I think the reason colleges identify Native American as specifically North American tribes is to give a leg up to members of groups who were openly discriminated against in the US. It’s not just about creating diversity. But that doesn’t mean OP can’t find someplace in their app to provide details about their heritage. I think it’s really interesting and adcoms might too.
I just looked up the [US Census](About the Topic of Race) definitions and they list North and South America under Native American. I think you could check it and add details about your heritage if that’s what you want to do.
One reason adcoms are interested in Native youth are because of dismal educational statistics in this group. This is the only URM group whose graduation rates have gone down, not up.
How bad is it? Native youth: only 78% graduate from high school. For students attending federal Bureau of Indian Education schools, only 53% graduate from high school (my daughter attended one, was #1 in her class (the “Harvard” of BIE schools, and has transferred.)
According to the ACT, only 11% of Native youth who took the ACT were college ready (scored 18 or better on English, 22 or better on math.) Almost 80% of Asian youth scored at that level.
Harvard’s charter is to educate Native kids. In 2014-5 (latest data set), 2 out of 1650 freshmen were Native. Including those 2, there’s only 14 Native kids out of 6,636 undergraduates. For comparison: 657 Hispanic, 463 AA students.
OP, I respect you referring to yourself as Hispanic and/or Native (and I am Native.) You are definitely indigenous, and I think writing about your Quechua heritage and language preservation would make a compelling essay.
Best of luck with your future plans.
I think the term Native American is used because American Indian went to the dog house. But obviously it refers to natives of USA. As far as I know it has nothing to do with natives of other countries or continents. You could always check “Other.”