Becoming good relatives, for settlers, is also not about becoming Native. Some white settlers seek belonging by looking for Native ancestry, which is another form of erasure. Race shifting refers to the act of people claiming Native identity based on an insubstantial, imagined, or invented connection to Native communities. They shift their racial understanding of themselves from white to Native. As DNA testing gains popularity, many scour their family tree for that one ancestor—that one of eight or sixteen or thirty-two or sixty-four grandparents, depending on how far back they need to go—who
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Question here about erasure
