I Am Native American (cherokee)

I am only a 1/4 Cherokee though. Growing up though I didn't even know until I was an older teenager. It is on my dads side of the family and he never talked about it. I made the comment once that when I tanned in the summer that I looked a little "native" and my grandmother said to me that is because your grandfather was Indian, it's in our family.
I said this to my dad a couple days later and he got very upset and told me my grandmother was a fruitcake. Yet it got me researching the history and taking a closer look at the photos and time and again I could see it, especially in my grandfather. I pointed this out to my dad and he just shook his head.
To this day that side of the family doesn't talk about it. I on my own studied the history of the Cherokee and I am not embarrassed or ashamed to talk about it. I may only have a small amount in it, but that's okay. I think it just adds another interesting element to who I am. :)

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Peaches · F

Yeah, there's a lot my family won't talk about either.🤔I'd love to take a test they have out to see what is in my DNA, or what ever they do?! That Ancestry thing seems to be popular.⭐

Heartlander · 80-89, M

@Peaches: This refreshes my memory of a visit I made about 20 years ago to one of the Indian schools. The idea was that native American children at a young age were taken from their homes at a very young age and completely deprived of contact with their family and/or tribe while completely submerged in training to be regular Americans. The particular school had been updated and become an extension of a nearby state university, but many of the old parts were still there as were some of the old timers with horrible stories.

One of the "memories" was the graveyard behind the more recently built football stadium where children who had died during the small-pox epidemic were buried. The internet refers to it as a "haunted place" which insensitively undercuts the pain and suffering of the people who were taken from their families and culture, stripped of their culture and died and were buried without their parents there to comfort them. A popular belief is that smallpox was intentionally spread to Native Americans via infected blankets.

Here is an image of one of the Indian schools, but not the one I visited.

Peaches · F

@Heartlander: Oh, it just takes me to MORE links, but I can appreciate what you are saying. That's so sad.💔🥀

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ravenwind43 · 51-55, F

@Peaches: I want to do the Ancestry test too....see what else is lurking lol