We're Havin' a Cherokee Pow Wow!

We're havin' a Cherokee Pow Wow!  Guest list includes Elizabeth Warren, Demi Moore, Johnny Depp, Cameron Diaz, Val Kilmer, Carmen Electra, and of course Ward Churchill.  I'm also adding three blonde-haired, blue-eyed women I have met who claim to be part Cherokee.  Now that I think of it, one in five California women claims to be part Cherokee, so we may have to make this a virtual event, and host it on Facebook.  

I will also invite the guy who called my mother (local historian and former librarian in a small Michigan town), being convinced he was part Cherokee.  His evidence?  His last name was "Fox".  Yes, you know, like Charles Fox, the renowned Native American statesman.  But it gets better. He had a brother whose first name was "Forrest" (or Forest, he didn’t spell it).  Yes, that's right, like Forrest Gump.  I’m not making this up.  I was in the room when my mother took the call.  She suggested that the poor fellow consult genealogical sources to test the validity of his dubious belief.

All this led to Anesi’s Second Theorem, which states that there is a 10% probability that any randomly selected apparently White person in the United States will claim to be part Cherokee. Bayesian inference can refine this estimate.  If the person is a woman from California, the probability rises to 20%, and if the person is a woman from California who also practices yoga, the probability increases to 50%; and if said woman lives in Hollywood, the probability approaches 100%.  In all cases, any actual evidence of Native American ancestry (from census records, DNA tests etc.), Cherokee or otherwise, is almost invariably lacking.

After I developed and tested this theorem (about ten years ago), I emailed the Cherokee Nation to ask if they had noticed a similar pattern.  I got a nice reply stating that yes, indeed, it was common for White people to claim Cherokee affinity: it is a large tribe, and its history is widely known, so people who have some vague family legend of Native American ancestry just latch onto “Cherokee”.  

Note that Anesi’s Second Theorem has statistical support.  While only 15% of those persons claiming Native American Ancestry alone and identifying their tribe(s) designate Cherokee (see table 7 in this census document),  38% of those claiming Native American ancestry in combination with some other race and identifying tribe(s) claim to be part Cherokee.  This is because most of those people are liars.  Of course the census numbers underestimate the total number of bogus Cherokee in the general population.  It really is more like 10%.  Trust me, Anesi’s Second Theorem is sound.   

Now, we all know that humans are notorious horn dogs and that considerable interbreeding among racial and ethnic groups has occurred, so many ostensibly White people undoubtedly have some Native American blood.  How to satisfy yourself?  Possibly a DNA test (just make sure you understand what you are getting).  Or genealogy.  Note that these may produce different results. 

If you rely on genealogy, be aware that there are things called non-paternity events, where the biological father is someone other than he is presumed to be.  This can result from patty-cake or from hidden adoptions, which can also cause non-maternity events.  Nowadays of course we also have sperm and egg donations, but these are recent innovations.  In any case, if the probability of a non-paternity and/or non-maternity event in any particular birth event is .05, the probability of one or more non-paternity/maternity events in a chain of n ancestors is 1 – .95ⁿ (disregarding effects from pedigree collapse).  This means that in a single line of descent, there is a 40% chance of one or more non-paternity events in ten generations.  In your entire pedigree, the probability of one or more non-paternity events in ten generations approaches certainty.  Yes, genealogy is more or less bunk.

Returning to supposititious Cherokee, since there was no objectively persuasive basis for Elizabeth Warren’s hackneyed assertion of Cherokee heritage, there are three possible reasons for her making it:

1. She intentionally misrepresented her heritage for the purpose of deceiving others to her advantage and/or their detriment.   

2. She truly believed her claims.  

3. She intentionally misrepresented her heritage but considered it a "tall tale" and did not care if anyone to took it seriously.  

Putting the best construction on her behavior, we would choose #2, which however seems hardly possible for an attorney schooled in the perils of negligent misrepresentation.  On the other hand, since Warren also believes other patently preposterous things without any supporting evidence -- that people get mired in debt because of inadequate loan disclosures, for example (Didn’t she  read David Copperfield?  Would disclosures have kept Wilkins Micawber out of debtor’s prison?) – she may be one of those strange people who lives in an alternate reality where scientific facts have no significance.  Typical law professor, in other words.  Wonder if she has done a past-life regression and discovered she was Helen of Troy?  (This relates to Anesi’s First Theorem, more about that in a later post.)