Hello! My mom is very much into genealogy too, and we have books of family tree stuff. There was a story in my birth father's side of the family that there was Native blood on that side. It was either supposed to have been my Great Grandmother on one grandparent's side or my Great Great Grandmother on the other side. We did extensive searches, but was able to get little information.
My mom learned that many families out west claimed to have native blood as a way of legitimizing their right to be there. "Oh, I'm part native, I can be here!" without ever really being able to prove it because of many young native children being forced to westernize in schools, changing their names, cutting their hair, dressing "normal", etc. Basically striping their cultures. There was also a lot of stereotyping, where the claims from my own family were basically "well she acted grumpy/sullen, had dark hair, and tan skin, so she must be native!" ... almost everyone has tan skin in Arazona, unless you are like be and don't tan.
To find out if we were chasing a false trail, I paid to have my DNA run through Ancestry's database. It was a myth, I was told we had Native blood, but not a drop showed up. I am about 99% European (61% British, 13% Irish, 7% Scandinavian [aka: Viking] and misc. others) and like 1% Middle-Eastern, likely due to trade and immigration patterns.
Genealogy couldn't say if I was Native American or not because of bad record keeping, but DNA definitely says I am not. Stories abounded saying I had Native blood, but my DNA says otherwise and I am glad to know the truth.
I do recall there being a big push to document Native American DNA by Ancestry(.com) because proof makes a tree legitimate where stories are just supposed to be fun things added to make the tree more human. A story can be made up, and without some sort of record, things become vague and fakes show up. It happened in two different branches of my family tree, it can happen in anyone's.
