Comments by "bart thomassen thomassen" (@thomassenbart) on "The Problem with DNA Testing for Native American Heritage w/Shannon O'Loughlin | Joe Rogan" video.

  1. Shannon is a white girl. She's not Indian. If you can simply assert yourself to be native, then anyone can be one. She's not 50% Choctaw. At best her grandmother was partially Choctaw and Shannon is a lesser amount. Does she speak Choctaw? If not, she has almost no claim to being an actual Indian any more than Rogan can claim to be Italian. If do don't speak, you are not in the club. In the bio of Shannon, her claim to being Choctaw is an encounter she had with an Elder Choctaw. In this interview she says it was her grandmother, so which is it? Could she be using the grandmother language in a figurative and not biological sense? Shannon has all the attributes of a fraud, similar to Elizabeth Warren.
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  2. Her push back about what percentage Indian she is, was telling. It is not a legitimate argument to claim heritage to a specific group of people, without a significant amount of biological continuity or at least the ability to speak the language of those people, know their culture, having grown up in that culture etc.... It would have been much better if she had answered the question directly rather than obfuscate. Her self identification as being Choctaw, seems problematic.
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  3. No. The 1% or one drop of blood concept, was based upon racist slave codes. Of course the govt. allows you to identify into whatever group you wish but if you are 1% descended from whatever ancestry, it's not nothing but it really is not enough to claim a state of being, i.e. I am X. Outside of actual blood ties, the strongest indicator of group affiliation and perhaps the primary indicator, is language. Do you speak the tongue of the group fluently? If not, your claim is in doubt. With American Indians, this is a real problem, because the vast majority no longer speak their tribal tongues or only a few words at best. This is unfortunate.
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  4.  @kingjamestres  I don't and I live here. Also, I don't think most people agree with you but would be interested to see polling on the issue. I would also argue that more and more people of mixed race or ethnicity, resent needing to choose and prefer to ID as none of the above, or mixed or something similar.
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  5. james d Interesting
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