This may come as a shock to Baby Boomers, but Iron Eyes Cody, the native American who cried about litter, is not Cherokee. He's not an Indian. He's Sicilian.
But then most people who claim to be Cherokee are not, and, according to a Pew Research Center study, there are 8.5 million whites who claim to be some kind of Native American mix.
But most who claim to be — like Johnny Cash, Elizabeth Warren, Johnny Depp, Miley Cyrus, and Bill Clinton — aren't Cherokee.
First, to be an actual Native American today it is generally agreed you have to have a tribal enrollment and CDIB (Certificate or Degree of Indian or Alaska Native Blood) card.
Does that mean your great-grandmother was not one quarter Cherokee? No. In fact, prior to the 1850s, according to Slate.com, the Cherokee encouraged intermarriage with whites as a way to make peace and strengthen bonds. According to timeline.com, claiming to have Cherokee blood is actually a tradition that binds Southerners.
If you have a Native American ancestor, in particular a Cherokee ancestor, you can find out.
There are 18 Cherokee census-type rolls that list families from dates ranging from 1817 to 1907.
These early rolls offer more insight into lineage than most descendants of white pioneer families can find from the period 1800 to 1850.
If you can trace your lineage to the rolls, you are said to be Cherokee.
But what if there was just a Cherokee in the family like grandma said?
You could look to DNA, which could be an instant refutation of the family story, but results that claim to show percentages of any ethnic group are somewhat misleading, according to NPR. Among the reasons, the world-wide sample of DNA is not that large and DNA mutates each generation. DNA results must be proved as valid by a concrete paper trail.