Native American DNA Testing Tracks Down Your Tribe

DNA Testing is moving out of the realms of medicine and science and being used as a tool for people wanting to know their heritage and lineage. One particular group of people are keen to find out their Native American roots. DNA testing in this case can help to map out a relationship to Native Americans.

The results of this particular test will not grant you instant access to your tribe bit will help with understanding of ancestry and family links.

Native American DNA Testing does not rely on one test necessarily, it depends on what information that you have about your family and ancestors before the DNA specialist will decide the best tests to do. You may just feel you have Native American heritage so a more generalized test will be run or you may know you have for example a male relative.
If you think a male relative was Native American, any sons of his line for many generations so it is quite possible therefore for a great great grandson to be tested.

The test will show that if the line is descended from Native Americans, the haplogroups will have certain values. You can think of the haplogroups as a branch coming off the family tree of the human race. If the group is C or Q, it is a positive outcome and proof of a Native American descendent who had not had any contact with people of European descent. The values Q1a3a and C3b if present in the subgroup test constitutes almost absolute proof of Native American blood.

If you have a female ancestor, you need to test the direct maternal line so any child of hers male or female, any female grandchild, female great grandchild, female great great grandchild etc. The maternal haplogroups that indicates Native American heritage are A, B, C and D. No subgroups can be interrogated for maternal haplogroups, so as long as you are sure your ancestors did not immigrate from somewhere else, you can be quite sure of Native American heritage.

If you cannot specify an ancestor but think they may have been Native American, a DNA test would be run that looks at DNA from all your ancestors. These DNA tests are not as accurate as they cannot focus on a paternal or maternal family line.

The tests will report relative admixtures from all of your ancestors across the broad categories of origin; European, Asian and African. Because the roots of Native Americans are Asian in origin, results in the Asian category so any results will be in the Asian category percentages. Therefore if you have no Asian percentage then it is highly likely there was no Native American ancestry in the past generations. If however, you have no Asian ancestor you are aware of and the test shows a significant percentage value in the Asian category it is quite likely you do have some Native Indian ancestors.

If you know you are part Native American and want more information a far more in-depth testing can take place and you can be matched with other people with whom you share a common ancestor which can help if you are doing your own family genealogy project. You may uncover some fascinating history.