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In reply to the discussion: Here's the deal with Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage [View all]pnwmom
(108,973 posts)major result (over 80% from one region) correlated with my father's genealogical research, but that was it -- just fun.
Because DNA is passed down in clumps (my word, not scientific), and mixed, not uniformly split between your two parents, two siblings can have different percentages of DNA from their ancestors. So one sibling might have 0 percent connected with Native American, while the other has 6%. Both had the same distant Cherokee ancestor, as proved by the Cherokee rolls, but only one got the DNA. (Just like one might get brown eyes and one might get blue -- even though they have exactly the same ancestors.)
So while the science might support Warren's family's story of having some Native American ancestry, it also might not -- even if she can point to a Native American ancestor in her family tree.
IOW, if you had gotten a negative result on your DNA test, that wouldn't mean your family's story was false. So there would still be reason to wonder.