intellectual pursuits combined with recent-ish DNA test revealed to me that i'm from a very recently dead culture (american yaqui & tarahumara) whose very few aware decedents have been fighting tooth-and-nail to re-cultivate it by patterning themselves after their nearest cousins (mexican yaqui & tarahumara) along with a recent recognition from the american government for the pascua reservation in arizona.

they were literally wiped out by the pogroms carried out by colonial settlers in the american southwestern united states during the 19th and early 20th centuries and it was merely the imaginary line on the map called the mexican border that allowed anything from the culture to survive at all.

if it weren't for people who rejected colonialist narrative of indigenous people happily becoming mestizos (or americans with Cherokee princess great grandma's); there would be nothing but a fringe belief and, if it weren't for DNA tests that heavily bolsters it, that fringe belief would continue to wane into nothingness.

you'd think that 2/3rds of your DNA being tied to a group of people and their genocide occurring less than 2 generations ago would ensure that something of that cultural inheritance would survive, but I'm living & breathing proof that the colonial narrative is MUCH more powerful than any heritage as the older generations of my family continue to strenuously reject both the science and the lore of their true roots.