He is now denying the validity of dna tests. I don’t want to say the past 35 years of having him treat me worse than he treats his sister had anything to do with his assumptions of my dna, but he was upset to learn that I am more Irish than him. I wonder what he thought of my mother before these results…
The only way I would touch these DNA tests is if I was somehow assured that it was completely anonymous and would be shredded as soon as I've seen it.
They literally turn around and sell your data, grouped along with others, to whoever wants it, and then get hacked and lose personal info. Hot mess.
They also sell it along with personally identifying inform information to your health insurance provider and the government. It's quite bullshit and should be illegal.
You can delete your dna after submitting it and viewing your results. Most dna sites have that option. Just curious, what are you afraid someone would do with your dna results? The government in America already keeps dna results on all babies born in the 80’s and later.
You have more to risk by joining NDMP to be a bone marrow donor, but in that case you’d probably want them to use your dna to find patients you could help. I honestly think everyone should join NDMP. I don’t work for them, or have anything to gain from their organization. I just think everyone should join and help people with cancer.
Just curious, what are you afraid someone would do with your dna results? The government in America already keeps dna results on all babies born in the 80’s and later.
Corporations aren't exactly known for being honest or fair, or following the law, when they have valuable data to sell. They might tell you that they'll delete your data but there's always a chance that they'll retain it and sell it under the table if someone makes a compelling offer. Or an employee could steal the data and sell it secretly, or they could have a security breach and someone could make off with it.
Why would any of that be bad? Because health insurance companies are salivating over new ways to deny your claims (or crank up your premiums) and genetic data that reveals an elevated risk of a serious condition is a damned good excuse for them to do just that.
You can delete your dna after submitting it and viewing your results.
But how do you know it’s actually deleted. Like, unrecoverable deleted and not just soft deleted. I can’t change my DNA when the data is eventually leaked.
I've heard before that there is a tendency of these tests to over-report European ancestry and under-report or misidentify ethnic minorities. Something to do with the underlying datasets not being inclusive enough because those populations are smaller and don't purchase these DNA tests at the same rate as Western Europeans.
There also seems to be a weird fetishisation of First Nations ancestry in parts of the US. I've also been told I have Cherokee ancestors, but it didn't show in my dna ancestory either.
I was also told our family was part Cherokee. It's apparently a super common claim
I'm struggling to process that this is so common... Also had this in my family growing up
I'm up in northern Ontario in Canada and I had a French Canadian neighbor who loved watching John Wayne movies. He often told me that he had Cherokee ancestry too.
I told him a hundred times that this wasn't Cherokee territory because I was full blooded Ojibwe Cree from this area and we had never heard of Cherokee. I kept telling him that he was probably part Ojibwe or Algonquin which is who the French mixed with in our area .... but he really wanted to be a John Wayne movie Indian.
That's hilarious!
Mixed race / olive skinned people trying to find something more acceptable in order to avoid being outcast. Also, edgelords.
You hear it so much that frankly when I hear it I assume they're lying. Like it's become that stereotype.
My mother always claimed that some amount of greats-grandmother was a Cherokee princess, but I've always thought it was bunk.
Definitely bunk because there were no Cherokee princesses. Could still have some sort of Native American ancestry but that whole Cherokee Princess thing was so overused at one point that it became a trope.
It's unstated racism.
If someone in your past could get a good tan, it was common to say that they were part "< insert native american tribe from your area>" because you definitely didn't want to be perceived as part black.
Look up the "one-drop rule".
I'm sure that was a factor in many of these instances. That said in our family my impression was it was more of a "here's something special about us" type thing, like there's nothing otherwise noteworthy.
That's generally how these things are always communicated to later generations. 😂
I have documented ancestry of Choctaw, card and everything, but my genetic test show 0%. The blood amount is quite low at 1/128
This could be because of the way genes work, roll the dice enough time and there are no genes left. On the other hand many Native Americans are not keen on giving away genetic data after their history with the US.
I'm not saying you are or aren't part native American, but genetic tests are limited.
You're probably aware of this monument to the Choctaw in Ireland but in case you aren't....
Wiki page with the detail and reason. We will never forget.
That'd be seven generations back. For me that'd be in the late 1700s. Did they keep records for that back then?
I'm honestly not sure, I'd need to talk to my family, since they know much more about it than me.
Almost like race is a bs social construct and we are all human who deserve to be treated well
...almost
Inheritance is random
My favorite way to resolve method ambiguities.
Not surprising. My mother was told by her mother that one of her great grandmothers was full blooded native (no specific tribe) which would make me 1/16 native. DNA showed 0% and one my mother took showed 0% for her. She chalked it up to her mother being nuts but it is a fairly common American family myth.
Yeah, I had one of these in my family as well. I didn't do the DNA test but went on ancestry and kinda pieced stuff together way back to when the majority of the family tree crossed over the Atlantic. There's maybe one or two people that are suspect (orphan like circumstances). I can't follow their trees or place them but I don't have strong confidence either of them were the missing Native American. It's made harder by the common practice of making Native Americans take more English names.
I do wonder if the DNA testing could get it wrong in any case. There are so few Native Americans still alive to collect the DNA and really get a picture of "this is what Native American DNA looks like." There were a lot of Native American nations before Europeans showed up ... and a lot were driven to near extinction between smallpox and war.
I'm also the only man I know that's got an effectively hairless chest naturally despite a lot of hairy European lineage... That's been linked to Native Americans (or was at least more common) so maybe there is something to the stories. I don't particularly want to take a DNA test to see what it would say.
In my case the story was definitely believable when I was younger. My grandmother and one of her sisters were orphaned and sent to a workhorse because my great grandparents could not afford them. I used to think my grandmother did not know her parents but using ancestry.com my mom connected with someone who she thought was simply a family friend growing up but turned out to be her cousin from her aunt who was not orphaned. Going through my ancestry, there is almost certainly nobody who is native. Grandma may have been a little nuts (one of the caregivers beat her do bad that she lost an eye so being a little nutty is fairly understandable).
Good point on few data points for native Americans. Many of them stay the fuck away from DNA testing nowadays so I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Knew a pastor who this happened to. He was adamant that he was part Native American. After a DNA test it turned out he was zero percent Native American.
He was big enough to embrace it, tho
He wasn’t a pastor in tribal land, was he? That would have been awkward.
I’m just glad I was never awarded any scholarship based upon being Native American. How bad would it have been if I had traced my supposed heritage to the point of applying for one of those tribal citizenship cards? That would have been humiliating!
Sorta depends on the tribe I think. At least for me, my grandfather has his card (Choctaw) and that was the only requirement for me. My DNA test showed something like 0.1% native.
There are lots of tribal card carrying natives who wouldn't test positive for native ancestry on a DNA test. The tribes don't even use these tests, they require you to prove ancestry with birth and death certificates from yourself back to someone listed on the final rolls. At least that's how my tribe works. That guarantees that you are in-fact an ancestor, and doesn't depend upon tests whose accuracy has been disputed.
He sounds abusive. Dna tests or not. You need to get out of there.
That's funny, when I took a DNA test it just said I was 100% that bitch.
Edit: posted wrong, meant to reply to post, not comment.
Curious on how they separate between Norway and "Sweden & Denmark". Seems like an odd grouping as arguably Norway have closer ties to both Sweden and Denmark than they do together.
I know, right? How odd. I guess Sweden and Denmark must share some genetics that other countries don’t share.
The worse parts of the Scandinavian genetics no doubt (no bias)
Get one from a different company, you'll get different results.
I have. They’re pretty much the same.
Sprinkle in a small amount of Russian and we're cousins!
What I think would be cool and novel would be for a European person to claim Indigenous American heritage. Flip the script.
We don't do that here.
After seeing these countries in my dna map, and having visited many of them in winter, I have to admit, if I ever won some huge amount of lottery money, I would return to those places and gather any homeless locals off the curb and try to help them become Americans. Have you ever been to a country where you literally watched people freeze to death on the street, because no city in the country is warm enough to survive outside during winter? I love Ireland, but I don’t love the fact that some of their locals die on the street by freezing death. The problem isn’t just one country. Even London made the news for having homeless suffering outside this winter. They can’t just bus their homeless to a warmer city. There is no warmer city in those countries. I feel for the governments there. I know they’re overwhelmed already, but it’s inhumane to let people freeze to death on the street without an option to move to a warmer location.
"moving the homeless to a warmer city" is not a solution to a policy problem...
No, it’s a temporary solution. When local governments can’t provide temporary housing, like shelters, and the weather is below freezing, they sometimes opt to bus the homeless to cities where it is warmer.
It was unusual to see Texas take the opposite approach to the migrant situation and bus them to cities where it was colder during winter. Then again, those weren’t American citizens, and it was a different situation than busing American homeless people. I don’t know. I just think that no one deserves to freeze to death on the street, in any country.
This comment is just so weird. If you have a huge amount of money you're going to make the homeless of Ireland American? Just so they can be bussed to warmer cities in winter? Instead of just helping them get better, get an apartment or a job, your only solution to helping the homeless is making them be homeless in another country.
Ireland is not like America. They would have a better chance at improving their situation in America. Ireland does offer help for those in need, but they have a housing crisis worse than America has. It is also difficult to get a job in Ireland. Try to get a job in Ireland some time. They will be very interested to know who your family is, and why you’re applying for a job at a place that is owned, operated, or managed by someone else’s family.
I've been in the USA, I think you've already quite a bit to do at home. If it's about the genes of the people you help, I know of a good book to get you started, but beware, its in German
It’s about family. A lot of Irish people are related. It was really disappointing to see so many Irish people dying in the cold, sleeping on the street, years ago. I’m sorry you think everything is about race.
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.