There are several different types of people who find themselves searching for their native heritage. Most will fall into about four or five differeing categories, and are seeking their heritage for one of just a few reasons. The first few types of heritage seekers have the best chance of finding their native heritage more easily because more records are probably going to exist that can readily be traced.

• The first group are those who are already part of a tribe or a Native American or American Indian community. When that’s the case, it is definitely far easier to accomplish their genealogy, as most American Indian tribes these days keep their own histories fairly well and will be well able to assist you. If you do belong to a given tribe, or your parents were born on the reservation, you’re going to find it much easier to accomplish your search than some of the other groups who are listed here. If you or your parents are part of an American Indian tribe, then the place for you to begin is the tribe where you are enrolled. They wll be far more helpful to you than any site on the internet might be.

• The second group of seekers are those who may have strong Indian blood, one or  both parents are Indian, but you don’t know where they came from, where their family came from or what your tribal affiliation may be due to custody issues, moving, forced adoption or other reasons. There are multiple Indian people in the same boat, so rest assured that you’re certainly not alone in this, or in wanting to know more about your heritage.
  One of the most heinous things to take place in the past has been a history of some very destructive behaviors where native kids were removed from one or both parents, and sent out for adoption.

  The situations differ but can run the gamut from young unmarried mothers being coerced into giving up children or even parents being falsely told that children had died at their board school so they could be adopted to white families who had no children.
  In the far distant past, some decent  US soldiers  did not kill the Indian chidlren but instead brought them home, raised them as servants, or even more rarely as their own, and told them little of their actual home.

  Those of mixed blood, white parent and native, are also prone to being involved in some truly vast and far reaching custody battles.

  If you were removed from your tribal affiliations and fmaily, then it is possible to find where you belong, if you take the time to really search it.

  IF you have an idea to which tribe you may have originally belongs, then one good way to attempt to go a step further is to contact that tribe.
  Many tribes today have what are called reunification programs, where they will assist you by going through enrollment or census records and may be able to help you find your birth family, or your lineage.

  Many tribes refer to these who have been removed as “lost birds” or “split feathers, and many tribes has Lost Birds sections to assist you in finding your way back.

  One web site that may give you some serious help as well as links to  other places that will help you to trace your heritage is the

  Native Languages.Org Genealogy Page

These pages will offer you links to the various Lost Bird programs as well as to help you to find your way back to the tribes you came from.
What if you don’t know where you came from, but only have some vague reference to being “part Indian”? What does it take to tackle the job then, of tracing your heritage?
To explore that aspect takes a bit longer…and we explore it a bit more in Tracing Your Native Heritage–Part 2