Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

the designation over Native American, which they view as a colonial term.)
Some of my Indigenous colleagues are uncomfortable with the terms
PaleoAmerican, PaleoIndian, and First Americans, and, at their advice, I
tend to use First Peoples when I am talking about people living in the
Western Hemisphere prior to European contact/colonialism. I will also use
these terms to refer to the portions of the genomes of contemporary Native
Americans that are inherited from those peoples. I will, without apology,
change the usage of a particular term used in linguistics and archaeology to
refer to an Arctic group that is viewed by many of my colleagues and
community partners as a slur x (8).
As we shall see, the genetic effects of European contact were profound.
Today there is no “Native American genome.” Contemporary Indigenous
peoples are diverse, with genetic ancestries from First Peoples, but also
from populations around the world. We will discuss later in this book how
genetics and ancestry testing does not give insights into the question, “Who
is Native American?” today.
In general, the commonly preferred way to talk about living peoples in
the Americas is to be as specific as possible: e.g., “member of X” or
“citizen of Y,” where X or Y refers to tribe, nation, band, or group. I will do
that as often as I can here.
The peopling of the Americas is not simply an esoteric bit of science and
history, important to only scholars and intellectuals. It is a story of
resilience, compassion, intrepidness, adventure, and loss. As the United
States is engaged in a difficult conversation about its identity as a nation,
the histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere—and
how they have been impacted by outsiders—need to be understood and
acknowledged. One place to start is by understanding just how long the
First Peoples have been here.
Footnotes
i
Within what is now the Thorne Bay Ranger District of the Tongass
National Forest.
ii
Officially designated 49-PET-408 when it became recognized as an