How to Explore Your Native American Heritage

November is National American Indian Heritage Month, which is a terrific opportunity to delve into your genealogical history and determine if you have any Native American ancestry on your mother's or father's side. This can be a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive task, since many records are unreliable, spotty, or have long since been destroyed. How to get started?

Instructions

1. Be realistic. Odds are that if you're reading this article, you already have a hunch about a Native American forebear somewhere in your family tree. However, if both of your parents can clearly and convincingly trace their heritage back to Eastern Europe, you're wasting your time. (I don't mean this frivolously; the fact is, many ordinary folks are convinced, against all evidence, that their great-great-great...etc. grandfather was Genghis Khan.)

2. Get the facts, before it's too late. Now is the time to reestablish contact with any great-aunts, second cousins, and the like who may have pertinent information. If you unearth a lead-say, an elderly aunt remembers her grandfather telling her about a part-Cherokee uncle-try to corroborate that information with other family members.

3. If your research uncovers the name of an actual tribe-and remember, not all Native American tribe names are as recognizable as "Cherokee" or "Apache"-there are online resources that list available information about tribes and their descendants. If these sites are unhelpful, it may be time to hire a professional genealogist to dig into your family tree.

4. Not all people seeking their Native American heritage are five or six generations removed from the tribe. If you know for a fact that one or both of your parents were Native American-or that you were adopted from Native American parents-your genealogical task should be much easier (or at least as easy as it is for any adoptee seeking information about his or her biological parents).

Tips & Warnings

• Despite what you saw on "The Sopranos," having a great-great-uncle with one-eighth Cherokee blood does not entitle you to open your own casino. Explore your Native American ancestry with respect, not as some kind of lottery that entitles you to a free scholarship or a professional leg up.

• If you do establish that you're part Native American, it's not okay to suddenly start wearing items of sacred Native American clothing, such as headdresses. As a sign of respect, you should first learn more about your ancestry by establishing contact with your tribe.