For those of you who are able to trace their ancestry back to another country...

[wnylib]

61. My family knew that my paternal grandmother

descended from a Seneca man who is well known in Seneca and western NY history. One of that Seneca leader's descendants became a NY State archaeologist and anthropologist who dedicated his work to preserving Seneca culture and history, along with other Haudenosaunee cultures.

My grandparents met him when he did research in northwestern PA where my grandmother's family had relocated to. She was mixed, British, Seneca, and Mohawk. He filled her in on her Seneca ancestry and her relationship to him.

I grew up in northwestern PA, but now live in western NY where my Seneca ancestors lived, and near where people of today's Seneca Nation still live on land that has been theirs for thousands of years. Greatly reduced in size, but still their homeland. They call it a territory, not a reservation. There are 3 main Seneca territories in NY.

But, due to the reasons you gave, many Native people do not even have family stories about their family ancestry. Too many slaughters and forced relocations over the generations, not to mention families broken up by the residential school system.