in her veins, and to this day, she carries a sense of shame and humiliation about
her native ancestry; and she's 96 now. She is "uncertain" of her NA heritage, as
in denial.

I sure hope Elizabeth wins this; for my mom, and for the nation.

be very interested in your mother's story. I'm proud to have your story attached to my post, but I believe you have a stronger message to share than I do. :0) Consider it?

but lets just say, there are complications, which
I'm email/messaging you in reply to yours.

thanks for the shout out.

my Aunt described my grandmother's reaction to being part Cherokee. I don't think that anybody in the family even knew about it until my Uncle was researching the family genealogy which was long after she had passed away.

but took it back as soon as she got better, and would never admit it again

:0) do your kids know?

but nothing yet. There's rumors of Cherokee on my paternal side, but even less evidence there. I found we are distantly related to a white woman who bore a Cherokee son but we're not directly descended.

not feel like they could talk about their ancestry because of public prejudice against certain ethnic groups. It results in their descendants not understanding and truly valuing their own heritage and it helps to perpetuate negative stereotypes.

And your kids, if you have some?

I'm curious how your family attitudes have changed. :0) though, feel free to tell me mind my own business.

really think about it. I think it is cool and wish that I had more information on it. I have no problem with having an ancestor that was of Cherokee decent. I think she was a great great grandmother and my uncle was able to locate where she is buried. My grandmother never told anybody that one of her grandmothers was Cherokee. It was only when my uncle was researching the family genealogy that we learned about it. I don't even know if my nieces and nephews are even aware that they have a Cherokee Indian in their family history. Nor do I know if my various cousins have passed the information along to their children.

Unfortunately, when my mother died, my sister sent all our copies of the genealogy work done by my uncle to one of my aunts. I could tell from my original conversation with her that she didn't seem to have a good opinion of Indians. My other aunt is probably more open minded as her husband had a pretty fair amount of heritage from a different tribe (I can't remember which one). Also aunt number 2 always seemed a lot more tolerant a person then aunt number 1.

narratives about how different families struggled with this fascinatingly
powerful denial about having any Native American blood in the family.

What I often wonder is, including with my own case, how many of these
stories spring from conceptions that occurred behind a woodpile, rather
than in a bedroom, if you get my drift. Where this is the case, there's no
finding any mention of it in "the records", and it only adds more layers of
shame and denial, in that it was "illegitimate".

They actually were taught to be ashamed of who they were. In the sixties one of the things that happened on many reservations was a strong movement toward Native pride. Many of us will be proud when Elizabeth wins.

I think she was only like 1/4 Osage.

learn that until long after she had passed away. According to my Aunt it was not anything that she wanted to acknowledge because white people looked down on the Indians. I could tell that my Aunt has some prejudice against Indians. I grew up in the Northeast and so was not really directly exposed to racial issues. As a result I considered myself to be a lot more open to people of other races when I moved to Oklahoma. I thought that it was really cool to be able to include some Cherokee heritage along with being part English/Scotch/Welch/German.

I teach her how cool that is.
:0)

in 1889. Grandpa’s mother was ½ Cherokee, but this was only briefly discussed out of earshot of my granny who was racist. When my mother was about 17-18, a handsome young man came to pick her up for a date, but my grandpa locked the door because the boy was Indian….and my grandfather was ¼ Cherokee. What an awful personal conflict? Or not. Everyone expects there to be Native Americans everywhere in Oklahoma, but truth is they were as segregated for years as the negroes were. By the time I was in high school in late 1960’s the neighborhoods were more racially mixed. My mom liked the Indian family down the street, Mr & Mrs Big Pond and all the little ponds. I have been laughed at for saying I am 1/16 Cherokee, but Chief Baker is 1/32 Cherokee and he’s a Chief! It matters. My grandpa taught me it matters. He also taught me we don’t celebrate Columbus Day. We don’t talk unless we have something worth saying. And, he said “We’re Democrats, this family, we’re Democrats, yellow-dog Democrats.”

Another example of how the responses are often better than the original post.

You need to write this up for Columbus Day and post it. :0)

That's too bad that some have to deny that they are related to Native Americans/Indians(whatever one wants to call them)..as soon as I found out I was 1/ 64 Ojibwa I added it my Scots, Irish, English bloodlines.

Go ahead make stupid remarks, Scott Brown.

I'm hoping for big things from her.

President Obama.

There was no way he could be considered non-native since he was full blooded but there was a time were being Native was a sure way not to get an apartment or job.

Born in the early 60's I can vouch for your comments first hand.

When he was growing up his grandparents would not allow him in their living room. When he would visit he was relegated to the back rooms of the their home.

No. No reason not to claim your heritage.

He tried to find proof but never came across anything concrete. He desperately wanted to find that it WAS true. Bear in mind, he was born in 1899 and started collecting ancestry information in earnest in the 1960's and 1970's, when there was still a lot of prejudice against Native American's. There were a few people in the family who were mad at my grandfather for pursuing it. I honestly think he just thought it would be really cool to be Cherokee. And he didn't give a damn what anyone in the family thought about it, he just wanted to know the truth.

My father continued with the family research in the 1980's and 1990's, and when he died in 2008, I took over all the records and put them on Ancestry.com. I have found some tentative information on the Ancestry.com website that the rumors might be true, but it's just not solid enough for me to confirm it. I would just love to be able to prove that it's true! My grandfather would have been tickled pink!

"swamp nigger." That was apparently the local term for Natives.

Thing is, it seems ot have been a family fiction - yet another pack of southern whites laying claim to Indian heritage... and then at some later point hiding this "heritage" that never actually existed.

Racism is fucking weird.

I grew up in Indiana and did not know many people who did not have some Indian blood in them. Everyone thought having Indian blood was kind of neat.

When I moved to Chicago as an adult, it was much the same thing. Pratically all of us whose European or African ancestry in this country dates back a couple hundred years or more have Indian blood. And everyone pretty much enjoys that fact.

Wasn't til I spent some time in the northwest that I first heard anti-Indian bigotry?

The great thing about first encountering bigotry as an adult, is that it made me more incredulous than angry. I laughed at their silliness! Then told them the above facts which, of course, they found hard to believe. But then, they could easily tell how surprised I was at finding this bigotry exists. My complete ease with the whole thing caused them a lot of confusion.

Indians aren't "real" - they don't live nearby, they're not often in public eye when they do, and so it's sort of a non-issue for most people.

Here in the Northwest, there's still plenty of Indians. And they're not afraid to demand their rights and privileges. Same applies in Alaska, and in major reservation areas like Oklahoma, new Mexico, and the North Border states. So whites often look at Indians the way southern whites look at blacks, or how southwestern whites look at Latinos; they're the "other" that are demanding equality and fair treatment - which to the racist mind, is the same as asking special favors.

The same is true with any other sort of bigotry. The more prominent the targets of bigotry are in the society, the louder the bigots will be.