Bare with me on this complicated question. My daughter will be applying for schools soon and since I have never been to college this is all new to me.
I’m adopted from Centra American and have spent my whole life trying to get more info on my ethnicity and race because the adoption papers and info were so secretive. A few years ago I finally did a DNA test and found I am 85% Native American. After more research I found my birth family and found we are from a small indigenous tribe there. My birth mother was tricked into giving me up and had been searching for me since. We’ve reconnected as best we can given language barriers, but I finally feel I can identify with an ethnicity and race, as I’ve felt lost without one for so long.
My question is, my daughter is around 40-45% Native American, can she mark this on her application? Central American tribes don’t have tribal roll numbers. We are not trying to reconnect with our roots as way to help in her application process, this has been years before we even thought of college. It doesn’t feel dishonest to me, but I want to be sensitive to this culture. Thanks.