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You dont have to answer if you're not comfortable but in your opinion who can claim to be mixed indigenous? Say if I person is a quarter or an eighth on one parents side and the other side has unsure heritage could the person still claim to be mixed indigenous?
This is an extremely complicated and nuanced question that I simply cannot give you a concise answer for, sorry.
That said, I can give you some insight into the subject that will hopefully help you going forward in researching your own ancestry and heritage. But note, before I go on, this is entirely my own opinion as a Saulteaux-Mi'kmaq person (Saulteaux by legal definition / ancestral connection, Mi'kmaq by communal relation / tribal recognition). Please do not take what I have to say on this subject as the last word, as much of it is influenced by both my own understanding of my heritage (which is still extremely limited because of colonization) and my own lived experiences and opinions. I am not a monolith for the Saulteaux and/or Mi'kmaq community, I am absolutely not a monolith for all Indigenous peoples.
If you are someone of First Nations and/or Native American descent and want to pitch in on this topic, I welcome you to reblog this post with your own opinions and viewpoints. Otherwise, OP, please consult more people than just myself if this is truly something you want to know more about. Thank you.
Okay, here we go-
If someone were to simply see "Native American" pop up in their 23andme test (or however that might appear on one of those, I've never done one lol) then I'd say, at the very least, that's not nearly enough information. Many Americans have "Indigenous blood" in them as a consequence of cultural mixing over the decades. There's also a lot to be said (and criticized) about blood quantum laws and how they've been used to systematically suppress and "breed out" Indigenous heritage. And god knows we don't want to leave Indigenous validation in the hands of the legal system, because that would once again be subjecting ourselves to the standards of a colonial government.
If you have an Indigenous relative though, such as a parent or grandparent? Talk to them. Talk to their parents if they're still around. Do some research on your family tree. And I don't mean just google your last name, I mean go to your local community library and look up paperwork and documents concerning your direct family tree.
Aside from that, understand that even if you were able to claim yourself as "mixed Indigenous", that does not allow you to claim yourself as part of a tribe. Tribes aren't just like vague lines drawn in the sand (like idk, fandom or something lmao) they're independent legal entities built on the backs of Indigenous families and their ancestries, with systems and expectations in place to ensure no one is taking advantage or accepted in just on good faith. Whether or not you're actually considered 'part of the tribe' can vary based on the tribe, but it usually involves actually being part of that community, whether directly as someone who was raised within it, or indirectly as a descendant of that tribe (in which case, they might not know you, but they might know your father, or your grandfather, or your aunt, etc.) Some tribes are fine with 1/16th's, others need much more than that. Hence why this is something you really need to do your own research on.
If your only relation to the Indigenous identity is "apparently I'm 1/16th Indigenous" then don't expect people to take you seriously if you try to claim you're mixed Indigenous. Not only does that make it way too easy for anyone and everyone to claim they're mixed Indigenous or part of a tribe (because again, just about EVERYONE has some amount of Indigenous relation) it also doesn't take into account the unique experience of being Indigenous - and that experience in and of itself is made up of a complicated web of systemic oppression, community relations, generational trauma, and government restrictions, among many other things.
In other words, just because you can claim you have an Indigenous great-great-great-grandfather, doesn't mean you can suddenly relate to the Indigenous experience or what it means to live as an Indigenous person.
Kinda like that episode of Family Guy where Peter finds out he's got a black ancestor. Like sure, technically that means on paper he can qualify as someone who's African-American, but in practice (i.e. in the real world and not strictly within a bureaucratic framework) it doesn't mean black people gotta be okay with it when Peter uses AAVE or injects himself into their spaces or personally benefits from reparation money. Because at the end of the day, he's still white, and a white guy has never had to live the life of a black person or suffer from black oppression.
Mind you, that example is still imperfect because the Indigenous experience isn't the black experience, and as you might have seen from my previous reblog of my Two Spirit post, being Indigenous is a lot more complicated than skin color.
So again, if your only relation to the Indigenous identity is some small percentage simply through circumstantial blood relation, that's not really necessarily enough to justify calling yourself "mixed Indigenous" to other people (esp other Indigenous people), because evidently, if it's just something that you happened to find out on a whim, then arguably nothing about your life has ever been Indigenous. Even if you could legally call yourself Indigenous with a government card stating it as such, that still doesn't necessarily mean you've lived as an Indigenous person.
And when many legally-recognized Indigenous people have suffered oppression that's threatened to erase their heritage and take it away from them and their children... you're really not entitled to try and take from that culture yourself if you have no natural incentive to beyond "I found out I have an Indigenous relative".
I remember reading something somewhere once in relation to this topic (I think it was on reddit or in some online space discussing this very subject) that went along the lines of "Ancestry is discovered, identity is formed, belonging is relational." All that's to mean, your ancestry is something you need to put an active effort into learning and understanding, your identity is consequential of your upbringing and how your ancestry affected that, and your belonging within that culture entirely depends on how your experiences and upbringing intersects with others who already exist within it.
Definitely keep that in mind as you do your research. Again, it very much varies depending on the tribe and how they quantify the Indigenous identity, whether it be legally, biologically, or spiritually.
I would say, at best, unless you know more than just circumstantial relation, it's fine to simply say "I have a Native American great-great-grandfather" or whatever term applies, and leave it at that. You can just say you're related to an Indigenous person without claiming yourself as Indigenous (and for the love of god, make that clear to anyone who assumes otherwise, people WILL assume because they just tend to do that). Just don't try to claim yourself as Indigenous or pitch in on Indigenous issues, especially if you can't actually personally relate to those issues. And if you want to claim you're of any specific descent, don't even think of doing so until you've done your research, traced back your own family history, and actually put in the effort to listen to other Native Americans and Indigenous peoples on the subject, especially those who you might be descended from or related to.
Your goal should be to learn, without the ulterior motive of being able to slap a new label on yourself. Don't let any excitement in claiming something new for yourself outpace reality or your common sense.
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