Most people think DNA is the same as blood lines; if their mother is 25% Native American, they expect to be 12.5%, but DNA doesn’t work that way. According to family folklore, your great grandmother was a full blooded Choctaw Indian, but genealogical research is unable to uncover any information about her history. Many Americans have a story similar to this. Unfortunately, if family members did not make it onto the roles, Native American ancestry is almost impossible to confirm without DNA testing.
If Native American ancestry was passed through a line of unbroken males or unbroken females, Y-STR or mtDNA testing can be used to confirm Native American ancestry, but this is rarely the case. The only option remaining is ethnicity DNA testing, which looks at the percentage of ethnic markers you carry associated with European, Native American, East Asian, and African ancestry. Keep in mind that if your mother is 25% Native American, that does not mean you automatically have 12.5% Native American markers. The easiest way to understand this is to picture two decks of 100 cards of which you are dealt 50 from each. If one of the decks has 25 Native American cards and 75 other cards, you can get anywhere from 0 to 25 of the Native American cards in your hand. Although genes passed tend to be in a similar range as blood lines, there is no guarantee that they will be. Having the genetic markers is great for confirmation of Native American ancestry, but lack of markers doesn’t disprove it. DNA testing can be useful, but it has limitations.
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