“Justin Petrone, like me, is a mixed race person with Native American ancestry, although unlike me, initially, he never thought of himself in those terms.  I’ve always known and since I was a child, self-identified myself in that way.  Like me, Justin has spent years searching for his elusive ancestors, more often than not, hidden in the mists of time with only suggestions of who their ancestors are by words on tax lists and census records like “free person of color.”

Most of the time, Native people were transparent, until they became at least “civilized” enough to be counted on the census, or taxed or they did something else to bring them into the white man’s realm.  More recently, Justin and others like us have been able to confirm, or deny, that heritage via DNA testing.  So even if we don’t know exactly who our ancestor is, we are positive THAT our Native heritage is real.  In some cases, through DNA testing we can learn which of our ancestral lines is Native.”

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See on nativeheritageproject.com