary problems as compulsory sterilization or substance abuse. Indeed, they're rarely willing to even acknowledge these problems, or do much of anything else that goes beyond vague, sentimental ideas of supposedly authentic Indian-ness.

This is hugely problematic for a lot of reasons. For one, it's any easy way to deny privilege (and ease your guilt a little), but I think, like Estes, that a lot of times there is some truth to the stories, especially if yours is a family that's been in the U.S. for many generations. (At the risk of sounding this a little US-centric. When I say "Native American ancestry," I mean including but not limited to the United States. I think this is grossly overlooked when people talk about the Native American ancestry.)  And it's while it's never cool to tell someone what part of their heritage they can or can't claim ,  I want to learn more, and at the same time can't help thinking, "What part of this can I embrace -- acknowledge even -- when I am seen in society as white?"

I also want to talk a little about DNA testing, which was mentioned toward the end of the original article. I can see autosomal testing as an option if you've hit a wall in your research and can afford the cost. I can't and, as I've said before, my Native American ancestry being several generations back, it might not show up in an autosomal DNA test in the first place. Plus, it hits a little too close to blood quatums. Testing Y Chromosomes and Mitochondrial DNA to see which haplogroup your ancestry may have belonged to is also risky and expensive, and each only represents one ancestral line. Rather than rounding up several cousins for cheek-swabbing, if you know your family tree pretty well, you can check something like Ybase or Family Tree DNA and see if someone sharing any of your ancestral lines has logged on to the database. I've been able to do this for a handful of my male lines. Most are in R1b, the most common European haplogroup, with a smaller selection in E. (I have some sephardic jewish ancestry as well, and haplogroup E is pretty common among sephardic jews.) Most of my male lines are European, which is typical of family histories of native American ancestry. It's possible, though incredibly difficult, to find your matrilineal line online, but women usually took the names of their husbands, which makes searching a names database impossible.