Legal Cherokee DNA Test

With the release of our new database atDNA 10.4 you can now find out if you have a high match to either admixed or official enrolled Cherokees. The two reference populations called U.S. Cherokee Admixed (n = 62) and U.S. Cherokee Admixed (n=92) were created in house from a combination of participants in our Cherokee DNA Studies who traced their mother’s mitochondrial lineage to a Cherokee woman and a random sample of customers who indicated to us that they identified as Cherokee. Most excitingly, we added the first available tribal data with a new population called U.S. Cherokee Enrolled (n=33) in July 2018. For more information on the Cherokee people see our population page.

Your personal DNA profile is compared with our data for more than 60 American Indian populations from numerous countries in North, Central,  and South America. In addition to Cherokee, possible matches include Apache, Navajo, Salishan, Inuit, Lumbee, Maya, Huichols and Canadian aboriginal tribes, representing a total of nearly 5,000 subjects who identified as Native American, American Indian, indigenous or aboriginal in forensic studies.

If you receive a positive match to one or more of the Cherokee populations your report will include a Special Cherokee Match Certificate. If you do not receive a high Cherokee match your report will include a Deluxe Native American Certificate listing your other Native American matches, depending on your results. You may also order a quality color print of your certificate that is mailed to you.

Purchase the Legal Premium if you need results for legal or administrative reasons. We will verify your ID, witness DNA collection by an approved and impartial party and certify a strict chain-of-custody process.

This is a stand-alone product including a DNA test and can be ordered by itself. Once your receive your test results you may upgrade to the full product with the Premium Upgrade. To order the full product to start with, including other American Indian matches and markers, world and megapopulation results, an ancestry map and certificate, and your top countries of Europe, purchase a DNA Fingerprint Plus or Native American DNA Fingerprint Plus.

Disclaimer: This is a forensic DNA test based in part on publicly available tribal American Indian data published in J. Ng et al, “Native American Population Data Based on the Globalfiler® Autosomal STR loci,” Forensic Science International: Genetics 24:e12-e13. This is a non-chain-of custody test and cannot be used for legal or administrative purposes. It does not yield percentages of ethnicity. Note that no DNA results are accepted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to claim membership. Your Native American ancestors may be very far removed generationally or their genes are too weak to register statistically. Your results may or may not confirm expected ethnic composition, family history or genealogical determinations. Alone, no DNA ancestry test may be used to prove identity, biological relationships, nationality, citizenship, immigration or tribal enrollment.

Once you order, we contact you and make arrangements at a nearby clinic for a third party to collect a sample with a cheek swab. The collector sends your sample overnight to our lab, where it is analyzed against standard STR markers, also called CODIS markers. Your values for 15 of these genetic systems are compared with the database known as atDNA 10.4 developed by our population experts. We mail you your report and certificate in hard copy. For security purposes, no electronic version will be provided.

Total turn-around time:  about three weeks after the lab receives your sample.

Consider ordering Genealogy Services to document your American Indian ancestry!