This is not at all uncommon, since the M/F ratio of early North American settlers was not 1:1. The trip was arduous, and expensive. My family name goes back to New Amsterdam and has a unique spelling here in the US compared to phonetically similar family name in the Netherlands. So the story about Native American blood was plausible family lore, and its confirmed by 23andme.
I just thought it was cool, I couldn't even imagine that I was discriminated against because of it.
I would never have considered claiming a minority preference because of it. If I had ever tried anything as underhanded as that, my dad would have yelled so loudly that trees would have fallen. And he had passed away several years before I even applied to colleges. He still would have yelled at me in my dreams.
That woman is a complete fraud.
My grandmother was half native American. No one in the family knows what kind her father was, just that he was from Tennessee. Guess we could narrow it down but whatever. Not one single person in the whole family has tried to take advantage of it.