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.
Daniel Heath Justice (Thu,) studied this question.