# I pit my fellow whiteys who think they are Native American **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 16, 2014, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686 "2014-09-16T20:21:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![ILikeForeignLanguages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bc8723/32.png) [@ILikeForeignLanguages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ILikeForeignLanguages)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/141 "2014-09-20T06:09:46Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > As for the second, there are a lot more members of the Cheyenne Nation than speakers of Tsėhésenėstsestȯtse. Is that really what the Cheyenne call their language? Wow. In terms of long and hard to spell/pronounce, that’s right up there with the Welsh town, “Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.” ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/142 "2014-09-20T06:33:58Z")
> [@ILikeForeignLanguages](#): > > Is that really what the Cheyenne call their language? Wow. In terms of long and hard to spell/pronounce, that’s right up there with the Welsh town, “Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.” Are you sticking with the idea that you can tell who is Native American by looking at them? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/143 "2014-09-20T09:15:09Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > … Sooo… my redheaded cousin is not Hispanic, whereas her raven-haired, tans-from-looking-out-a-window brother is? I’m sure they’ll be happy, if somewhat surprised, to hear it, given their differring politics. If your friend is not culturally Hispanic, then he’s not Hispanic, but for the twentymillionth time, that’s got nothing to do with looks. There are a lot of red-headed Puerto Ricans, FWIW. It means they probably have a white ancestor who was very blonde, like Norwegian, or something, but it could be pretty far back. There’s a certain combination of genes, a very blonde Scandinavian or other Germanic type, and someone very dark, like an Italian, Greek, Spaniard, or Hispanic person, that can produce a red-head. Unlike the red-heads you see from places like Ireland, they have the same carroty head hair, but brown eyes, and very light, unfreckled skin in the winter, that will tan fairly easily in the first days of spring. I had a Puerto Rican drill sergeant with reddish hair, and he had a really adorable little daughter with bright red hair. He was really excited to have a platoon of women for basic training, and I kinda wondered why, and then later I realized it was because he had this really cute two-year-old at home, and he loved showing off her picture, and telling stories about what new, cute thing she’d said or done that day, and women were a much better audience for that than 18 & 19 year-old guys. Once, a couple of days before graduation from basic, when the rules were really relaxed, he brought his little girl in, and there was this huge collective “Awwwwww…” Back to your regularly scheduled thread. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/144 "2014-09-20T09:16:42Z")
> [@ILikeForeignLanguages](#): > > RIP thread. You were a good pitting while you lasted. Thread drift happens. I’ve gotten some really good recipes that way. Clearly you found a topic that made people want to talk. Good for you. ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/145 "2014-09-20T17:45:43Z")
> [@andros](#): > > Hmm. That would include about half the population of New Mexico. Yeah, I just had some at the Taos Pueblo. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/146 "2014-09-20T19:44:22Z")
[NATIVE AMERICAN FRY BREAD RECIPES](http://www.manataka.org/page180.html) Now everyone on this thread can apply for tribal membership. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/147 "2014-09-20T20:03:08Z")
My grand-grand-grand-… mother was an pretty redhaired irish slave girl who was sold to be the bride of a pagan barbarian Viking who had gotten into his boneheaded skull to settle on some god-forsaken freezing islands in the North Atlantic. I totally claim Irish descend. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/148 "2014-09-20T21:22:48Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > There are a lot of red-headed Puerto Ricans, FWIW. It means they probably have a white ancestor who was very blonde, like Norwegian, or something, but it could be pretty far back. There’s a certain combination of genes, a very blonde Scandinavian or other Germanic type, and someone very dark, like an Italian, Greek, Spaniard, or Hispanic person, that can produce a red-head. Unlike the red-heads you see from places like Ireland, they have the same carroty head hair, but brown eyes, and very light, unfreckled skin in the winter, that will tan fairly easily in the first days of spring. I had a Puerto Rican drill sergeant with reddish hair, and he had a really adorable little daughter with bright red hair. He was really excited to have a platoon of women for basic training, and I kinda wondered why, and then later I realized it was because he had this really cute two-year-old at home, and he loved showing off her picture, and telling stories about what new, cute thing she’d said or done that day, and women were a much better audience for that than 18 & 19 year-old guys. > > Once, a couple of days before graduation from basic, when the rules were really relaxed, he brought his little girl in, and there was this huge collective “Awwwwww…” > > Back to your regularly scheduled thread. Uhm, there are plenty of blonds in Spain. Puerto Rico was populated by, among other people. the Spanish. You don’t need to invoke a Viking ancestor to explain blond hair-- it occurs all over Europe, even if in significantly less frequency as one travels south. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/149 "2014-09-21T03:53:55Z")
And redheads, but the thing is, you can still get red or reddish hair from all sorts of combinations other than “redheaded parents” (my aforementioned grey-eyed redheaded cousin’s parents are both dark haired, dark eyed, easy tanners; my brother’s coppery brown hair comes from ash-blonde plus dark brown). For some reason, a lot of people who don’t have redheaded relatives are surprised by that. Bonus points? Some people attribute the relatively large amounts of blondes on the Northern edge of Spain to… Vikings. Not to the many Germanic tribes that drove by, or the ones who stayed, or Celts, or any other of the zillion possible origins like, say, a few Dutch and German sailors. I’m not sure how much it’s serious and how much a case of “Viking” sounding cooler than “Ostrogoth”. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/150 "2014-09-21T04:04:04Z")
Is having a Viking ancestor in Europe like having a Cherokee “princess” ancestor in the US? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/151 "2014-09-21T04:44:20Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > And redheads, but the thing is, you can still get red or reddish hair from all sorts of combinations other than “redheaded parents” (my aforementioned grey-eyed redheaded cousin’s parents are both dark haired, dark eyed, easy tanners; my brother’s coppery brown hair comes from ash-blonde plus dark brown). For some reason, a lot of people who don’t have redheaded relatives are surprised by that. Since the genes for dark hair are dominant, it’s easy for a non-dark hair genes to hide in the genetic make-up of dark haired individuals. It’s downright silly to assume that two dark-haired parents must, necessarily, have only dark haired children. I would think most of us have seen this to not be the case in our daily lives. I can think of several instances in my own family where blond children were born to parents with dark hair. The genetics of skin and hair color are more complicate than simply binary Mendelian genetics, but didn’t we all learn in Junior High that Aa x Aa = AA + 2Aa + aa? ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/152 "2014-09-21T10:41:54Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I think it’s likely such family lore stories about native American ancestry, which are very common, from what I understand, often came about to hide African ancestry. Seems legit. My first (Canadian) husband is mostly Scottish on his mother’s side and largely Irish on his father’s, but there are some traits from his father’s side (lips, nose, hair) that made them think there was some African ancestry in the mix. It didn’t become verified until his grandmother’s death, as she suppressed the information because she was ashamed of the fact, which is too bad. To our generation the reaction was merely ‘Really? Cool.’ No stigma attached. On the other hand, his first wife is the sort who clings desperately to a Native ancestry, to what degree and whether real or imagined I don’t know. Their son attended a native school of some sort, even though over half of his ancestry (his dad) was nowhere near native (and he’s totally got the same lips, nose and hair too). Why not celebrate other aspects of his heritage, such as Scottish, as there seems to be quite a lot more of it. Oh well. First Nations issues are pretty politicized in Canada, and I suppose you can’t blame those with actual native ancestry for trying to recover aspects of their culture and language, considering how recently they were still sending them to residential schools or taking children by force and giving them to white families. I met a guy several years younger than me who had experienced that, so it was apparently still happening in the 70s. He has no idea who or where his real parents were or what happened to them afterward. I also had a few youth workers in my greening project who were Metis, which is apparently a separate identity from the rest of the First Nations. I don’t know if they make a distinction between those whose ancestors were half French and those who were half Scottish. All those I met in Winnipeg identified as half French, and were very proud of both halves. They also would experience significant discrimination from their own, if they didn’t look ‘native enough’. One of my workers had light hair, blue eyes and freckles, and said he got a lot of shit for it from other Metis, accusing him of pretending. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/153 "2014-09-21T10:50:12Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I’m 1/4 Native American, but I only consider my mother to be actually Native American. At 1/2, it shows. At 1/4, I’m just a regular white dude. Albeit with a full head of dark hair at 40 where most of my classmates have graying or receding hairlines. I’m curious to know what your facial hair is like? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/154 "2014-09-21T11:15:52Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Is having a Viking ancestor in Europe like having a Cherokee “princess” ancestor in the US? No, but I’m reasonably sure that a lot more people can remember quickly who the Vikings were than, say, the Vestgoths or Ostrogoths. Or that the Vandals were real people many centuries before their name became an insult. The names of those nations are the kind of things that people hear about in High School or Middle School history if at all, promptly to forget it. Nobody makes movies about the Castros of Galicia or the plight of the Alanos, but Vikings? They’re a sort of shorthand for “barbarian dudes whose opponents wear something more modern than Roman armor”. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > The genetics of skin and hair color are more complicate than simply binary Mendelian genetics, but didn’t we all learn in Junior High that Aa x Aa = AA + 2Aa + aa? You assume that people attended Junior High and were awake during class. My own first batch of Genetics lessons was part of a course which was not part of the general educational requirement; people in the non-college-track HS never had any courses about that. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/155 "2014-09-21T13:37:07Z")
Red hair can also be caused by [albinism](http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask67). ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2014, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/156 "2014-09-21T23:52:05Z")
If I may use a personal example, I’m 100% Asian. If some white person who were 1/64 Asian began waxing eloquent about how Asian they were and how important their Asian blood and Asian heritage was to them…well, I’d be irritated. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2014, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/157 "2014-09-22T00:22:15Z")
> [@ILikeForeignLanguages](#): > > Look at the history of what we did to the indigenous people: we took their identity, raped it, beat it to nothing, burned it and then urinated on the ashes; “We” didn’t do anything. “We” were in Austria and Poland at the time. Quit blaming my ancestors or what yours did just because we came from the same continent 200 years apart. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2014, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/158 "2014-09-22T00:25:42Z")
I’m not sure why people let that stuff irritate them. I think it’s kind of funny. I mean, unless one had to spend inordinate amounts of time with someone like that and they made a big deal about it all the time, but then anyone who makes a big deal about anything all the time can be irritating. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2014, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/159 "2014-09-22T01:48:08Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > “We” didn’t do anything. “We” were in Austria and Poland at the time. Quit blaming my ancestors or what yours did just because we came from the same continent 200 years apart. :shrug: You benefit from it. ---
**Author:** ![jimbuff314](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c57346/32.png) [@jimbuff314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbuff314)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2014, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686/160 "2014-09-22T02:58:57Z")
> [@MostlyUseless](#): > > My wife is Cherokee of the Tahlequah Cherokees although she would like to change allegiance to the Smoky Mountain band. There is a pretty easy determination of one’s native American heritage. The next time someone claims it, ask if they have their _ **CBID** _. If they don’t know what one is, they likely are NA by family stories. When the Govt says you are NA, then you are. CDIB. After all, this _is_ The Straight Dope. “Change allegiance”? Also, almost everyone I personally know is Native American. Oddly enough, excepting the one closest to me. My SO is British. ☹ Fuck those twenty-dollar bills, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-fellow-whiteys-who-think-they-are-native-american/698686.md?page=9)