If you follow Indianz.Com on social media you know that Wes Studi, an actor and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, will be featured on an upcoming episode of the popular PBS show “Finding Your Roots.”
Dr. Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., the host of the long-running show, spilled the beans about Studi’s participation during a lecture in New Mexico last month.
“I’m filming Wes Studi tomorrow here in Santa Fe,” Gates said at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on April 13, 2023.
“I’m doing his family tree, so I’m really excited about it,” said Gates, who has been researching the histories and genealogies of celebrities, politicians, athletes and other notable individuals on the show since 2012.
As we know from Pretendian Country Today, many, many people claim to have Native ancestry. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a whopping 7.2 million Americans self-identified as having some sort of American Indian or Alaska Native roots as of 2021, an increase of nearly 40 percent from a decade prior.
But as shown repeatedly on the PBS program, and in real life, far fewer Americans can actually document ties to a Native nation — whether through research, documents and, yes, even DNA testing.
“None of y’all got Native American ancestry,” Gates told the crowd at the School for Advanced Research’s Presidents Lecture, after asking audience members if any “know” one of their ancestors is Native.
Gates pointed to a landmark study from 2015 which debunked the all-too-common lore of that mysterious “Native” grandmother in someone’s family tree.
“And she was Cherokee — they’re always Cherokee,” the scholar said of the family lore claim.
