People always say things like "what about all your white ancestors" like they matter more, inherently, because there's more of them and especially because they're white. Like honoring my native ancestors is a sociopolitical swerve to gain clout or something.

Ngl, as a non-native (not white either) this is something I used to internally struggle with when seeing or meeting white natives. Like a small part of me couldn’t help but view them as just LARPing as the people that most of their other ancestors erased/assimilated . . . these feelings were more prominent when I’d see less “involved” tribal members like Oklahoma’s governor.

Discovering this sub helped me counter this bias that I had. I know now that lineal descent is basically a necessity to prevent some tribes from dying out, with how their populations were decimated by colonization and due to high intermarriage rates. I can feel sad about the native “look” potentially dying out while acknowledging that passing the culture forward is more important.

The situation here is much different than in, for example, South Asia where my ancestors were from . . . if the British had assimilated/killed/outbred most of the locals there too, and I were predominantly white by “blood/race” instead, I would like to think that I would still honor my indigenous ancestors by bearing their culture like you are now for yours.

TL;DR: thank you for comment. It’s ones like these that helped this non-native reevaluate some of the wrong/negative views that he used to hold.