[Fitzgerald]

(02-05-2013 05:09 PM)Emancipator Wrote:  

Hear the lady screaming "I"M PART CHEROKEE", can someone tell me the fascination of some to claim native american ancestry? I know a girl, who claims ancestry to a bunch of native tribes, often at opposing sides of the continent.

My grandmother is American Indian, but I'm just another whitey in appearance and culture. Uncle Sam (not the actual historical figure, but the generalized spirit of the gov't) kept the tribes fighting against each other for a while, instead of fighting him, but then he figured out that forcibly relocating various tribes from their homelands to reservations, or fracturing a tribe entirely, splitting them up and sending them to the four corners, effectively destroying the tribe, was a nicer way to go (Oklahoma has no reservations, but a high AI population all from different tribes all I've the country). Many young children were also taken from their parents and put in boarding houses to be westernized (where many ended up abused physically and sexually). Basically, the government was trying to destroy their culture and assimilate them, turn them into "real" 'Mericans.
Now, even though the tribal councils exist, there's more of a general AI culture. There are national powwows that bring visitors from all over the US and Canada where many people from different tribes meet, there are "sister tribes", etc. Hence, a person could be entirely native in genes, and be Cherokee (originally from Georgia), Lakota (Colorado/Wyoming), and Puyallup (Washington).