Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. - General Discussion

[carrps]

9 hours ago, One Imaginary Girl said:

It was the writer Louise Erdrich.  

She grew up among Native Americans, but I don't believe she has any actual NA ancestry. It's a touchy issue. A lot of tribes consider people raised in (with?) the tribe are considered tribal members. I guess, for me, what's the point of going on a show like this if you don't think the DNA matters? Oh, well.

 

23 hours ago, Mermaid Under said:

none of these people interest me. 

I'm a huge fan of Ruben Blades -- both his acting and his music AND his politics -- I'm looking forward to his episode. Actually, I like a lot of these people: Melanie Lynskey, Michael Imperioli, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Amanda Seyfried, and Amy Tan.

[meep.meep]

Louise Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe tribe.

Sean Sherman is a Native American chef.

I think it's an interesting list with lots of Asians for once.  Salonga, Tan, and Teigan

[Mermaid Under]

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Louise Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe tribe.

I didn't remember her name, but I remember that she gave a long, noble, speech about why she wouldn't consent to DNA testing that sounded totally disingenuous. 

I thought Teigan had already been on one of these shows. I remember her saying that people would ask her "what she was"; i.e., her look is very racially ambiguous.

Edited November 23 by Mermaid Under
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[shapeshifter]

On 11/21/2024 at 11:09 AM, One Imaginary Girl said:

It was the writer Louise Erdrich.  

On 11/21/2024 at 8:25 PM, carrps said:

She grew up among Native Americans, but I don't believe she has any actual NA ancestry. It's a touchy issue. A lot of tribes consider people raised in (with?) the tribe are considered tribal members. I guess, for me, what's the point of going on a show like this if you don't think the DNA matters? Oh, well.

17 hours ago, meep.meep said:

Louise Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe tribe.

(see also: startribune.com/the-three-graces/15083971)
 

1 hour ago, Mermaid Under said:

 I remember that she gave a long, noble, speech about why she wouldn't consent to DNA testing…

From scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2010/03/08/genetic-ancestry-testing-peopl:

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Louise Erdrich also added that she had spoken with her family members and they did not want her to find her genetic ancestry either.

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This comment from John Hawks (below) also makes an important point about the trade-off between individual choice and effects on broader communities:

If each person's decision were independent, that would be one thing. But what do these companies know about Chippewa ancestry? They know the genotypes of some other people who self-identify as Native American, and they'd like very much to add more self-reported people to their databanks so that they can improve their interpretive abilities. Fair enough.

But that means that every self-identified Chippewa who gives a sample helps to build the genetic picture of identity in that tribal unit. So that every person who contributes may help to *take away* the status of *other people* who self-identify and are genotyped in the *future*.

Individuals should be tested or not as they choose, my viewpoint is personal rights, not collective rights. But the effect of your test on the collective identity is a possibly negative externality of testing -- your genes help to identify others who share distant ancestry with you.

To put it simply: It's complicated.
Not entirely unlike the points in the quote directly above, I personally find the designation of 100% Ashkenazi Jewish to be at least slightly more historically significant than biological, since it doesn't separate out ancestors who were, for example, Cossacks or whatever. Plus, Cossacks themselves might have had significant Far East Asian ancestry. For these reasons I'd like to have my genes in the database for future research that I hope might dispel racism, but I'm still not sure, and have not done so, although one of my daughters has, so it might not matter.