How do you find your Native American heritage?

-I have been looking up my ancestry and I am trying to find out how to find my Native American roots. My great-grandmother was Native American from Meade county in South Dakota. I would like to know about the tribe my family is from.The same way everybody looks up their ancestors and creates a family tree. By staring with yourself, then parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. start collecting birth, marriage and death certificates, military (if any), newspaper announcements. Once you get to 1930 you can look for family in censuses. There were Federal censuses, state censuses and special "Indian" censuses as well as Reservation censuses.



Here is a website for Meade County South Dakota:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~sdmead鈥?/a>



Ancestry has the "U.S. Indian Census Rolls 1885 to 1940" the original database is: "Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M595, 692 rolls); Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75; National Archives, Washington, D.C."



You can see if a LDS Family History center has the microfilms or see if your local library had Ancestry to use.



http://beta.familysearch.org/
You find any ancestors the same way, you start with the known information YOU and work back, looking at appropiate records to find the events in the ancestors life you are looking for, such as death, marriage,baptism, birth, onto parents names and contiue in this way making sure you have enough records to make the connection. http://familytimeline.webs.com/ this website will help you do that, most is done at home by talking to your relations, listening to the family stories and looking at the records/documents they already have, which then starts to build a tree and gives you experience to go back further, knowing who you are looking for and where you are looking...don't just jump in looking for NA ancestry without connecting your living family correctly...once you have done this look at the links page and there are some NA ancestry links
You already seem to know that you are of Native American ancestry. I would contact the Sioux tribal office in SD and see if you G-GM was a tribal member.
You can do a DNA test to determine % of Native American and check for companies who do upgrades to try to narrow it down to a certain tribe. Be sure the company you select for the first one does the upgrade or it will cost you more. Cost should be about $200.00 for both. Frame your certificate and display it proudly. If so you can do the mitochondrial test. If not a cousin could it for you. Discuss all your questions with someone at the company before testing. I was on the phone [toll free] for 2 hours on a Sunday morning, and got lots of answers. I did mine in 2005, motivated a cousin and sister to have theirs done also. It's a great tool to document the ancestry. Before that we had only oral family history. Even members of the family were skeptics about the ancestry. DNA makes them a believer! ADDENUM: Search for DNA testing companies on internet.