We Are Not African American

Introduction 

George Catlin - (North American Indians Vol. 1  pg. 94 & 95)
"From these few facts alone, the reader will see that I'm amongst a strange and interesting people, and know how to pardon me, if I lead him through a maze of novelty and mysteries to the knowledge of a strange, yet kind hospitable, people, whose fate, like that of all their race is sealed; whose doom is fixed, to live just long enough to be imperfectly known and then fall before the fell disease or sword of civilizing devastation."

                             

We Are Not African-American
 

First let me say we already know that there will be confusion about what we are saying.  We only ask that you view this information with an open mind.  Some of us don’t view racial heritage as being important. However, racial heritage is just as important as knowing your parentage. Many of us have been told or have heard about our Indian heritage. We've mistakenly believed that this meant we were Native Americans. Thus when DNA tests were taken and no DNA link to Native Americans was established, we've erroneously accepted the remaining strong African link as our heritage.

When Columbus arrived he thought he was in India and therefore called all the peoples of this land Indians. Columbus was not aware that there were, at least, three separate peoples living in the Americas: Moors, Asians, and an indigenous group. Our ancestors, the indigenous group,  lived here and may have been known as the Anasazi people.

The elders in our family had knowledge of these distinct groupings of peoples but was forced to accepted the blanket designation "Indian" as their own. Our elders knew we were not African. This is the genetic trap Henry Louis Gates fell into in his program "Finding Your Roots". Gates compared the DNA of Asian (Native Americans) to that of possibly Indigenous Americans and correctly found no match but mistakenly concluded that the tested individuals were of slave descent with European highlights.

Our DNA is an infallible record of our heritage and can accurately detail our heritage. We estimate that over 80% of people designated as "African" are actually indigenous.

The Americas is where our ancestors lived and were buried for over 10,000 years. Recent archaeological findings of bone fragments is beginning to recover the DNA of the ancient Americans we believe to be our ancestors.

We are an ancient people who have been stripped of the knowledge of their heritage. That knowledge has been replaced with stories of slave ships and made up tales like the movie "Roots" http://www.martinlutherking.org/roots.html. The recovered DNA of the ancient Americans will restore our lineage, and irrefutably establish our claim to the Americas as our ancestral home.