Ancestry in a Drop of Blood

She has mountains of paper -- birth certificates, tribal enrollment cards, land deeds, affidavits, yellowing photographs -- documenting her family's life within the tribe.

But when the engineer from Oklahoma City asked to join the 250,000-strong Cherokee Nation four years ago, she was rejected by tribal officials here who declared her black, not Indian.

The truth, she believes, is in her blood.

Vann turned to a technology that is roiling Indian tribes nationwide -- DNA testing.

From California to Connecticut, tribes and would-be members are grappling with the ramifications of a science that is able to demystify someone's genes for as little as a few hundred dollars.

Modern genetic tests can detect traces of ancestors by looking for mutations that pass from generation to generation in specific racial groups.

More than half a dozen companies have sprung up in the last five years. Many report their most eager customers are people seeking to prove Indian heritage.

Some tribes are welcoming the new science.

The Meskwaki Nation in Tama, Iowa, began requiring DNA testing this spring to screen out pretenders seeking to cash in on the tribe's casino profits.

"It was something we needed to be in place to protect the tribe," said tribal council member Keith Davenport. "People are looking for an easy ride."

But the DNA tests have opened fresh wounds throughout Indian country, unmasking complicated family relationships and turning the unspoken bonds of community into impersonal laboratory results.

Inevitably, DNA raises a delicate question: What does it mean to be Indian?

"What is up for grabs is how we define race," said Jenny Reardon, who studies genome sciences and policy at Duke University in North Carolina. "Tribes are dealing with these issues first, but it doesn't mean that every American might not have to deal with these issues in one way or another."

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Vann has never been uncertain about who she is.

She spent much of her childhood surrounded by Cherokees in eastern Oklahoma and enrolled in programs for Indian students at school. Her late father, George Musgrove Vann, grew up in Cherokee country attending stomp dances and speaking some Tsalagi, the official Cherokee language. He received 110 acres from the federal government in compensation for lands confiscated from the tribe when it was forcibly relocated to Oklahoma from Georgia on the Trail of Tears in the late 1830s.