Maori performance

I attended the Sacred Springs Powwow in San Marcos this past weekend (as a visitor, not a participant), and was delighted to learn TE TINI A MĀUI, a Maori cultural group from Vancouver, were invited guests. They performed a number of songs and dances, and even did the haka. I'd never seen this before and was duly impressed. If you can stomach occasional shakycam on my part, I've posted video of much of their performance at my blog: Gibberish: Maori!

If you get a chance to see them in person, I highly recommend it.

Very cool videos, glad you were able to witness that. PS, don't give up on your Cherokee ancestry just because the DNA didn't show it. As I remember they are only accurate up to about 5 percent so any single ancestor more than about 4 generations back won't pick up. You can try having your mother/father/aunt/uncle in that line tested, they would have twice as much Cherokee ancestry as you. A grandparent or great aunt/uncle would have 4 times as much if any of them are still around.

Mike, having a "distant ancestor" who was Native American is a very common family myth in the South. It came to prominence following the Civil War (complicated social reasons). I'd already started to suspect the family claim was bogus, because a sister had done extensive genealogical research on the family, but was quite evasive whenever the question of Cherokee ancestry came up. The most I could get from her was "it's murky." So, the DNA test pretty much confirmed what I'd already suspected.

And the tests are getting a lot more detailed. The Wife was surprised to discover she has a significant amount of PNG ancestry--that's not part of any family history!