Past down through my family is the story that one of my ancestors was Native American, of Chowctaw Nation. However, when I got the results it was 73% UK, 24% Ireland/Scotland, and 3% Norway, no trace of Native American.

My TBM sister referred me to some BYU TV show about DNA ancestry where a guy was adopted, looked Native American, based his identity on that his whole life, and the DNA results said otherwise. She said that sometimes you just don't get the DNA from some of the people on your tree.

Is this true? I mean, is there still a possibility that I am partially Native American? Or is the Mormon church's way to trying to muddy the waters once again about Lamanites and Native Americans?

This is a really interesting question I have been wondering about myself.

Thank you for posting this, blueskyutah2!

That's a really great article, thanks Elder Berry! It answers some questions that I have had.

My niece had a small amount of Ashkenazi Jewish DNA show up in her profile, consistent with my maternal grandmother (who emigrated from the Pale section of Russia, which was 2/3 Jewish at the time,) having one Jewish grandparent. My grandmother emigrated at the age of 16 a bare few months after a major pogrom in her city. She told me that she had to escape across a border under cover of darkness in order to do so (I'm assuming that it was the border between Russia and Poland.) She proceeded to a German coastal city where she got on the ship to America. She later sent for her two sisters, when they were 16 and 17, respectively.

A person with grandma's family name, which is uncommon, died during WWII at one of the death camps. Possibly a relation?

I realize that these are rather tenuous clues, but I feel confident that in time I can come up with reasonable conclusions about my grandmother and why she felt compelled to come to America and to bring her sisters along with her.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2019 06:32PM by summer.

Glad it was appreciated.

The fact that there is a chance I could have zero DNA from Zina Young Card Brown has been very comforting to me.

I'm sure she was an amazing person.

https://history.lds.org/article/zina-young-card-biography?lang=eng

It isn't that I would care much if I did. What is important is the fact that DNA doesn't matter. It does looking for Lamanites. It doesn't looking for specialness in some sort of sick and twisted ideologue view of Mormon "blood of the prophets" spiritual aristocracy.

It also helps me understand that adopting and human adoption is a natural thing. We care for others regardless of our genetics. All the "us and them" stuff in our natures isn't inherently racist, biologically preferential, or programed.

Human societies and cultures create these ridiculous things. Ancestor worship may be very very old but it isn't something we have to accept as fundamentally part of ourselves. Caring for others regardless of DNA is.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Human societies and cultures create these
> ridiculous things. Ancestor worship may be very
> very old but it isn't something we have to accept
> as fundamentally part of ourselves. Caring for
> others regardless of DNA is.

The genetic difference between individual humans today is about 0.1%, on average.

Caring for others regardless of DNA shouldn’t be hard when there is only the tiniest bit of difference from human to human. Again, about 0.1%.

There is only one race, the human race, which is another way of saying there are no races. We are, for better and for worse,

Human

Human Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is only one race, the human race, which is
> another way of saying there are no races. We are,
> for better and for worse,

Thanks for the reply and reiteration. I don't think of race when I think of human caring. Biological heredity is what I was thinking about. Modern humans understand it so well that I think we have grown more and more obsessed with it when in fact nature and nurture should be our obsessions in my opinion. We like to reduce to mere inheritance things of great importance. Mormonism claims merely being born from a sealed set of parents negates the need for a formal ceremony. It is a tragedy.


"While in the temple for our third child’s sealing, my best friend whispered to me, “Lindsey, this is your delivery room.” The revelation that this was the moment I had really always dreamed of filled me with the Spirit of God and a burning testimony of the sealing power. Just like my mom described her delivery room experience, I too felt so close to heaven. "
http://www.ldsliving.com/How-to-Prepare-for-a-Temple-Sealing-After-Adopting/s/78547

Ah, yes, I gotcha.

Racial identity is heredity writ large. Pride in either is much the same thing.


Cultural inheritance is trickier. The tragedy I see in your case, “pioneer” mormons, trails a “shared sacrifice” motif: our ancestors built this thing more than anybody else’s, therefore we own it more...therefore, also, we are more it than everybody else; thus (tragically) we owe it more.

“Sealed” is such a provocative word in this context, eh?

Human Wrote:
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> “Sealed” is such a provocative word in this
> context, eh?

Yep.

For instance, if this woman had been marriage "sealed" and her husband had impregnated her, their child without her consent would not have to be sealed to them.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/how-could-a-woman-in-a-vegetative-state-get-pregnant-and-give-birth-an-ob-gyn-explains/ar-BBS4XPl?ocid=spartandhp

Biology connection trumps all.

And in a similar vein, how many Mormon wives have been martially raped, conceived, and borne in their covenant more people who never have to go through but one sealing?

Is there a possibility? Sure. A small one.
Is it more likely that the family story wasn't accurate?
Yep.

Mormons like to think "DNA disappears!" as an excuse for why there's no trace of Jewish DNA in Native Americans.
In the real world, that's not how it usually works.

We had a similar story in our family, that we had a Shawnee ancestor. It turned out to be both right and wrong. We have a great-great-great (how ever many "greats" are required here) grandfather who did marry a Shawnee woman. However, my line comes from his previous (English) wife who died during child birth. So we do have a Native American ancestor by marriage, but not by blood.

This is tricky because honestly I read on the 23andMe website that we inherit random genes

And I said so much more than what was posted or from what I can see was posted. I gave a very detailed explanation. This is frustrating because this isn’t the only time it has happened!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2019 06:21PM by catholicrebel.

I'm sorry, Catholicrebel. I've been on this board for more than a decade and haven't had that happen. I'm not sure what's going wrong for you. Perhaps one of our other board members has an idea.

If you have registered with the board, you can always go back and edit or add to your posts (unless a thread has closed after about 60 replies.)

catholicrebel Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And I said so much more than what was posted or
> from what I can see was posted. I gave a very
> detailed explanation. This is frustrating because
> this isn’t the only time it has happened!

This has happened to me before. I have written a post, clicked on the "Post message" button....and then my post vanishes into cyberspace.

It is very frustrating when this happens.

I’ll try again to explain all the information I learned. I may not be Mormon anymore but have always been fascinated by family history and ancestry. It took me like 15 min to post my explanation the first time and it vanished!

If I've written a lengthy reply, I'll hit Control-C (Copy) before I post in case something goes wrong. I guess I have had it happen to me! -- but I've never had a post cut off like you did.

It's very possible. One of my mexican relatives (with and English name) did one of those DNA-palm readings and found that she was 30% British. It was hilarious!

But very politically correct, lol!

It happens all the time down here in the south. Just about everyone I know claims that their g-g-g-g-grandfather married a Cherokee princess to explain why sometimes a family member will have darker features. When a DNA test is ever done, more often than not, a small percent of sub-Saharan Africa rather than native American ancestry is indicated.

fossilman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It happens all the time down here in the south.
> Just about everyone I know claims that their
> g-g-g-g-grandfather married a Cherokee princess to
> explain why sometimes a family member will have
> darker features. When a DNA test is ever done,
> more often than not, a small percent of
> sub-Saharan Africa rather than native American
> ancestry is indicated.


Within contemporary American culture, the phrase "Cherokee princess" has become both partisan and racist. Native American tribes in what is now the United States did not HAVE "princesses" (or "princes," either), at any historical time.

In the South, where (in pre-Columbus times) the Cherokee tribe began (before most of the tribe was forcibly "removed," by the U.S. government, to what is now, more or less, Oklahoma), both the politically partisan, and the racist, sectors of white American culture are feeding this particular prejudice right now.

Please realize this, and please refrain from using this epithet in the future.

[Full disclosure: The maternal side of my family comes from Oklahoma, and my maternal great-grandmother (who my mother and my aunt both knew for all of their lives until she died) WAS Cherokee, and other relatives, who married into the family or were first-generation in that time period, were from other tribes which had been "removed" to the Oklahoma Territory--and they certainly LOOKED Native American (particularly my Aunt Lela, who my maternal grandmother grew up with, and who I met several times when I was growing up--nobody would EVER think she was ANYTHING but Native American!).]

Please do not use this term: it is prejudicial, it is politically partisan, and it is racist.

Thank you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2019 02:12PM by Tevai.

Charles Barkley vs Snoop Dogg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T59G76NE6KY

It came as a surprise when doing my DNA that it came back with .1% Native American ancestor who lived 400 years ago.

A maternal uncle on the same DNA test had the same result as mine. It's also a match I believe on my father's side as well since both sides share some common distant ancestors.

It also may matter who does your DNA analysis. Mine was done through 23 and Me. My results from that were uploaded to My Heritage, where I got a distinctly varied DNA result from the first, with no Native American in the mix reported. Guess it was so minute that My Heritage didn't bother to note it.