If your narrative of Indigineity is from old history books or Hollywood films its safe to say that your view on indigineity is warped. Among many tribes there is a commonality on what we view indigineity truly is. Indigineity is blood, culture, and belonging to an actual tribal community. It is not one or the other it’s over all encompassing. You may be asking “What makes you a viable source for this topic?”. I am a Quechua man born and raised in New York City. My family come from a full blooded Quechua village called Yungay in Ancash, Peru. My people also migrated to New York City in 1980. We have a Quechua community that exists here as well as access to our food, ceremonies, and festivals. My background in history, genetics, genealogy, and DNA was brought to life 12 years ago when a friend of mine had an assignment in college to research his last name. I later began to develop a curiosity about my fathers side of the family, and that was how it all started. I also have ties to different tribal communities. I’ve also had success in helping people enroll into their tribe in the past. So although this was something recreational for me, some may say I have a lot of experience in this area of work. So you’ve taken a DNA test and it says you have some Native ancestry. Before you start trying to identify as Native ask yourself these questions:

1. Do me, my family, or ancestors belong to a tribal community?

2. Are there documents that confirm this?

3. Has anyone currently or in the past in my family speak an indigenous language?

If you find yourself not able to check any of these off, you are not actually Native. Don’t take my word for it, 23&me themselves even urge you to stop identifying as such and you can read more about it here on their website. You may be a descendant, but not an actual Native person. Paraphrasing a Native journalist named Ruth Hopkins who writes for Indian Country once said “Are you Native? Or a Native Descendant? Are you actually part of a living breathing culture? “ Like always Ruth hits it right on the nail, as always. It’s important to make that distinction, when you do not live a native experience.
I’ve noticed with non native people tend to have a lot of myths about our people. Some myths I’m sure you’ve heard of:

Native People Never Mix:This is actually not true. Some tribes intermarried with other tribes, slaves, and slave owners (for obvious reasons). A lot of eastern band tribes in the United States are actually Bi racial or Tri racial like Taino in the Caribbean. Some tribes in Canada like the Metis are mixed.

My Great Great Grandmother was a Cherokee princess: Women were not typically chiefs and we had no princesses.

If You’re Mixed You’re Not Native: This is also a myth that Non Native people impose due to stereotypes. Non native people look at indigineity as looking phenotypically like our ancestors which is not the reality for some tribes. As states earlier there are many tribes that are federally recognized and the majority do not phenotypically look like their ancestors. Again, being native is belonging to a community, blood, and culture regardless of being half or one fourth.

Native People Originally Came From Asia: This is constantly being researched, but most of us have our own creation stories or how we ended up where our tribe is today. Native people called for re-thinking of the study a while back, you can read more about it here.

All Natives Have A Traditional First/Last Name: This is not true to the slightest. We adopted English, French and Spanish last names. This is the same reason why African Americans may have the last name for ex: Washington. It came from the same reasons of either assimilation or slavery.

One thing worth noting is race really is a social construct. Natives, Europeans, and Africans all mixed. There was mixing before colonization and after colonization. Either we were mixing with other tribes we were trading with, or outsiders. Another thing while receiving your DNA results, you must take them for a grain of salt. It’s important to know how these DNA companies detect your ancestry, and understanding how to decipher your DNA results. Understand that your results are not based on fact but a suggestion on what your DNA may be aligned with. Each DNA company has different markers (or data base) for specific populations, and if a segment of that DNA matches, it marks itself that you may belong to that population (ethnicity). This is why you can take two different DNA tests and come up with different results. This doesn’t mean that your DNA changed, it means there is a different data base picking up your DNA that the other one is lacking. Therefor, the percentages and populations may be off. The only real way to determine your Native ancestry is by doing a paper trail, but once you hit a specific time frame it gets tricky because Native people went through something we call paper genocide.

“"Native Americans do not use genetic ancestry tests to define citizenship…. We have a much stronger sense of what it is to be Native American that is governed by our family relationships, by lived social relations ... that matters to us."- Kim TallBear

(Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the University of Alberta)

What Is Paper Genocide: It was a tactic the colonizers used on Native people to force us to identify as anything but Native, to remove our existence on government records.

Here’s a chart that I created specifically so that if you truly are Native ,or suspect your ancestor is Native to the Americas, it will briefly educate you on the similarities we had historically despite being from different tribes.

Some things you should take into consideration while searching for your ancestors are learning about these key things that happened throughout all of the americas during different periods of times. Here are somethings to learn about when it comes to Native history from North To South America:

Residential Schools (Indian Day School): The government-funded and church-run institutions aimed to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into mainstream European culture. There are similarities between Residential Schools and Indian Day schools, but slight differences. Indian Day School are known to take place in Canada, while residential schools took place in the States.

Blood Quantum: Was a tool used by the colonizer government (of what we known as America) to calculate the amount of "Indian blood" that an individual possesses. The federal government, and specifically the Department of the Interior, issues what is called a "Certified Degree of Indian Blood," and that is a card similar to an ID card. So the way that blood quantum is calculated is by using tribal documents, and usually it's a tribal official or a government official that calculates it. You can read more about it here.

Metis or Mestizx: Both originate from the Latin word mixticius, which means to be mixed. It later on was used to describe a distinct culture and people that blended the mix of European And Native cultures together.

Federal Recognition: The U.S. or Canadian Government defines a Federally recognized tribe as a tribe that has a government-to-government relationship with the United States or Canada with responsibilities, powers, limitations, and obligations that are attached to that designation.

Note: There are 500 tribes federally recognized in the U.S , with 200 tribes that are not recognized federally. According to the census in the U.S Native people only make up 2.2% of the population. In canada its slightly hire which is 4.9%, where as places like peru (25.7%) or Mexico (15.1%) are much higher. These percentages are Native people enrolled or Natives who actually belong to a tribe. It’s also worth mentioning in Central and South America being Indigenous is mainly viewed more on how you were raised. In the States and Canada Blood Quantum was enforced, and there are many who do look at Blood Quantum for the most part as a means to validate your indigineity. Your enrollment to a tribe (in the U.S or Canada) means you along with your family received a Tribal ID which validates your legitimacy for being an enrolled member. Although this is also viewed as a colonized concept there are many who still go by this. There are some cases like Natives being put up for adoption, or adopting someone not ethnically Native, and this too may complicate things.

Some questions to ask are:

Are the tribes without federal recognition no longer native?

Are natives from central and South America who migrated to the U.S no longer native?

Of course not, this is something the American government dictated and was used as another way to separate us.

Spanish Missions: The missions served as agencies of the Church and State to spread the Christian faith to natives and also to pacify them for the State's aims. In short, to colonize Native people. It was the equivalent to Residential schools. As a matter of fact even some Spanish speaking Natives were sent to residential schools.

Hispanic: A term created by President Nixon to lump spanish speakers who migrated to the U.S in 1970. He got the word from when Columbus conquered Dominican Republic & Haiti. The originally meaning of the word means to be “of Spain” or “conquered by Spain”. It means to simply be disconnected adopting spanish culture. In spanish speaking countries There are White, Black, Asian, Or Indigenous hispanics. The difference between an indigenous hispanic vs someone Kiche, Quechua, Mexica, etc is belonging to a specific tribal community.

Note: There are tribes in the United States who encountered the Spanish Missions. There are Natives in the South West and California who speak spanish, have spanish last names, mixed with the spanish, but are enrolled and viewed as Indigenous.

Some questions to ask are:

Are tribes in California or the South West Hispanic?

Philippinos were colonized by the Spanish and they have spanish last names, are they Hispanic?

It’s safe to say the government cherry picks on who is and isnt indigenous and who is or isnt hispanic. But this word has not existed before the 1970’s. Before the 1970’s everyone in Spanish speaking countries were called their true Ethnicity.

Latino: So you have the original meaning of this and what it later became to mean. The original meaning of Latino means to come form where the Romans once ruled. Various scholars have shown, the term emerged in Europe in the early nineteenth century, when the rise of romantic nationalism and scientific racism led Europeans to identify their nations with races and languages. The Latin race was first linked with countries where much of the population spoke a Romance language and practiced Catholicism (those nations in turn formed “Latin Europe”). It is said “Latin America” had first been used in 1856 by Central and South Americans protesting U.S. expansion into the Southern Hemisphere. The idea of Latin America stymies efforts by peoples of indigenous and African descent to democratize the region. “Latin America” was indeed long identified by elites with whiteness, even though most “Latin Americans” were—and are—non-white. To read more about this research click here.

The Issue With Blood Quantum

Some tribes look at Blood quantum, documents, or both for enrollment. Blood quantum minimums restrict who can be a citizen of a tribe. If you've got 25 percent of blood (according to that tribe's blood quantum standards) and you have children with someone who has a lower blood quantum, those kids won't be able to enroll simply due to blood quantum regardless of ancestry proven on papers. This tactic was a way to control who is and isnt Native, with the intention of knowing on paper we would soon be erased. Nowadays a lot of tribes talk about the complexity of the issue. Some tribes would like to keep reinforcing blood quantum for the fact there has been issues through out history of people falsely claiming indigineity for their convenience. This means trying to reap the benefits that may come with a tribe they were falsely claiming to identify as.

Till this day people who take these DNA tests, who are not actually Native try to talk on Indigenous issues they know nothing about. A good example is if your great great great great grandmother was Cherokee, of course sports teams named “Red Skin” would not affect you. You do not look, speak, nor were raised Cherokee. You do not have anyone close to you in your family who received discrimination for being Native and nor did you ever have any close to you that actually experienced boarding schools. You did not grow up practicing your ancestors ways, you are a descendant. It is actually offensive to many of us who actually did live a native experience. We feel often times there is a glorification and fantazation of indigeneity. Almost as if many try to take the beauty of our culture but also have no idea about the negative affects colonization has on our people today such as drug addiction, suicide, or abuse.

One thing to take into consideration is that there are tribes that have been detribalized/colonized having lost their language or culture. There are many indigenous languages that have went extinct, however these tribes are actively revitalizing and reconstructing their language back as much as they can. Some tribes going through revitalization are Taino, Atsina, Barbareño, Mohican, Plains Apache, North Eastern Pomo, Wentu, and more that you can view here. All though the list has not been updated, Taino revitalized their language and dialect Hiwatahia in 2022.

What Is Detribalization?

is the process by which persons who belong to a particular Indigenous ethnic identity or community are detached from that identity or community through the larger effects of colonialism.