He is now denying the validity of dna tests. I don’t want to say the past 35 years of having him treat me worse than he treats his sister had anything to do with his assumptions of my dna, but he was upset to learn that I am more Irish than him. I wonder what he thought of my mother before these results…
The only way I would touch these DNA tests is if I was somehow assured that it was completely anonymous and would be shredded as soon as I’ve seen it.
They literally turn around and sell your data, grouped along with others, to whoever wants it, and then get hacked and lose personal info. Hot mess.
It’s not easy, but it can be done anonymously.
You can delete your dna after submitting it and viewing your results. Most dna sites have that option. Just curious, what are you afraid someone would do with your dna results? The government in America already keeps dna results on all babies born in the 80’s and later.
You have more to risk by joining NDMP to be a bone marrow donor, but in that case you’d probably want them to use your dna to find patients you could help. I honestly think everyone should join NDMP. I don’t work for them, or have anything to gain from their organization. I just think everyone should join and help people with cancer.
Just curious, what are you afraid someone would do with your dna results? The government in America already keeps dna results on all babies born in the 80’s and later.
Corporations aren’t exactly known for being honest or fair, or following the law, when they have valuable data to sell. They might tell you that they’ll delete your data but there’s always a chance that they’ll retain it and sell it under the table if someone makes a compelling offer. Or an employee could steal the data and sell it secretly, or they could have a security breach and someone could make off with it.
Why would any of that be bad? Because health insurance companies are salivating over new ways to deny your claims (or crank up your premiums) and genetic data that reveals an elevated risk of a serious condition is a damned good excuse for them to do just that.
I’ve heard before that there is a tendency of these tests to over-report European ancestry and under-report or misidentify ethnic minorities. Something to do with the underlying datasets not being inclusive enough because those populations are smaller and don’t purchase these DNA tests at the same rate as Western Europeans.
There also seems to be a weird fetishisation of First Nations ancestry in parts of the US. I’ve also been told I have Cherokee ancestors, but it didn’t show in my dna ancestory either.
I was also told our family was part Cherokee. It’s apparently a super common claim
I’m struggling to process that this is so common… Also had this in my family growing up
I’m up in northern Ontario in Canada and I had a French Canadian neighbor who loved watching John Wayne movies. He often told me that he had Cherokee ancestry too.
I told him a hundred times that this wasn’t Cherokee territory because I was full blooded Ojibwe Cree from this area and we had never heard of Cherokee. I kept telling him that he was probably part Ojibwe or Algonquin which is who the French mixed with in our area … but he really wanted to be a John Wayne movie Indian.
My mother always claimed that some amount of greats-grandmother was a Cherokee princess, but I’ve always thought it was bunk.
It’s unstated racism.
If someone in your past could get a good tan, it was common to say that they were part “< insert native american tribe from your area>” because you definitely didn’t want to be perceived as part black.
Look up the “one-drop rule”.
I’m sure that was a factor in many of these instances. That said in our family my impression was it was more of a “here’s something special about us” type thing, like there’s nothing otherwise noteworthy.
I have documented ancestry of Choctaw, card and everything, but my genetic test show 0%. The blood amount is quite low at 1/128
This could be because of the way genes work, roll the dice enough time and there are no genes left. On the other hand many Native Americans are not keen on giving away genetic data after their history with the US.
I’m not saying you are or aren’t part native American, but genetic tests are limited.
You’re probably aware of this monument to the Choctaw in Ireland but in case you aren’t…
Wiki page with the detail and reason. We will never forget.
That’d be seven generations back. For me that’d be in the late 1700s. Did they keep records for that back then?
Not surprising. My mother was told by her mother that one of her great grandmothers was full blooded native (no specific tribe) which would make me 1/16 native. DNA showed 0% and one my mother took showed 0% for her. She chalked it up to her mother being nuts but it is a fairly common American family myth.
Yeah, I had one of these in my family as well. I didn’t do the DNA test but went on ancestry and kinda pieced stuff together way back to when the majority of the family tree crossed over the Atlantic. There’s maybe one or two people that are suspect (orphan like circumstances). I can’t follow their trees or place them but I don’t have strong confidence either of them were the missing Native American. It’s made harder by the common practice of making Native Americans take more English names.
I do wonder if the DNA testing could get it wrong in any case. There are so few Native Americans still alive to collect the DNA and really get a picture of “this is what Native American DNA looks like.” There were a lot of Native American nations before Europeans showed up … and a lot were driven to near extinction between smallpox and war.
I’m also the only man I know that’s got an effectively hairless chest naturally despite a lot of hairy European lineage… That’s been linked to Native Americans (or was at least more common) so maybe there is something to the stories. I don’t particularly want to take a DNA test to see what it would say.
In my case the story was definitely believable when I was younger. My grandmother and one of her sisters were orphaned and sent to a workhorse because my great grandparents could not afford them. I used to think my grandmother did not know her parents but using ancestry.com my mom connected with someone who she thought was simply a family friend growing up but turned out to be her cousin from her aunt who was not orphaned. Going through my ancestry, there is almost certainly nobody who is native. Grandma may have been a little nuts (one of the caregivers beat her do bad that she lost an eye so being a little nutty is fairly understandable).
Good point on few data points for native Americans. Many of them stay the fuck away from DNA testing nowadays so I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
