Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.

The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).
Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.
(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)
I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.
But as self-appointed family genealogist, I noticed one loose end: my paternal great-great-grandmother, unlike everyone else in that level in the tree, was Cuban-born, something I only discovered recently thanks to a transcribed marriage doc that was smuggled out of Cuba in 1963.
Per the document (dated 1908), Mariana Josefa Felina Romeu Yañez (my great-grandmother, who I have vague memories of) was a daughter of a Spaniard, and Juana Yañez y Sotolongo....of Trinidad, Cuba. This is a smoking gun, genealogically.
Trinidad, which is now a UNESCO Heritage Site and popular with tourists, is one of the few parts of Cuba with extant Taíno natives. The documentary trail goes cold further back than Juana, but now the 23andme results are less mysterious.

https://t.co/lTNeT7IsQg
So there's 1/16th that isn't necessarily pure European, though what's behind that is unknown. Given general Latin American obsession with 'pureza de sangre' ('purity of blood'), plus the brutal history of early Spanish colonization, it's likely not much. But it's non-zero.
Net: I'm at least as native as Warren apparently is. Which also highlights how absurd this searching for roots in the single-digit percentiles is a bit silly. But humans will cling to anything that answers the perennial riddle of, who am I?

More from All

You May Also Like

Fake chats claiming to be from the Irish African community are being disseminated by the far right in order to suggest that violence is imminent from #BLM supporters. This is straight out of the QAnon and Proud Boys playbook. Spread the word. Protest safely. #georgenkencho


There is co-ordination across the far right in Ireland now to stir both left and right in the hopes of creating a race war. Think critically! Fascists see the tragic killing of #georgenkencho, the grief of his community and pending investigation as a flashpoint for action.


Across Telegram, Twitter and Facebook disinformation is being peddled on the back of these tragic events. From false photographs to the tactics ofwhite supremacy, the far right is clumsily trying to drive hate against minority groups and figureheads.


Declan Ganley’s Burkean group and the incel wing of National Party (Gearóid Murphy, Mick O’Keeffe & Co.) as well as all the usuals are concerted in their efforts to demonstrate their white supremacist cred. The quiet parts are today being said out loud.


The best thing you can do is challenge disinformation and report posts where engagement isn’t appropriate. Many of these are blatantly racist posts designed to drive recruitment to NP and other Nationalist groups. By all means protest but stay safe.