It’s not just Canadians. Sooooooo many people south of the border tell me they had a “great grandmother who was a [pick a tribe, usually Cherokee].” Even my wife believed it because her mother swore it until she took a DNA test. Her mother still swears it after the DNA test.
lol … I’m up in northern Ontario in Canada. I’m Indigenous and I know because its my family and community that my area is completely Ojibway. Parts our area can also be known as Ojibway/Cree or Oji-Cree because we start mixing with the Cree in the north. Then down below us are the Algonquins and closer to the Great Lakes everything gets terribly mixed but there is a large majority of Ojibway throughout.
I have had several people in my area in Sudbury / Timmins / North Bay come up to me and tell me that they have Native ancestry and more than a few of them have claimed to have Cherokee, Sioux or even Mohawk ancestry, claiming that their family has always been in the north for generations. All tribes that had never been part of our part of the country. I had an old French Canadian friend who proudly told me that his grandmother was a Cherokee princess even through his French Canadian family had never come from the American midwest.
Personally I’ve given up on all this crap and just nod, don’t argue and just treat people nice and never ask them about it all again. I grew up being made to feel less than others because I was 100% Native only to end up at this point in my life where I meet lots of people with no ancestry wanting to be 10% Native.
You are considered “cool” now.
I mean, you always were who you were, but now they finally acknowledge it. So… that’s “good”, I guess?
Meh, at least it will be for future generations, and that’s not nothing. :-)
It’s far weirder than you think … being Indigenous is more often just glorified, fantasized or placed on some strange pedestal that doesn’t mean much to actual Native people.
I left my home community years ago and I’ve lived most of my life now in the city. Although I was born 100% Indigenous on both sides of my family, people from my home community look down on me as being less than Native because I don’t live there any more or practice the culture like they do. Meanwhile, I’m obviously a big brown long haired Native guy living in the south and I’m never treated as a normal member of society … everyone just automatically thinks of me as a drunken uneducated Indian from the north that doesn’t know anything about living in the south. Although I have full status, I don’t get the benefits because I live off reserve … I get some tax off on things but doing my taxes at the end of the year is a nightmare. I have to fight for any kind of basic benefits and if I talk to my home community, I’m placed at the bottom of the list because I don’t live there. It’s messed up.
Meanwhile I keep running into people working at big organization making a ton of money who only have 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 … even 1/16 or 1/32 blood ancestry and get full Native benefits and live in the city. I actually know a few blonde haired blue eyed full status Native people that live with more help than me. It’s so weird because I’ve also known people with full ancestry like me but for all kinds of historical reasons either lost or couldn’t get their full status recognition.
At this point … the identity or identifying is more important than the actual people who have majority Indigenous ancestry. I also don’t enjoy discussing it with people because then it starts sounding like advocating for Eugenics or racist ideas of who should or shouldn’t be Indigenous or identify as Indigenous.
But whatever the conversation or debate is … it always feels like actual indigenous people, especially those living on their territories in their own communities on their own lands are the ones who get the short end of the stick.
I have no idea what you have gone though. From your words here you perfectly describe being caught between two mutually opposing worlds - which you fit into neither. THAT I think many of us here on Lemmy get, which is probably why you fit in so well here:-). But of course that helps with neither your taxes nor reservation priorities so… the benefits to belonging here are purely intangible.
Why do they get full Native benefits? Do they live on the reservation for some period of the year? Can you do that - like if you lived 11 months in the city vs. 1 on the reservation, would that help? Well, it’s your life and I’ve no call to speak to it, just wondering if you can do anything to improve your situation. Surely the details here must be excruciating to have to work through - varying per area of the country and possibly by tribe, etc. I will add that it is good to see that while you are not standing on top of the world looking down on everyone else around you, neither are you at the very bottom looking at everyone else who always gets more than you - that is the best place to be, imho, somewhere in the middle.
Though absolutely agreed that the reservations get the absolute shortest end of the stick. In the USA the highest murder rate (not absolute numbers, b/c the population is quite small) is not black people as I had thought most of my life, but rather among native peoples.
And now you are “cool”, which totally makes up for all of the past deeds - and especially the current, ongoing murders - r-r-right?! /s
Life will never, ever be fair, but I am glad that for people in the future it is at least improving:-). At the same time, it royally sucks that you had to go through all that pain just to get to here.:-(
I’m a middle aged man and more and more, I’m starting to act or speak like some wise old sage like the Elders I remembered as a kid. The funny part is that I am starting to realize that those wise old sages I remembered were probably just as confused, unaware and dumbfounded by the world as I am now.
I used to get mad about it all, shake my hands in the air and get frustrated … but now I really don’t care. I live my life, treat others nicely and with respect, hold my ground against those that want to spread hate or fear and generally try not to disturb the waters too much - they are already disturbed enough as it is … lol
It’s good to just talk about these things and to have a caring, respectful, kind and sympathetic person such as yourself to listen to it all. That makes me feel far better than any kind of magic solution to these complex problems.
Kitchi-Meegwetch doodem … naspeeteh neeseekeenehsin … ehkooteh
It means ‘Thanks very much my friend … I am very grateful for your kindness … that is all’ in northern Ojibway or Oji-Cree
I’m not middle aged but I’m increasingly seeing how lost and confused my familial elders were when I was younger. The older I get thr more I see their brave faces as an act they told themselves because I’m putting that same face on too. I think we’re all lost and confused, the difference between the wise and the foolish is being able to accept that and navigate around it or denying it or failing to figure out how to handle it.
The older I get (I’m not that old yet tho) … the more I realize that most people of all ages, including who we see as wise old folk are all just people doing the best they can to try to figure out this strange reality we live in. Those old wise people get it wrong much of the time but get it right enough of the time for younger people to think that older people actually know what they are doing.
I am so glad that we have this space where you feel free to talk. Some people put in some SERIOUS work to create that (as the modlog attests to) - e.g. I recall a post here ~4 days ago that was quite disturbing to see, and if left up would have the effect of chilling conversations here (seeing these things pop up all over seriously make me worry about remaining on Lemmy at all - I am in the USA and what if Donald Trump’s administration starts going after these instances, shutting them down b/c of all the calls for violence? there are already rumblings that this may in fact happen…). Lemmy as a whole very much has a toxicity problem, but I am so glad for this space here that holds the line, so that we can talk, just like this:-).
And ofc make silly jokes - that’s CRUCIAL too:-).
I don’t think our instance is that terribly large or popular enough to warrant any kind of shut down from the authorities any time soon. Lemmy on any instance right now just feels like the early internet and it is just simple, easy and has a decent community of good people having free conversations without being directed by bad actors, bad algorithms or the influence of manipulated corporate content or controls - which is what social media should be.
I’m really happy to meet you here … in a digital world full of negativity, its like a breathe of fresh hopeful air when I get to talk to people like this. Stay well my friend … and don’t step into a space suit after Taco Tuesday.
I just… why is it almost always Cherokee? You’d think North America was 99% Cherokee before Europeans came.
Yep
Goodbye, Cherokee Princess: Extractive Settler Genealogy and the Transmission of a Toxic Trope | Harvard University Native American Program - https://hunap.harvard.edu/event/goodbye-cherokee-princess-extractive-settler-genealogy-and-transmission-toxic-trope
But why Cherokee? That just summarizes the program. I just don’t understand why it’s specifically Cherokee. You’d think the trope would just be “Native Princess” and they’d just name whatever tribe was nearby where their forebears grew up. So like you would think people who’s family lived in Arizona for a few generations would claim to be descended from a “Hopi Princess” or a “Navajo Princess.” But it’s almost always Cherokee.
Edit: This article goes into it- https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/10/cherokee-blood-why-do-so-many-americans-believe-they-have-cherokee-ancestry.html
Edit 2: From that article:
Recent demographic data reveals the extent to which Americans believe they’re part Cherokee. In 2000, the federal census reported that 729,533 Americans self-identified as Cherokee. By 2010, that number increased, with the Census Bureau reporting that 819,105 Americans claimed at least one Cherokee ancestor. Census data also indicates that the vast majority of people self-identifying as Cherokee—almost 70 percent of respondents—claim they are mixed-race Cherokees.
To put that in perspective, this website claims the estimated total population of Cherokee in the 19th century was 36,000. Either there was a lot of fucking after the Trail of Tears or a lot of people are wrong.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e9913eb717dc4e68aebe7a7c7d3f42c3
Right, it was Slate that article was on. I remembered it as Salon. No wonder I didn’t find it.
In the Appalachians especially, it became a thing to claim native ancestry to try and hide black ancestors, both as an ancient claim to the place they’re proud to live in and, yes, as some pretty blatant racism.
Interesting. I had never heard that before.
My ancestry is 0.04% Vulcan, the DNA test says so. Don’t believe me? We can settle it with a game of three-dimensional tic-tac-toe.
I was going to debate you on that … but seeing as you are 0.04% Vulcan … I have already lost
I wasn’t born on Vulcan, but I was later vulcanized.
Can I go first?
(I take the center cube.)
Even if the nation of Canada ceases to exist, I suspect we would still call the region and people Canadian.
People still call themselves Welsh almost 500 years after the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535/1542.
At the risk of controversy … it makes me wonder if some of them will refer to themselves as French-Canadian … Calais!
It still useful as a place name, and probably an administrative subdivision of the United Earth government.
Wales is considerably older than Canada. Canadian national identity is barely over 100 years old.
