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Cherokee Dispossession Through Claimant Self-Declaration : Assessing Cherokee Heritage Claims in the 2020 U.S. Census Justice, Daniel Heath

Abstract

Despite extensive and multigenerational efforts by the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes to educate the larger public about the sovereign right and authority of Cherokee governments to determine affiliation, well over a million unaffiliated and unsubstantiated American claimants still declare Cherokee heritage in official records, deforming public understanding and reinforcing dangerously anti-Native racial logics. This article considers the problems associated with the “Cherokee” population categories in the 2020 U.S. census, its relationship to genealogical stereotypes in mainstream family history research, its dangers to Cherokee nationhood, and its consequences for Indian Country as a whole.

Item Metadata

Title
Cherokee Dispossession Through Claimant Self-Declaration : Assessing Cherokee Heritage Claims in the 2020 U.S. Census
Creator
Justice, Daniel Heath
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Date Issued
2025-11-19
Description
Despite extensive and multigenerational efforts by the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes to educate the larger public about the sovereign right and authority of Cherokee governments to determine affiliation, well over a million unaffiliated and unsubstantiated American claimants still declare Cherokee heritage in official records, deforming public understanding and reinforcing dangerously anti-Native racial logics. This article considers the problems associated with the “Cherokee” population categories in the 2020 U.S. census, its relationship to genealogical stereotypes in mainstream family history research, its dangers to Cherokee nationhood, and its consequences for Indian Country as a whole.
Subject
Cherokee identity; Cherokee Indians; Native identity; Indigenous identity; U.S. census; Cherokee nationhood; Indigenous identity fraud; sovereignty; Cherokee citizenship
Genre
Article
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2026-01-12
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
CC BY 4.0
DOI
10.14288/1.0451208
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/93368
Affiliation
Arts, Faculty of; Critical Indigenous Studies, Institute for; English Language and Literatures, Department of
Citation
Genealogy 9 (4): 131 (2025)
Publisher DOI
10.3390/genealogy9040131
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty; Researcher
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Rights

CC BY 4.0