https://new.artsmia.org/stories/why-so-many-people-claim-to-be-cherokee-who-arent-and-why-that-matters/
Though the number of registered Cherokee tribal members
today is around 300,000, nearly a million Americans claimed at least one
Cherokee ancestor in the 2010 census.
To claim Cherokee ancestry is not just to empathize with the Cherokee people’s history, but to literally claim a connection to it—to the ongoing struggles of the Eastern Cherokee communities and to the story of the Cherokee rose, after the Cherokee were pushed off their land. Along the Trail of Tears, Cherokee women were said to look behind them and weep. And their tears, according to legend, turned into Cherokee roses. That so few people truly connect with this perspective is one reason it’s often overlooked—a problem exacerbated by false claims that minimize this history’s importance.
As a complex, living system of citizenship, tribal enrollment is not a
hunch, a wish, or even a personal decision. The Cherokee people decide
who is Cherokee and who isn’t, and this has ensured that a unique
culture, against all odds, has remained so. A Cherokee rose, after all,
is not A rose is A rose is A rose.
