
What Does Indigenous Americas Mexico Mean?
Indigenous Mexican Americans or Mexican American Indians are American citizens who are descended from the Indigenous peoples of Mexico.
For more than 200 years, New Mexico existed as part of colonial Mexico, then for 25 years as a territory of Mexico. Those historical events shaped New Mexico and led to a war with the United States in 1846 that would change the state forever.
Native American groups have inhabited the region of New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Utah for thousands of years — many centuries before Europeans reached the Americas.
What does Indigenous Americas Mexico mean ancestry?
All the people with DNA from any of the regions above have ancestors who were the original inhabitants of North and South America. These people are often referred to (in English) as Native American, First Nations, American Indian, Amerindian, Aboriginal, or Indigenous People of the Americas.
What does this mean to me?
My birth certificate issued in 1980 shows my “race” as Mexican. Based on my family’s heritage and culture I have always identified as a “Mexican” and not “Mexican American”, allow me to explain.
When speaking Spanish, I am often asked about my ethnicity. When I state I am “Mexican”, the next question is always “what part of Mexico are you from”?
My response…. Texas.
This is where race, heritage and ethnicity can get confusing for anyone not indigenous to that territory or a self-proclaimed YouTube scholar like myself.
I am of mixed race. My father considered “Mexican” and my mother “Caucasian”. I have chosen the identity of Mexican not only because a birth record had chosen for me, but also our family’s culture.
In the early 80’s there was still a stigmatism placed on a Caucasian woman who reproduced or married a “minority”. Although my mother’s family accepted me, I have never felt “white”. My parents did not stay married, and I was adopted and raised by my fraternal grandparents.
My household language was Spanish, I speak Spanish fluently, I attended a Spanish speaking church and congregated most often with the Hispanic side of my family.
Although I call myself Mexican, that reference is still not completely accurate. My heart lies with Indigenous Mexican Americans or Mexican American Indians.
That is what we are, Indigenous to the Americas.