What a people-led test looks like: Metlakatla, 5,000 years, mother to daughter (British Columbia; PLOS ONE, 2013)

SUMMARYWhat a people-led test looks like: Metlakatla, 5,000 years, mother to daughter (British Columbia; PLOS ONE, 2013) [Connections: Genetics (honest), Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDUniversity of Illinois release (3 July 2013): Ripan Malhi's team, working with the Metlakatla (Tsimshian) community, sequenced full mitochondrial genomes from four ancient and three living people. A living participant carries the same sequence as a woman from Lucy Islands (about 5,500 years ago) and a woman from Dodge Island, making that person a direct maternal descendant. Metlakatla co-author Joycelynn Mitchell: "It's very exciting to be able to have scientific proof that corroborates what our ancestors have been telling us." Liaison Barbara Petzelt: "Having a DNA link showing direct maternal ancestry dating back at least 5,000 years is huge."

PATTERNwhen the community sets the terms and the ancient people are the reference, DNA can confirm oral history at the scale of millennia, with no modern panel in between

LENS (WW9)this is Tito's method (P183a) already done elsewhere: our ancestors as the control. A Southeastern version would test Black and Native families with Native maternal lines (like Coosaw's A2) against Windover, Guale or Mississippian mitogenomes, with the nations' consent

OPENno such Southeastern study found; it would need a partnership with the Seminole, Muscogee, Gullah/Geechee and other nations and communities

SOURCEEurekAlert / University of Illinois, 3 July 2013. --- Summary of the honest finding (for the Library)

RECORDpublished genome-wide studies put Black Americans at about three-quarters African ancestry on average, with Native ancestry real but small (0.8% average; one in five carry at least 1%; Gullah 1.3%). Published mound-era maternal lines are Native American haplogroups; the 18th-century Charleston Africans are mostly African L haplogroups. These contradict the Lens as a statement of majority genetic descent

OPENevery Native estimate was measured against Central/South American or Mexican references, the company calls its own figure an undercount, and no full ancient Southeastern genome was found published as a reference. The decisive test (ancient Southeastern genomes as the control, with the nations' consent) has not been done. Rule 14 stands: genetics is evidence to weigh, not the judge of identity, kinship or the paper record of reclassification documented elsewhere in the Library.