And that's the percentage! The article is dealing with raw numbers. The US population at large grew 9.7% between 2000 and 2010 (http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-pop-text...). So it would be expected that a given subset of that population would also increase by about that amount.

A further confound is that you can not know that you had Cherokee ancestry in 2000, but discover that in the next ten years. I'd think this would be especially true during the rise of internet-based ancestry research tools.

You would only expect the percentage of people with any specific ancestry to double if they never had children with people of similar extraction, and there was no immigration.

Googling suggests that DNA evidence shows that about 5% of "white" Americans carry Native American genes (this varies a lot with the region -- for instance, "white" people from Louisiana are more likely to carry Native American (8%) and African American (12%) genes than in some other areas).

200 million "white" Americans x 0.05 = roughly 10 million Americans with some type of NA ancestry. Give that the Cherokee were (and are) quite a large tribe, 700,000-800,000 living descendants doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

Edit: corrected to account for only the "white" population rather than the whole population.

> Googling suggests that DNA evidence shows that about 5% of "white" Americans carry Native American genes

I'm one of these, at least according to my Genographic Project results.

Prior to getting my results, I assumed my father's family's oral tradition of a Cherokee ancestor was fiction. But maybe it's true after all.

Yea, this article is weird. Why would a professor lead the piece with a suggestion that a bunch of this students are deluded and then provide essentially zero evidence that this is the case?

"In the United States alone, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma estimates there are over 200 fraudulent groups claiming to be Cherokee."

The author doesn't go into great detail, but it the estimate is probably correct given the statistics of the situation. The tribes have the tribal roll with the ancestry. You can do further reading on the genetic testing and people's beliefs about their ancestry.

Based on my experiences with non-recognized tribes of other affiliations, I'd be willing to best that a lot of those "fraudulent" groups are legitimate Native American tribes, or at the very least organized groups of people with shared Native American ancestry, but ones that are not officially recognized by the US Government.

Yes, there are fake tribes that come out of the woodwork hoping to gain casino rights, but many if not most of these non-recognized groups often accused of being fraudulent have verifiable histories going back 100 or more years, and have been studied by historians and anthropologists (with publications to prove it). It's a shame that such groups are denied the recognition they deserve, even after all that has happened in this country.

It is also a shame that casino rights is the form of recognition they seek.

It's a shame that casino rights is the only meaningful form of recognition being offered...

That is definitely not true. Federal recognition brings a host of abilities for a people to organize including the ability to form a government and other institutions.

And I think it's a shame that anyone thinks they deserve "recognition" based on who their ancestors were.

It's a shame that there's no form of recognition that doesn't involve casino rights.

In fact, there is no official "casino rights" recognition to seek, it's just an often unwanted right that comes along with federal tribal recognition.

So many tribes, who want other educational and or commercial benefits that come with federal recognition (like being able to label their art/crafts "Indian-made"), or who simply want the recognition due to them for reasons of ethnic pride, have to face opposition from big casino corporations worried that some tribal leader in the future might propose a casino.

There should be a form of federal recognition by BIA that doesn't involve casino rights, that's the easiest solution (although unlikely to happen for legal reasons).

Technically there are some states that refuse to sign compacts with the tribes. It's a myth its automatic. Further, some states (e.g. North Dakota) do not allow direct payment to tribal members and require the money go to social service programs.

I am getting a bit sick of all the FUD in this area.

What? FUD? There are a few state exceptions (as there are to just about any US intersection of state and federal law) to what I wrote and you call it FUD?

The fact is, for those states that do give federally-recognized tribes casino rights (ie, most of them), there is not way for a tribe to forfeit that right.

How in the world is that a "myth" or "FUD"? Look, I can understand why you got irritated at the other statement above (of course federal recognition brings benefits other than casino rights!), but I have no idea what you would call this fact a "myth".

If you're pointing out that this would have to come from the states, and not the federal government, then it's a good point (that's what I was referring to my "legal reasons"). But why call this "FUD"?

"Gregory D. Smithers is an Associate Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University"

Speaks for itself.

> "Assuming completely random mating"

I'm not sure this is an entirely sound hypothesis given the observable state of this country over basically its entire history.