A Short Critique of Roberta Estes book; "DNA for Native American Genealogy”

Critique of Roberta Estes book; "DNA for Native American Genealogy”, Genealogical Publishing Company., Inc., Baltimore, Md., © 2021

This is a very informative book.

I had trouble ordering it, though. I thought I’d ordered it, not realizing their program hadn’t accepted my information. I tried calling them on the phone, and never reached an actual person. I left a message but no one ever responded to it. I sent them an email and got no responses from them. It took me six weeks before I “somehow” was allowed to order the book. Once I finally got my information into their system, things went smoothly, and it arrived in the mail quickly. It is printed on 8.5”x11” paper and is 176 pages long. There is no final index, which was disappointing. However there is a Glossary of the terminology used throughout the book. This glossary is very useful, as many DNA terms need to be explained.

She mentioned the Metis in Canada, but not the Melungeons of East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, and neighboring regions. She spoke of the Athabascan peoples, but not the Uto-Aztecan peoples. Since the Utes and Aztecs speak similar languages, I have wondered if their genetic records showed a relationship as well. Oh well, I shouldn’t get so picky.

I do have a bone to pick with her about the Y-chromosome and mtDNA tests. Since one follows the straight male line and the other the straight female line, neither are very useful to me. Only the autosomal DNA can help me – and I wish she’d followed that route more closely than she does.

I loved what she says about tribal membership. There is no way any tribe will ever allow membership because of DNA match to certain tribe. Just as European DNA can point toward an origin from several European nations, so can Native DNA.

She gets the numbers of tribes/Nations in Oklahoma wrong. But most people do. They don’t understand sometimes bands of a minor nation r really allied closely to a far stronger band or Nation. The best record on this account is as I have said many times, “A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma” by Muriel Hazel Wright. But this is a trivial concern. She does cover the difference between “proof” and “evidence”. I harp on this often. I like it. It makes me happy to see someone else do the same.

Next in part two she covers clusters of data. This was one point I was really hoping to learn about. It bothers me some people of Melungeon ancestry were classified as Portuguese when it isn’t true. We are put in the same clusters because of two populations whose DNA has some similarities, and not because we are very closely related. I was wondering how she would cover this.

See, some early people in the Iberian peninsula are classified as Celt-Iberians. These were overrun by the Romans. The Romans were in turn overrun by the Western Goths, who it is thought came from the region around the Isle of Gotland, in Sweden. After the Goths came the Moors of MORocco and MAURitania in northwest Africa. See where I am going with this? Celts were also in Britain, as were the Romans, and were overrun by first Anglo-Saxons and later Danes. Just to the south of the Moorish peoples of West Africa was once the fabled city of Timbuktu. When this region collapsed, within 20 years the slave trade across the Atlantic began and African slaves were crossing the ocean to America in perhaps of the worst/cruelist travesties of the modern era. So DNA results can classify the two populations (Iberians and Melungeons) as closely related, in reality they are not. The Melungeon peoples were NEVER the Cherokee. They go back to the Catawban speaking populations, and can prove that at least some families go back to the Saponi, once a major Band of the Yesah/Esaw, who came to be known as “Catawba” only after the Tuscarora and Yamassee Wars that came to an end just before 1720.

Another point I am making is that the same nationalities emigrated to the southern Appalachians as to the Iberian Peninsula, with one exception – Native Americans. I was wondering if geneticists considered a small amount of Native American DNA as just “statistical noise” and thus ignored it, or if they truly accept a small amount of Native DNA as REALLY present with its presence meaning it was just introduced at an earlier time in history, and was never reintroduced later. I feel she does introduce this concept. I’d like to see this concept expanded. She comes close to making this distinction. I really enjoyed this aspect of her writing.

She also discusses various DNA testing kits and companies, citing similarities and differences between them.

The last half of the book however, couldn’t hold my interest because I knew it couldn’t affect my ancestry. But her explanations can be very helpful for those families who can trace a genetic marker back to an original Native American ancestor down the straight male or female line. She has numerous charts and diagrams to help explain her reasoning. She defines terms, and there are pages you might have to read two or three times to really understand what she is trying to say. The book is well written and her explanations are clear and concise.

If you think this book is something you would be interested in, just google the title and/or author. It is very educational and will help you to better understand the terminology of genetics.