Clint Midwestwood: Put Your Documentation Where Your Mouth Is
This is a picture of a large piece of art carved of wood by Peter Wolf Toth in 1988 that stands next to a small lake on the western edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It commemorates the Ojibwe presence in the region.
Here are some things that are true:
1. I just wrote a long thing about how everybody wants to make up claims of Native American heritage.
2. Before that, I wrote a bunch of long things claiming Native American heritage.
3. I am not a fan of cognitive dissonance.
So what gives?
One of the things that people told me when I was little and everybody was talking about my adoption was that my biological family had some connection to the Native Americans, though nobody knew the distribution of the cultures well enough to specifically say "Ojibwe." My mom -- Becky, not Yvonne -- used to say that Uncle Joe Prout might be half-Indian, and if he was half-Indian, then I'd be a quarter. Even at a young age, I was skeptical, but as time went on and I looked more closely at my origins, it seemed reasonable that at least some portion of me might have passed over the Bering Land Bridge. By the time Robin and I got together, I was making joking references to "my people" as Robin stared at my blond hair with rolling eyes.
But then she did all this research and confirmed it. As it turns out, I am one of the few white Americans who claims Native American heritage without lying. There really are Ojibwes on my family tree. And probably some Hurons and maybe some Sioux.
So, then. How Native am I?
(Now, to be clear, I want to emphasize that this is purely an exercise in biology. Culturally, I am not Native American at all. I was not raised in that culture, and I've never had to deal with the limitations imposed on that culture by the larger society of white Americans. I'm not trying to go all Rachel Dolezal here. I self-identify as a white guy.)
To work the biology out, let's go back five generations to my great-great-great grandparents. Like anybody, I have 32 ancestors in this generation. This is the generation of Susanne Aiabens, daughter of Chief Aiabens and some unnamed Ojibwe woman. John Davenport is also in this generation, and as the son of Susan Descarreaux, he was 50% Ojibwe. Another 50%--at least as recognized by the government--comes from Marie Vallier, the wife of Amable Goudreau. So assuming that I'm right about about these heritages--and for these three people, I'm about 95% sure--then I am at least 1/16th Native American, or about 6.25%.
There are more questionable references to people who might have been Native American. Some notes suggest that both parents of Elizabeth Belanger (Paul Belanger and Angelique Montreuil) were half-Ojibwe. There's some suggestion that some Ojibwes might be hiding in a couple of places on the Frazier line, or among the Leveques/Lavakes. And there's that Nathaniel Quick thing, which I mostly don't buy. If all that were true, that might take me up to about 10% Native American.
And the rest of me? That seems split between France and England, with England getting the edge. As far as I know, everybody on my biological father's side is English. About a third of my mother's people are French by way of Canada. And that's everything I am. I'm 90% white guy, which in America counts as white guy.
If you want to go back far enough, though, things start getting absurd. Consider all those Cornwall English. Go back far enough, and what's their origin? Where were they, say, a thousand years ago? Maybe they were Normans. So, more French. Or maybe they were Anglo-Saxon, which makes them kind of German. And what about all those French? Go back far enough, and they're Germanic Franks. Go back farther, and they're Gauls. Unless they were Romans. It's entirely possible everybody's a Roman. Which would make me Italian. So I'm a distant cousin to Robin.
(Which, as a Kentuckian, doesn't really bother me.)
Basically, if you take all this genealogical stuff far enough, everybody is everything, and we're all the same people. Robin and I probably have a common ancestor within the last 2,000 years. I probably have a common ancestor with most people reading this in the same time frame. In my 37th generation, I have a number of ancestors greater than the number of humans that have ever existed, ever. So do you. That generation probably lived some time around the fall of the Roman Empire, when the population of the entire planet was around 200 million. So a lot of names appear a lot of times, and they're the same names that appear on the family tree of every other person alive today.
So here's the ultimate lesson of genealogy. Knowing this stuff is fun, and I enjoy seeing the different paths people took to get to different places. But in the end, we all go back to the same patch of African trees. So really, we should just get over ourselves.
Clint Midwestwood: Put Your Documentation Where Your Mouth Is
This is a picture of a large piece of art carved of wood by Peter Wolf Toth in 1988 that stands next to a small lake on the western edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It commemorates the Ojibwe presence in the region.
Here are some things that are true:
1. I just wrote a long thing about how everybody wants to make up claims of Native American heritage.
2. Before that, I wrote a bunch of long things claiming Native American heritage.
3. I am not a fan of cognitive dissonance.
So what gives?
One of the things that people told me when I was little and everybody was talking about my adoption was that my biological family had some connection to the Native Americans, though nobody knew the distribution of the cultures well enough to specifically say "Ojibwe." My mom -- Becky, not Yvonne -- used to say that Uncle Joe Prout might be half-Indian, and if he was half-Indian, then I'd be a quarter. Even at a young age, I was skeptical, but as time went on and I looked more closely at my origins, it seemed reasonable that at least some portion of me might have passed over the Bering Land Bridge. By the time Robin and I got together, I was making joking references to "my people" as Robin stared at my blond hair with rolling eyes.
But then she did all this research and confirmed it. As it turns out, I am one of the few white Americans who claims Native American heritage without lying. There really are Ojibwes on my family tree. And probably some Hurons and maybe some Sioux.
So, then. How Native am I?
(Now, to be clear, I want to emphasize that this is purely an exercise in biology. Culturally, I am not Native American at all. I was not raised in that culture, and I've never had to deal with the limitations imposed on that culture by the larger society of white Americans. I'm not trying to go all Rachel Dolezal here. I self-identify as a white guy.)
To work the biology out, let's go back five generations to my great-great-great grandparents. Like anybody, I have 32 ancestors in this generation. This is the generation of Susanne Aiabens, daughter of Chief Aiabens and some unnamed Ojibwe woman. John Davenport is also in this generation, and as the son of Susan Descarreaux, he was 50% Ojibwe. Another 50%--at least as recognized by the government--comes from Marie Vallier, the wife of Amable Goudreau. So assuming that I'm right about about these heritages--and for these three people, I'm about 95% sure--then I am at least 1/16th Native American, or about 6.25%.
There are more questionable references to people who might have been Native American. Some notes suggest that both parents of Elizabeth Belanger (Paul Belanger and Angelique Montreuil) were half-Ojibwe. There's some suggestion that some Ojibwes might be hiding in a couple of places on the Frazier line, or among the Leveques/Lavakes. And there's that Nathaniel Quick thing, which I mostly don't buy. If all that were true, that might take me up to about 10% Native American.
And the rest of me? That seems split between France and England, with England getting the edge. As far as I know, everybody on my biological father's side is English. About a third of my mother's people are French by way of Canada. And that's everything I am. I'm 90% white guy, which in America counts as white guy.
If you want to go back far enough, though, things start getting absurd. Consider all those Cornwall English. Go back far enough, and what's their origin? Where were they, say, a thousand years ago? Maybe they were Normans. So, more French. Or maybe they were Anglo-Saxon, which makes them kind of German. And what about all those French? Go back far enough, and they're Germanic Franks. Go back farther, and they're Gauls. Unless they were Romans. It's entirely possible everybody's a Roman. Which would make me Italian. So I'm a distant cousin to Robin.
(Which, as a Kentuckian, doesn't really bother me.)
Basically, if you take all this genealogical stuff far enough, everybody is everything, and we're all the same people. Robin and I probably have a common ancestor within the last 2,000 years. I probably have a common ancestor with most people reading this in the same time frame. In my 37th generation, I have a number of ancestors greater than the number of humans that have ever existed, ever. So do you. That generation probably lived some time around the fall of the Roman Empire, when the population of the entire planet was around 200 million. So a lot of names appear a lot of times, and they're the same names that appear on the family tree of every other person alive today.
So here's the ultimate lesson of genealogy. Knowing this stuff is fun, and I enjoy seeing the different paths people took to get to different places. But in the end, we all go back to the same patch of African trees. So really, we should just get over ourselves.