Any Native Americans in this community?

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  • singingflutelady
    singingflutelady Posts: 8,736 Member
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    I should add I loved working on the reserve and learning about the mi'kmaq culture and language. There is a very strong push at that school to teach the language as unfortunately there are very few young people who are fluent. Our school only goes to grade 8 though and they have to go to school board schools after that (since it is so close to school board schools there are quite a few parents who send their kids to school board schools to begin with). I loved the sense of community and watching out for each other on the reserve!
  • CorpseNettle
    CorpseNettle Posts: 6 Member
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    Cherokee here! c:
  • monaleerez
    monaleerez Posts: 73 Member
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    singingflutelady wrote: »
    I should add I loved working on the reserve and learning about the mi'kmaq culture and language. There is a very strong push at that school to teach the language as unfortunately there are very few young people who are fluent. Our school only goes to grade 8 though and they have to go to school board schools after that (since it is so close to school board schools there are quite a few parents who send their kids to school board schools to begin with). I loved the sense of community and watching out for each other on the reserve!

    Wow, that's great, I live on the Hopi reservation in northern Arizona, and our local boarding school just converted to a grossly controlled grant school, a conversion I proud to. Say I s apart of I'm on the school board here.
    Yes it is true about the language being lost and. Not carried on when I was. Younger I was raised by my great grandmother and only spoke our native language when I first went to school teachers had to interrupt for me. Now sadly, I know just enough to understand a conversation but not converse fluently.
  • monaleerez
    monaleerez Posts: 73 Member
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    cmriverside wrote: »
    I love this thread. I don't have NA lineage to my knowledge, but I worked in a DNA lab for a while and we did some DNA testing for people wanting to be added to the rolls without having a tribe member vouch for them. It was really interesting, sensitive work for all involved. I don't know how the cases turned out, it was tricky.

    That's pretty interesting. Where does you do the testing, which general areas?
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,997 Member
    edited September 2016
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    monaleerez wrote: »
    cmriverside wrote: »
    I love this thread. I don't have NA lineage to my knowledge, but I worked in a DNA lab for a while and we did some DNA testing for people wanting to be added to the rolls without having a tribe member vouch for them. It was really interesting, sensitive work for all involved. I don't know how the cases turned out, it was tricky.

    That's pretty interesting. Where does you do the testing, which general areas?

    I'm in the PNW, but I think a lot of the (most) of the genetic testing labs do the same tests, and they are done through the mail anyway. It's basically an ancestry test. If the tested person has a close relative (mother/father/grandparents/siblings preferably) who can trace their lineage without the DNA test, that seems to be the preferred method of tribal inclusion (? I think.) This was a few years ago, and it was the tribes themselves who were not willing to use the test results as a way to admit people into the tribe - which I totally understand! I don't know if that has changed, or if it was just the group we were working with, or what the story was. We weren't in on all the details.

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