What is the possibility of a “Native American” claim in the family being a cover for Jewish ancestry?
Yesterday, in that starter pack meme crossposted to the subreddit, I noticed a reply to a comment stating,
“In my case the side of my family that was supposed to have [Indigenous American] had 1% Jewish.
There seems to be some sort of connection between certain tribes and Jewish dna however so not sure.”
And a reply to that reply stating,
“Nah, that ain't it. In your case, the Native American myth might've come about because your family was trying to hide Jewish ancestry. If you are US based, it wasn't uncommon for people to need to downplay Jewish ancestry due to insane antisemitism. And, since many Jewish people have the "dark" features, it's definitely where the connection to a NA tribe could be fabricated. It's similar with African ancestry. Sometimes people whose families had the Cherokee myth come back with results that are 99% WE and 1% African. The Cherokee myth was to cover for the African ancestry.”
What had initially got me into genealogy at age 15 was the mention of “Native American” on my great-great-grandmother’s side (she is circled in red in the attached image). Eventually, my mom got me a test for my birthday, which among confirming what my family pretty much already knew about our ancestry, (through “hacking” it) revealed that I had 0.20% Ashkenazi Jewish DNA (now updated to 0.36%). In calculating my Parental Split, I found that it came from my dad, and when his test came in, he had it at 1%, “hacked” to 0.41%, and it was inherited from his mother. My “Native American” great-great-grandmother was my parental grandmother’s own paternal grandmother.
So, as asked in the title, is there a precedence for Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry to be claimed as “Native American” to historically avoid antisemitism? Did I find our “Native American” ancestry without even realizing it?
Yesterday, in that starter pack meme crossposted to the subreddit, I noticed a reply to a comment stating,
“In my case the side of my family that was supposed to have [Indigenous American] had 1% Jewish.
There seems to be some sort of connection between certain tribes and Jewish dna however so not sure.”
And a reply to that reply stating,
“Nah, that ain't it. In your case, the Native American myth might've come about because your family was trying to hide Jewish ancestry. If you are US based, it wasn't uncommon for people to need to downplay Jewish ancestry due to insane antisemitism. And, since many Jewish people have the "dark" features, it's definitely where the connection to a NA tribe could be fabricated. It's similar with African ancestry. Sometimes people whose families had the Cherokee myth come back with results that are 99% WE and 1% African. The Cherokee myth was to cover for the African ancestry.”
What had initially got me into genealogy at age 15 was the mention of “Native American” on my great-great-grandmother’s side (she is circled in red in the attached image). Eventually, my mom got me a test for my birthday, which among confirming what my family pretty much already knew about our ancestry, (through “hacking” it) revealed that I had 0.20% Ashkenazi Jewish DNA (now updated to 0.36%). In calculating my Parental Split, I found that it came from my dad, and when his test came in, he had it at 1%, “hacked” to 0.41%, and it was inherited from his mother. My “Native American” great-great-grandmother was my parental grandmother’s own paternal grandmother.
So, as asked in the title, is there a precedence for Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry to be claimed as “Native American” to historically avoid antisemitism? Did I find our “Native American” ancestry without even realizing it?