“Then, my nephew got a DNA test. No American Indian, but a little bit of black African (he is whiter than Macaulay Culkin). My guess is that back then the lying was better to say you were American Indian instead of black.”
That lying in the past was probably correct with many of us with so called Native American ancestors.
However, apparently many of our so called Native American ancestors had zero DNA showing Native American genes. In particular those also with documented Euro ancestry.
A sibling and I supposedly have zero Native American DNA.
Yet according to Ancestry.com we have many great/great/great Native American grandparents based on birth certificates, wedding data and obit data.
Maybe there was a reason there were so called civilized Native American tribes.
Did they descend from Euro ancestors?
Yet we have African DNA traceable to 1%.
This has happened to others who can prove their American Indian ancestry through records. When you go back several generations, you can have ancestors whom you inherited no DNA from (but you wouldn’t exist if they had not existed and had children). Plus the DNA ethnic analyses by the DNA companies are not infallible—I have wildly different estimates from different companies (and supposed ancestry from unbelievable places). Also, very small percentages of a particular ethnic or racial origin are not reliable...they could be zero.