Today people can look up their family tree by using the internet on a website known as Ancestry.com.
To others there is no way for them to find any link to their past.
My wife who was born in Bogota, Colombia was adopted at the age of three. She’d been found wandering the streets and taken to an orphanage. Out of it she was adopted by a white woman. When she was brought to America and naturalized, she had to give up her Colombian citizenship. She told me she got angry and cried because she didn’t want to give up her citizenship!
She can’t trace her ancestry to a particular family tree or branch except for being a Colombian.
There are a lot of Indians-natives-indigenous, Blacks, Orientals, Mexicans, and of course Europeans’ who can only go so far back. While others have a story of their parents, grandparents were this and that.
We have stories of the battles fought, lives lost of those remembered and those forgotten.
Movement of people west. The Old settlers were Cherokees who moved early from Georgia and North Carolina. Old settlers aren’t on the Dawes rolls which were used to identify Cherokees. Which in turn became the basis for the Allotment Act.
Who moved? Most importantly who were the ones who died on “the trail where they cried?’ where are the grave markers with names on them so we can know?
We aren’t the only tribe that has a history of the Trail where the old ones walked. Each tribe has their own trail.
The United States known as America is littered with graveyards and markers with names on them. Others are lost to time and erosion. There are some still being found to this day but what about the names? Time and nature erodes’ and erases names on gravestones if there were any.
Today there is a renewed effort to find tribal and family lineage. While some look for the goodies one can get others search for answers to questions of who and what were my ancestors. What is my culture.
My wife may not be able to find her family tree but she is still a Colombian and that doesn’t change. The same can be said for us as we strive to survive as a people.
With so many crying about America they forget why they are able too! I’m ndn or native or indigenous whichever is true but also American as it has given me by its’ Declaration of Independence the right to be. What you say? It is the right to be! To exist and as a person by its’ acknowledgement of these words “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.”
Which tree the one that says American and the branch that says Cherokee.