Like Blake Lively, I’m Blond, Blue-Eyed, and Part Cherokee. How Should I Talk About My Native Roots?

Social media collapsed in on itself like a dying star last week — not because of something that was said by our president-elect, but because Blake Lively, an actress with blond hair and blue eyes, claimed in a makeup commercial that she was part Native American.

Sure, the actress experiences the distinct misfortune of “Anne Hathaway syndrome” — when a perfectly nice, reasonably talented person elicits teeth-gnashing hatred — but she has made some cultural gaffes in the past. (Remember “L.A. face but an Oakland booty”?) When she starred in a L’Oréal commercial and said she’s not only part German and Irish, but Native American too, the Internet lost its mind — doubting Lively’s roots on the basis of her looks and calling out L’Oréal for using her as the only Native American represented in the commercial.

But let’s unpack something first. As a person who is blond and blue-eyed myself and so pale I make Boo Radley look tan, I also happen to be part Cherokee (in addition to having German, English, Swedish, French, and Hungarian ancestors). I’m proud to have each of those cultures in my background, as it’s literally a part of who I am.

But is it OK for me and others like me to tout our Native American heritage when we don’t look the part — and therefore appear to come from a place of white privilege, with its many benefits? Many Yahoo commenters wondered the same about our initial reporting on the Blake Lively backlash: Who is allowed to claim the rights of being Native American?

To get more context on the issue, I caught up with Johnnie Jae, the founder of A Tribe Called Geek and co-founder of LiveIndigenousOK.

“I don’t think [Lively] was perpetuating white privilege in this claiming Cherokee heritage as much as she was exhibiting a deep-seated ignorance regarding native identity,” Jae tells me via email. “From what I’ve experienced, most people that claim native identities only do so for what they think they can gain from it, such as silencing actual indigenous voices or excusing disrespectful behavior towards indigenous people. In Blake’s case,” she continues, “I think it’s more about being trendy and exotic. I mean, this is the girl who also claimed to have an L.A. face but an Oakland booty.”

I was adopted at birth, in the stone age of the ’80s, when a closed adoption meant closed — all I knew about my birth mom was her age, 16, and that she was from my hometown in Ohio. It wasn’t until I met my biological mom in my 20s that I found out that my great-grandmother was Cherokee. Fascinated, I pored over every family picture my birth mom could dig up — I saw traces of it in my grandmother’s olive skin and dark hair, my birth mother’s high cheekbones. But I had some giant recessive gene and ended up with light hair and eyes. And in that way, I was privileged never to have had to question my racial identity or where I fit in a cultural melting pot of ethnicities and races.

I had been raised in the Anglo-European tradition of my adoptive parents, who are of Scottish and German descent, and I never even knew about my Cherokee heritage until I was well out of college. While I haven’t registered as Cherokee, I’ve read a lot about the tribe’s history — including the strange reasons why so many people claim to have Cherokee blood coursing through their veins. Johnny Depp, Miley Cyrus, and even Sen. Elizabeth Warren are among the celebrities who have done so.

Let’s be clear — this is a multifaceted issue involving race, white privilege, and the shaky reliability of family narratives passed down through generations. Warren, for instance, said her “mammaw and pappaw” passed down the oral history, but she has no documents to back up the family tree.

When I asked Jae about the proper way to celebrate a diverse heritage, she paused. It’s an extremely complex question. But it comes down to a responsibility to educate yourself, she says.

“If you want to claim native blood and native identity, understand that it’s not just something you can claim and wave around when it suits you,” Jae says. “Being indigenous is more than blood, it’s more than a fascination, more than a ‘spiritual’ experience, or a claim to fame or standing.”

Adrienne Keene, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at Brown and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, tells me that there are often legitimate reasons for people not having strong ties with their tribes. Maybe they were assimilated by force, or maybe they grew up “passing” as white and experienced white privilege. But, according to Keene, those reasons don’t apply in Lively’s case.

“When settlers lay claim to native identity as a ‘neat’ ethnic add-on and not as connection to a real, living, contemporary nation, it’s a dangerous affront to tribal sovereignty and indigenous rights,” Keene tells me over email. “But,” she continues, “there’s also an important note for those who are still working to reclaim and rebuild legitimate cultural connections.”

Jae agrees. “From what I’ve experienced, most people that claim native identities only do so for what they think they can gain from it, like being seen as trendy or exotic.” In other words, using a shaky family narrative that your great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess to inherently make you more interesting doesn’t make you a Cherokee at all — it just lands you in the Wannabe tribe, someone who maybe says it’s OK that they wear a full headdress at Coachella because “my ancestors did it, too.”

In my case — and for those who are still sifting through their heritage — Keene says that honesty is key. “When people ask you about your heritage, just be honest. Say where you are in that journey and why. Don’t fill in gaps in knowledge with falsehoods. No one can fault you for your truth.”

For Keene, the bottom line is that claiming a Cherokee — or any indigenous — background is a responsibility. “It’s tied to actual enrollment in a tribal nation, not something that is just a fun, unverified anecdote used to sell makeup,” she says.

“Native identity is about relationships to family, to a people, to land, and to traditions. Relationships are also multidirectional — it’s not just who you claim, it’s who claims you back.”

So for me, it’s going to be about digging deeper into my family tree, finding out what tribe I belong to, and appreciating and celebrating the deep, complicated history of who I am.

Because I’m worth it.

Related:

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Michelle Obama and Blake Lively Wore the Same Dress in Completely Different Seasons

Blake Lively Shows Off Her Beautiful Babies in Cool Blue Dress

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