The Longhouse: A Gathering For Steampunker Of Aboriginal Descent

[chicar]

A place for every native american,saami, yakout, australian aborignal, etc, full blood ,half blood or in between.

I'm personally of the third category.

[MWBailey]

less than half in my case.

[J. Wilhelm]

May I ask a question regarding the former Spanish territories?  It seems to me that a great number of people "south of the border: qualify.  What is the position of North American (i.e. "North of the Border") first people's on kinship with the South of the Border Natives and Mestizos?

Regarding the 1890s -1900s in my Mexican family: In my case the French family (great grand parents who arrived in 1890's to Mexico), whom I oft expound on in this forum,  married into a Mexican family who were fairly close to 50% native and 50% Spanish.  While my other 1/4 side were an Italian family who married a Basque family who themselves were immigrant farmers and had married into Native farmers from Northern Mexico.  The  presence of Native blood in me is fairly obvious, as I sport an inexplicable perennial tan (very useful, actually) except in tjose parts of my body never hit by the sun, in which case my skin is very white.  Yet I can see the French eyes and Italian cheek bone structures and mandible, Basque torso and bone structure quite clearly. People in the Basque side tend to have blue eyes are always born blond or very light brown and their hair darkens to brown toward adulthood. Some family members look all white and others look tanned, seemingly at random (that's how genetics work depending which half of the DNA you get for each part of your body).  Once mixed, though you acquire a new identity, and yet never forget the past in spite of having become culturally "Western" people as the Asians would call it.

My American side- the remaining 50%  is half Dutch and half English.  Admittedly the French/Italian/Basque/Native side is far more interesting and illustrious if I say so myself)...  I have yet to find an interesting member of the family on the Brit/Dutch side...  All I know is that the English side were fairly smart in the brain department, as were the Basque side, whom I know to possess extreme intelligence.  I need to learn more about the Brit/Dutch side, but relations with my bio father and his family are very limited...

In Mexico 30% of the present population is still 90% or better pure Native (Mexican definition of Native), and roughly 10% of the population are 90% or better pure European - including a sizeable percentage of non-Hispanic European immigrants, especially after the 19th. C.  The rest (Mestizo) are ranging from 90% Native through to 90% European (pretty liberal definition by the Mexican Govt.). with a small percentage (0.3%)  of Afro-mestizos, especially along the Eastern coast of Veracruz.

It is very hard to point to a particular Native heritage, as the Spanish cultural influence wiped out much of their cultural identity such that today only 5% of the population still speak their native tongue... Still you can guesstimate which Native group you belong to if you can trace yourself to a geographical location.

Since both Mexican sides were from the Central-Mexican region of State of Guanajuato and the State of Mexico, that makes me part Nahua, Otomi, or Chichimec or any permutation of the three.


~ ~ ~
Some examples of Mexican Native

President Benito Juarez (several terms 1858-1872): (Zapotec Native, South Western Mexico, State of Oaxaca)


A modern day Huichol Native and Child (Huichol, north central western coast of Mexico)


Composer Armando Manzanero  (Maya - Yucatan and Quintana Roo Peninsula and Southern Mexico, State of Chiapas.  Outside of Mexico, the whole of Guatemala and Belize)

[Hurricane Annie]

I put myself in a 5th dimension . According to family lore there is "dark Scots'   running through the veins. I have not been able to trace the family back very far  , 7 generations.   I can can find photos of  obviously mixed racial types  that pop up   through the time line.  This would go back to far to be  Maori   and I would expect it to be  from perhaps one or more of the other colonies,  trading  countries or pogrom .


Does anyone have suggestions ?

4rth  right top row [ in the striped vest]  c1900


Mrs Bowater [ aunt of above chap] c 1850



2nd row 3rd and 4th from left [ cousins of chap above]  c1890s


extended family  [ grandmother, father/ uncle of  below cousins  c 1977



Aunt of below c 1980


Current batch of cousins  [ gt gt & gt gt gt grandchildren of above chap]

[J. Wilhelm]

I put myself in a 5th dimension . According to family lore there is "dark Scots'   running through the veins. I have not been able to trace the family back very far  , 7 generations.   I can can find photos of  obviously mixed racial types  that pop up   through the time line.  This would go back to far to be  Maori   and I would expect it to be  from perhaps one or more of the other colonies,  trading  countries or pogrom .

History holds the answers.  Exactly what were their traditional occupations, to have ended in the Pacific? At 7 generations you should be able to see some historical trends.  Genealogy (usually through church records) is most helpful.  Less helpful but providing strong peripheral evidence is family name origin/history if you can trace back to  particulat geographical location, a village, a province, etc., where some occupations would be common.  This helps in determining whether there was common interracial marriage in those conditions (e.g. New Orleans, Louisiana's Criole population who over the years went from colonial European population ("Criole proper") to an Afro-French mix).

[J. Wilhelm]

My apologies ladies and gentlemen, for I have made a major faux-pas.  Mr. Chicar's recent mention of the Saami/Sami peoples as indigenous people, has reminded me that the Basque are also indigenous people.  So I correct this omission:

The Basques or Euskaldunak are a very old group in Western Europe who precede the Celts and (more controversially among scientists)  are presumed to go back 7000 years, which means their presence in the region could even predate the development of agriculture (actually this finding is now contested by recent genetic studies- but they definitely preceded the Celts).  The Basque have no known language ties with the Indo-European family of languages.  Their land is known as Euskal Herria or Euzkadi in their own language , also known as Vasconia, and where the mediaeval Kingdom of Pamplona (aka Navarre) was located.  The difference, of course, being that the Navarrese were incorporated into mediaeval society and later integrated with the Spanish Kingdom.  Good for them!  Certainly the most interesting guys in my family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_people

Spoiler: ShowHide

Since the Basque language is unrelated to Indo-European, it has long been thought to represent the people or culture that occupied Europe before the spread of Indo-European languages there. A comprehensive analysis of Basque genetic patterns has shown that Basque genetic uniqueness predates the arrival of agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula, about 7,000 years ago.[5]

It is thought that Basques are a remnant of the early inhabitants of Western Europe, specifically those of the Franco-Cantabrian region. Basque tribes were already mentioned in Roman times by Strabo and Pliny, including the Vascones, the Aquitani, and others. There is enough evidence to support the hypothesis that at that time and later they spoke old varieties of the Basque language (see: Aquitanian language).

In the Early Middle Ages (up to the 9th or 10th century) the territory between the Ebro and Garonne rivers was known as Vasconia, a vaguely defined cultural area and political entity struggling to fend off pressure from the Iberian Visigothic kingdom and Muslim rule to the south, as well as the Franks advancing from the north. A Basque presence is also mentioned on the southern banks of the Loire river (7th to 8th centuries). By the turn of the millennium, following the Muslim invasions and Frankish expansion under Charlemagne, the territory of Vasconia (to become Gascony) fragmented into different feudal regions. For example, the viscountcies of Soule and Labourd formed out of former tribal systems and minor realms (County of Vasconia), while south of the Pyrenees the Kingdom of Castile, Kingdom of Pamplona and the Pyrenean counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe, Ribagorza (later merged into the Kingdom of Aragon), and Pallars arose as the main regional powers containing Basque populations in the 9th century.

[W. S. Marble]

I put myself in a 5th dimension . According to family lore there is "dark Scots'   running through the veins. I have not been able to trace the family back very far  , 7 generations.   I can can find photos of  obviously mixed racial types  that pop up   through the time line.  This would go back to far to be  Maori   and I would expect it to be  from perhaps one or more of the other colonies,  trading  countries or pogrom .


Does anyone have suggestions ?

4rth  right top row [ in the striped vest]  c1900


Mrs Bowater [ aunt of above chap] c 1850



2nd row 3rd and 4th from left [ cousins of chap above]  c1890s


extended family  [ grandmother, father/ uncle of  below cousins  c 1977



Aunt of below c 1980


Current batch of cousins  [ gt gt & gt gt gt grandchildren of above chap]

No suggestions, other than to say "what a thoroughly charming family!"  It amazes me how the blending of ancestors from different lands so works to make descendants even more attractive than they already would have been...

[J. Wilhelm]

Photos of the Day.  President Obama visits the North Dakota reservation ehere the Standing Rock Sioux tribe resides.

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/obama-visits-indian-country-in-n-dakota-slideshow/

Since Mr. Chicar mentioned her:

Sofia Jannok (Saami/Sami, indigenous people of Lapland in Scandinavia i.e. northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GZu8xECOdw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU-np8zS4HQ

[CorneliaCarton]

I have Nordic heritage but I think there's Saami in there somewhere.

[J. Wilhelm]

And I just found this

Oki Dub Ainu band (Ainu, indigenous people from Hokkaido, North Japan, and Sakhalin, Russia, and the Kuril Islands)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X9QxFaHJwA

[J. Wilhelm]

I have Nordic heritage but I think there's Saami in there somewhere.

Welcome to the Longhouse! Given that native peoples are to be found all around the world, there must be more people in the forum.  The Interwebs are full of examples.  I think that will bring more people in. 

[Hurricane Annie]

I put myself in a 5th dimension . According to family lore there is "dark Scots'   running through the veins. I have not been able to trace the family back very far  , 7 generations.   I can can find photos of  obviously mixed racial types  that pop up   through the time line.  This would go back to far to be  Maori   and I would expect it to be  from perhaps one or more of the other colonies,  trading  countries or pogrom .


Does anyone have suggestions ?

4rth  right top row [ in the striped vest]  c1900


Mrs Bowater [ aunt of above chap] c 1850



2nd row 3rd and 4th from left [ cousins of chap above]  c1890s


extended family  [ grandmother, father/ uncle of  below cousins  c 1977



Aunt of below c 1980


Current batch of cousins  [ gt gt & gt gt gt grandchildren of above chap]

No suggestions, other than to say "what a thoroughly charming family!"  It amazes me how the blending of ancestors from different lands so works to make descendants even more attractive than they already would have been...

Thank you  for  kind words.

[Hurricane Annie]

I put myself in a 5th dimension . According to family lore there is "dark Scots'   running through the veins. I have not been able to trace the family back very far  , 7 generations.   I can can find photos of  obviously mixed racial types  that pop up   through the time line.  This would go back to far to be  Maori   and I would expect it to be  from perhaps one or more of the other colonies,  trading  countries or pogrom .

History holds the answers.  Exactly what were their traditional occupations, to have ended in the Pacific? At 7 generations you should be able to see some historical trends.  Genealogy (usually through church records) is most helpful.  Less helpful but providing strong peripheral evidence is family name origin/history if you can trace back to  particulat geographical location, a village, a province, etc., where some occupations would be common.  This helps in determining whether there was common interracial marriage in those conditions (e.g. New Orleans, Louisiana's Criole population who over the years went from colonial European population ("Criole proper") to an Afro-French mix).

So far I have not been able to go back  beyond the  generations that came to NZ.   They came from the usual  settler sailing points in Scotland , Ireland and England.   The common theme on the maternal  side of the family appears to be Wesleyan Methodist  fervour.   Both sides come from coastal  port areas.  Of the photos supplied from my maternal side  :

Hughey    from Lecumpher, Londonderry,  [Catholic ,  stone mason/ carpenter]
Hollard from Charlton Mackrell Somerset    [Methodist lay preacher, agricultural labourer/ sawyer] 1 son rumoured hanged for bush ranging in Australia
Robinson  from  Isle of Ely  Cambridgeshire [ Methodist lay preacher , tailor/ draper ]  Connections with various Methodist missions in NZ. 

   For the  early 1800s  these steerage  immigrants were highly literate. Some of the "christian " names of the Methodist branches of the  family  were traditional Hebrew names.

The occupations that appear to trend down the generations are writing, acting, art, design  and   horticulture.

James Laurenson  [stage name]  notorious for playing an Australian aboriginal main character  also for having the 1st gay kiss on BBC with Ian Mc Kellen




on my paternal side they were  soldiers and sailors , while I have no photos to put up it does explain the   Moorish  appearance of  some of that branch.

[J. Wilhelm]

*snip*
So far I have not been able to go back  beyond the  generations that came to NZ.   They came from the usual  settler sailing points in Scotland , Ireland and England.   The common theme on the maternal  side of the family appears to be Wesleyan Methodist  fervour.   Both sides come from coastal  port areas.  Of the photos supplied from my maternal side  :

Hughey    from Lecumpher, Londonderry,  [Catholic ,  stone mason/ carpenter]
Hollard from Charlton Mackrell Somerset    [Methodist lay preacher, agricultural labourer/ sawyer] 1 son rumoured hanged for bush ranging in Australia
Robinson  from  Isle of Ely  Cambridgeshire [ Methodist lay preacher , tailor/ draper ]  Connections with various Methodist missions in NZ.  

  For the  early 1800s  these steerage  immigrants were highly literate. Some of the "christian " names of the Methodist branches of the  family  were traditional Hebrew names.

The occupations that appear to trend down the generations are writing, acting, art, design  and   horticulture.

James Laurenson  [stage name]  notorious for playing an Australian aboriginal main character  also for having the 1st gay kiss on BBC with Ian Mc Kellen




on my paternal side they were  soldiers and sailors , while I have no photos to put up it does explain the   Moorish  appearance of  some of that branch.

Well that already provides some starting points.  I may be restating the obvious, but people inland will tend to be less likely to be mixed in regions of the world where racial mixing is not the norm (as opposed to the Americas where racial mixing was a set political policy in the Spanish colonies).  Not only do immigrants or their children have to deal with society's norms and judgement, but also it is much simpler for people from foreign lands to have close encounters with native people along the coastal areas.  Sailors would be at the top of the list as possible candidates for exactly that reason as well. So your paternal side is much more likely and while not impossible, I think it's less likely to have happened in Charlton Mackrell and Isle of Ely as these are inland communities.  If I go out of my way to imagine a possibility in Lecumpher, Northern Ireland, I'd say that Catholics could have been a bit more tolerant of racial miscegenation, especially in the light of the state policies since the 1600 in the mainland Spanish colonies, which basically always had a very strong interdependence with the Catholic Church, but even then I don't see the chance based on the occupations or geographic location (e.g. imagine a scenario where a person comes from some Catholic part of the planet because he/she is brought from those lands to the British Isles by a Catholic priest, for whatever reason.  Likewise a wandering priest may "misbehave" overseas, with the unintended consequences coming back to haunt said priest).

[MWBailey]

~ ~ ~
Some examples of Mexican Native

President Benito Juarez (several terms 1858-1872): (Zapotec Native, South Western Mexico, State of Oaxaca)

The official family explanation on my Dad's side of the family is that we are part Choctaw (but we don't have lot numbers or anything). However, intriguingly enough, the gentleman above (Presidente Juarez) could be my Dad, if his hair were white and sparse and the cheekbones were slightly more celtic. Everything else is eerily almost identical, or as near as I can determine, given that it's (apparently) a black and white photograph.

On my mother's side, a rather famous Comanche war chief (cousin, not direct antecedent)'s portrait looks similar to the woman in your post.The Comanche were known to take Spanish and Mexican captives and adopt them. What I am getting at is that it might not always be as simple as having separate tribes and families, and separate stories thereof, as others' posts here seem to indicate.

[J. Wilhelm]

Indeed.  it's very hard to trace and prove purity, identity, etc.  Especially prior to DNA analysis, not everybody had genealogical records, so the measures are pretty arbitrary.  Also on the absorption of other peoples into Native tribes, that is also true.

Let's keep in mind that Europeans have been on the American continent for more than 500 years!! Being Mexican means that you have some  Native blood maybe a little, maybe a lot, but the tribe itself has either disappeared or mixed  or it may still be there, but you can never assure yourself 100 % of the particular identity.  It's more like a "consensus;" a game of numbers. The problem in the United States is that the number of surviving natives is extremely small compared to the rest of the Americas.  A larger population helps, actually in tracing origins.  After the Spanish were done with their "social engineering" exercise, most of the native uniqueness of each native civilisation had been blurred - but not erased completely... (read below).

Spoiler: ShowHide

In Mexico what you have is pockets of indigenous peoples who can be identified by body/facial features and spoken language.  More modern techniques involve DNA analysis and such but that has been mostly absent from the cataloguing.  If you live for any measurable amount of time (decades) in Mexico, you will soon start seeing the differences between native peoples.  The Yucatec Maya and Oaxacan Zapotec (Benito Juarez) are two examples who are very distinctive and look like no others in Mexico.

Even though I said that only 5% of the population still speak their native tongue, that percentage was much higher at the start of the 20th. C. with my grandfather's nanny/maid in the 1920s in Mexico city being a full native Nahua.  The maid regularly spoke Nahuatl with her brother according to my grandfather's childhood memories (the brother used to sell live chickens he hauled on his back in cages on the streets of Mexico City!

So the ethnography is well mapped because you have much greater numbers of natives and you can trace their language and correlate with art and genetic features.  Hard as they tried, the Spanish could never truly incorporate all of the natives into a single "mass" of people.  Far from it. And even if they mixed, the resulting Mexicans still carried their own native features.  You CAN tell when someone comes from Veracruz, or Oaxaca or the Yucatan, or Central Mexico -  even if they are Mestizo (in fact a lighter complexion is no impediment at all!).  The modern day accents and inflexions of their spoken Spanish also betray their origin.  Yucatec Maya speak with a very strong accent (somewhat akin to the harshness of a celtic accent in spoken English)  and Chiapas or Guatemalan Maya speak differently, very softly.

Mayans are short and stocky people (Armando Manzanero, above) with a very strong identifiable accent. Central Mexicans are taller and lighter skinned and tend to be very verbose and soft spoken.  Translations of books written during the Conquest of Tenochtitlan (1521), and translated by friars into Spanish reveal that the Aztec (Mexica, Nahua) spoke very softly and were very verbose in their speech, often using synonyms to repeat phases over and over again.  Well educated Central Mexicans still carry that speech pattern today in their canonical Castillian Spanish, and I noticed when I was in high-school and compared all the forms of spoken Spanish around the world.

All you have to do is tune to the news channel or hear academic commentary (not from the American- Miami-based Spanish networks like Univison please, as those are a Frankenstein of South and Central American programming; instead tune to Televisa news broadcasts from Mexico City) .

Mexican Spanish is as canonical Castillian as you will get, but it's not spoken the same way as Iberian Spanish like in Madrid, and those differences are true remnants from the past (again like Celtic accents - "they're're still there").  I still have to see a good online catalogue of Native Peoples in Mexico, though.

[Hurricane Annie]

*snip*
So far I have not been able to go back  beyond the  generations that came to NZ.   They came from the usual  settler sailing points in Scotland , Ireland and England.   The common theme on the maternal  side of the family appears to be Wesleyan Methodist  fervour.   Both sides come from coastal  port areas.  Of the photos supplied from my maternal side  :

Hughey    from Lecumpher, Londonderry,  [Catholic ,  stone mason/ carpenter]
Hollard from Charlton Mackrell Somerset    [Methodist lay preacher, agricultural labourer/ sawyer] 1 son rumoured hanged for bush ranging in Australia
Robinson  from  Isle of Ely  Cambridgeshire [ Methodist lay preacher , tailor/ draper ]  Connections with various Methodist missions in NZ.  

  For the  early 1800s  these steerage  immigrants were highly literate. Some of the "christian " names of the Methodist branches of the  family  were traditional Hebrew names.

The occupations that appear to trend down the generations are writing, acting, art, design  and   horticulture.

James Laurenson  [stage name]  notorious for playing an Australian aboriginal main character  also for having the 1st gay kiss on BBC with Ian Mc Kellen




on my paternal side they were  soldiers and sailors , while I have no photos to put up it does explain the   Moorish  appearance of  some of that branch.

Well that already provides some starting points.  I may be restating the obvious, but people inland will tend to be less likely to be mixed in regions of the world where racial mixing is not the norm (as opposed to the Americas where racial mixing was a set political policy in the Spanish colonies).  Not only do immigrants or their children have to deal with society's norms and judgement, but also it is much simpler for people from foreign lands to have close encounters with native people along the coastal areas.  Sailors would be at the top of the list as possible candidates for exactly that reason as well. So your paternal side is much more likely and while not impossible, I think it's less likely to have happened in Charlton Mackrell and Isle of Ely as these are inland communities.  If I go out of my way to imagine a possibility in Lecumpher, Northern Ireland, I'd say that Catholics could have been a bit more tolerant of racial miscegenation, especially in the light of the state policies since the 1600 in the mainland Spanish colonies, which basically always had a very strong interdependence with the Catholic Church, but even then I don't see the chance based on the occupations or geographic location (e.g. imagine a scenario where a person comes from some Catholic part of the planet because he/she is brought from those lands to the British Isles by a Catholic priest, for whatever reason.  Likewise a wandering priest may "misbehave" overseas, with the unintended consequences coming back to haunt said priest).

Your interracial interaction theory is  logical and common sense and deepens the mystery.  To confound the issue further   [ at risk  of sounding like a family of circus freaks]  various  genetic physical traits and anomalies indicate   Nigerian , Iraqi or Berber  descent. There was little contact between these ethnic groups and the British empire [ soldiers , missionaries , sailors etc ]  until the  1800s  - 1900s  heavily reducing the chances  of "social interaction".

Family tradition , first names , daily ritual and food preparation  would indicate a  Jewish Semitic influence hidden  in the mists of time.  Physical traits such as mid line diastema [ tooth gap],  hypermobilty syndrome  [ double joints] , wide skin tone and hair  variation including siblings, neonatal lunago  etc are all prevalent in the  above mentioned ethnic  gene pools.

More oddly  , my parents  do not descend from a common area  , my father's family being more recent immigrants  from elsewhere; yet both branches share  similar traditions  and  traits  as above  that are  not common  in  western populations.

[J. Wilhelm]

You know?  I think we are well within the technical ability to narrow the possibilities with a DNA/RNA analysis.  Have you thought about doing this?  If I understand correctly the major human branches have already been mapped all the way to South Africa, where the oldest human lineage emerged.  You can tell whether your lineage came from the time when humans still lived in Africa, or when they moved to Asia minor and split East/West, and so, on.  The idea being to find from which human branch (at which height of the tree) your ancestors came from.  That might help to determine a nationality.  Then you try to correlate the geographical region with known travels your ancestors could have made.  You can discard the list of ancestors who don't match the genetic markers (e.g. if the DNA/RNA points to Madagascar you can already discard those names who were unlikely to have gone to Madagascar).

Basically you would do it yourself an perhaps ask some family members on each separate line you can identify.

Unfortunately 7 generations already takes you to a time when navigation basically made anything possible, so you have too many leads.  You need to narrow a bit.


~ ~ ~

Wow.  I just found the most interesting Samba/Bossa Nova sung by Sofia Jannok...  (yeah I know!).  Some of the lyrics (and the title- as this was written by someone else) are Portuguese, but I think she's mixing Sami as well)  sounds really good

Mu Moras by Sofia Jannok
Sofia Jannok " White"- 07 Mu Moras [My Sorrow]

[rovingjack]

I wouldn't depend too much on genetic testing. My genetic parents were both 1/4 native. The Paternal being Cherokee, the maternal being Haudenosaunee. But my gene testing shows mostly western european, with some eastern european mostly on my mothers side, and a suggestion of possible mongolian which is not evident as any large amount and might be the misinterpretation of Native lines.

My fathers side practically screams it's heritage from a very tight region and not anywhere else despite his being the son of a half Cherokee man. That region is Doggerland.  and Island off the cost of europe that sank into the sea about 10,000 years ago.

So while having Genetic heritage of Native Americans, I've apparently not got the detectable genes to prove it. And I'm technically 1/4. Even have data on the individual nations and clans.

But as I was adopted and raised outside, not sure I could ever claim any if I wanted to. I think mostly I'd like to just connect with it. Much as I'm doing with The scottish, irish (possibly travelers) and eventually the dutch and french portions.

[J. Wilhelm]

I wouldn't depend too much on genetic testing. My genetic parents were both 1/4 native. The Paternal being Cherokee, the maternal being Haudenosaunee. But my gene testing shows mostly western european, with some eastern european mostly on my mothers side, and a suggestion of possible mongolian which is not evident as any large amount and might be the misinterpretation of Native lines.

My fathers side practically screams it's heritage from a very tight region and not anywhere else despite his being the son of a half Cherokee man. That region is Doggerland.   and Island off the cost of europe that sank into the sea about 10,000 years ago.

So while having Genetic heritage of Native Americans, I've apparently not got the detectable genes to prove it. And I'm technically 1/4. Even have data on the individual nations and clans.

But as I was adopted and raised outside, not sure I could ever claim any if I wanted to. I think mostly I'd like to just connect with it. Much as I'm doing with The scottish, irish (possibly travelers) and eventually the dutch and french portions.

Perhaps.  It's technically possible, yet very unusual that for every single chromosome not one got any native (at least there should be one chromosome out there of the 23 pairs when you were conceived which has a few bits of DNA passed from the native side) .

The human branch testing I was talking about is most likely related to RNA which is only passed through the maternal line. It's basically a comparison between generations, and large swathes of population to see how far away you are from the "first humans."  I guess it depends on the type of test we are talking about.

As far as being able to "officially" claim heritage... that is more a North American idea rather than a Continental American idea.  In the US, it's all about belonging to one of the Indian Nations.  The preoccupation with exquisite fractional percentages of native blood, and whether you qualify or not is much more acute in North America, because so little Native blood is still left, whereas a full third of the population south of the border is still all native, basically.  Down there, there is no certificate of entitlement for being native.  You just are.  Join the club (here's your card   ).

On native self identity and the future of native peoples in the Americas.... (WARNING: Wall of text in spoiler below).

Spoiler: ShowHide

Down South, some people choose to deny it.  Colour of skin is socially important in former Spanish colonies due to the historical social stratification being directly tied to colour of skin and naturally tied with economic and political power in traditional colonial Spain.  Things radically changed after independence (see President Benito Juarez again, and a good number of military heroes from the independence war).

However, some attitudes about colour of skin are still there socially in every-day life today, even if unofficially.  This presents mass-psychology challenges (self identity, standards of beauty, etc.) for Latin America - the price we pay in exchange for being able to say that natives were not exterminated.

Some people embrace the native as a new identity (Mestizo), which is the idea that you are neither European nor Native but something new, a purely nationalistic ideal ("La Raza").  Most Mexicans think that way, at least 60%. And some people choose to be all native and discard their European roots altogether, choosing native names for themselves and their children, even if they are not all-100% native, mostly for political reasons (example: Cuahtemoc Cardenas, former Mayor of Mexico City and communist party leader).

It's a highly complex exploration of your self-identity that you have to define on your own, and you have to make a choice, and not let anyone else make it for you (hence the very "lax" definition by the Mexican government).  I guess 10% can claim to be caucasian and have no problem with that, and 30% can claim to be all native - but socially that is still a handicap down there.  So identifying as native is a deep choice rather than a feather on your cap. does that make sense?

It's a price we can pay TBH.  Better alive and mixed than just a memory.  In fact, what the Spanish started in terms of racial mixing, well... simply can't be undone.  They knew what they were doing, because they had done it since the fall of the Roman Empire when the Visigoths subjugated the Roman-celtic population in Spain after the year 400 AD.  They are the ones who came up with the idea of promoting racial mixing while simultaneously maintaining social strata  based on colour of skin...  After Spain became a country and Columbus came back, they just repeated the same process in the Americas as a matter of policy.  As Latin America became independent, the social strata began to dismantle, but the racial mixing was already advanced by 1800.  And still don't forget Benito Juarez.

This is a 500 year old process that is now beginning to happen in the United States in the 21st. C. and I'm not talking about just Natives and Europeans but all races as well because of immigration, globalisation, wars, and changes of attitudes in the USA (I used to work for the Census Bureau).

There is no stopping it, and I don't think we should even try to stop it.  It's the way of the future, except that for North Americans wide-spread racial mixing is a new idea for the late 20th. C and 21st. C. (except for perhaps the Creole people in Louisiana and other French in Canada).

For Latin America, it's an old hat.  When Europeans came into the Americas, they basically "bought the farm" so to speak - but only the Spanish understood that (which makes them different from the English, Dutch and other Europeans who came, except, save the French who also were more open).

And Europeans are still coming (Mexico is undergoing a wave of international immigration right now... from Europe and even Asia).  There's no turning back. In the future, some will still look European, some will be clearly mixed (probably the majority), and others will be mostly Native, like the lovely people I posted in photos above. But all Continental Americans will have some native in us.  Like a homoeostatic balance rather than "put them all in the blender and now they are all the same."  That is not how demographics work.

The republics of the former Soviet Union are a  good example of diversity and mixing between races over a very long period of time on a continental scale. Just like Russians say they "are not Western people", the truth is that American Natives are now Western people, and Western people in the Americas will be native even if just a little bit...  surprising, but true.

[CorneliaCarton]

I would like to get genetic testing. I don't know my full heritage, so it would be fun to see where I come from.

[J. Wilhelm]

There are a lot of genetic tests.  I just doubt that all are equally good, though.  Lots of services around.  My bio father was trying to convince me to have a test to see if he could link the our surname in our family to other records in the US (a horrible task because it's a name as common as "Smith" in the USA)

[SeVeNeVeS]

100% Paleface here. 1/4 Bog Irish, the rest Germanic.

Wasnt there a TV program in the UK that tested DNA and almost 70% or something of the people living Up North were of Viking decent/ genes? Or am I making that up?

~SeVeN~

[J. Wilhelm]

100% Paleface here. 1/4 Bog Irish, the rest Germanic.

Wasnt there a TV program in the UK that tested DNA and almost 70% or something of the people living Up North were of Viking decent/ genes? Or am I making that up?

~SeVeN~

Is this what you are talking about? http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/10/one-million-brits-viking-descendants_n_4933186.html/

[J. Wilhelm]

Andean Native girl, Bolivia  Photo by Ximena Bedregal (2010). http://www.mamametal.com/