she’s basically accusing me of “stolen valor” by saying “youre not indigenous, youre mexican,” despite having 25% “indigenous peoples: mexico” on my ancestry DNA test. can anyone please explain to my mother how this works? i tried to explain it but she wont listen to me.
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Mexicans are not all native American descendants, there is a portion of the population that is European descent and many other nationalities
Most real Mexicans ( i.e. not those with Spanish ancestry) are descended directly from the Mayan. Who if truth be told were Natives of certain areas of South and central America.
Are you just going by the DNA test? If so, I don’t think it’s appropriate to pride yourself on being “indigenous.”
If you have cultural ties to a people group, that’s different. But so many people say “I’m part (insert people group here), my DNA test says so!” when they have no ties to that identity besides a DNA test.
Use the DNA test as a starting point. Ask your father, if you are able, about his family. Look into your family’s history. But without creating ties to this identity, you are just using it to be “special.”
Put it to her this way: the “Indians”(no better common term, since each country has it’s own unique term) in Canada are accepted, culturally and legally(you can even cross the US border with just your Canadian Indian Status(still called that BTW) card) as being the same as US Indians, so if you were 1/4 Canadian Indian, she would not have an issue. The reason that Mexican Indians are not, has to do with US Mexico relations and not with Mexican Indians being more different than Canadian Indians.
Being indigenous to the area and being Mexican are unrelated. If you’re part of the groups that lived there before the old world came and slaughtered, then you’re indigenous. If you just have family that’s Mexican, they could just as well be Spanish.
In the spirit of r/explainlikeimfive
[Spaniards banged the Mayans, turned ‘em into Mexicans](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5a630e52-421a-434f-9d62-3a74e0b915fe)
The NPR podcast Throughline did an episode about the city of Tenochtitlan and the mixing of indigenous and Spanish peoples.
There have been some very good books written on why white European Americans so often identify themselves as Native American. They seek to legitimize themselves as rightfully belonging to the US. A great example is the ‘[improved red men](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improved_Order_of_Red_Men).
Just point out that there were indigenous peoples in Mexico too before the Spanish came. Indigenous means original inhabitants, not just original inhabitants of the continental US.
I always wondered if people from Spain look Mexican. If it’s not the Spanish blood, where would it come from?
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