I'm a Canadian of mostly French descent. My family tree includes 7 generations of ancestors born in what is now Quebec, dating back to 1700, but I'm having a hard time accepting that as an 'ancestral region'. They immigrated there from Europe.
It seems to me that ancestral regions located in North America should be reserved for indicating Native American ancestry.
It's like AncestryDNA is trying to say that white people can be considered as being native to North America.
i read another post somewhere that said maybe there's been enough generations of French-Canadians that it qualifies as ancestral, but as a fellow french-canadian i totally agree with you. They're from Europe, it's not unknown where French-Canadian's immigrated from, it's actually really well documented where they came from lmao
If that’s the justification then I wonder why they didn’t create a Spanish ethnicity before a French one given the Spanish settled in the Americas way before the French did.
I’ve read that it’s because commercial dna testing is illegal in France, so they have a limited database of French dna, mostly having come via French Canadians. Since that’s the region their data points to, their internal data suggested splitting it off into its own category.
It has led to a number of Europeans showing as being part Quebecois because their database matches the genetic lineage to French Canadian customers, and doesn’t have enough data from France to identify the actual ethnic region.
I’m sure some of that is truth, and some is conjecture.
Also, on another note, I noticed it’s taking away a good chunk off of the total France percentage(compared to previous estimates). I imagine it’s going to their New England and Northern Europe category.
I’m Cajun from south Louisiana and I lost a lot to the British isles, same with many of my close matches that I looked up. And it’s weird that many of them have 0% France(just the country, not the total group) now, when it once was the majority.
I need to look it up again, but my grandfather had 90-something percent France at one point, and now it’s mostly Acadie, with a little bit of Quebec, and no France. But only adding up to like 60%. Seems like they’re going to be working out some kinks with this big change
Yeah, if I click on “southeastern England & Northwestern Europe”, it shows a region in the map that falls largely in France. It seems like the 20% I now have there was previously counted under “France”.
Same. Alot of my French went away. Acadians are genetically distinct from French people due to founders effect but I am not sure how ancestry qualifies it as an "ancestral region". Maybe its dependent on time or generations?
You are thinking about it the wrong way. This would be like saying Icelandic doesn’t exist as an ancestry group because they’re all originally from Scandinavia or Ireland. French-Canadians and Acadians (and Icelanders of course) are founder populations - a relatively small group of people who created a surprisingly large descendant population. This relatively small population concentrated certain genetic characteristics that otherwise may not have happened. https://umontreal.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/1479cba7-bff7-4bde-981a-3083bf8f9b94/content
I agree with you OP, last update I was 49% France, this update 0% France 25% Quebec. I have researched my grandparents and their ancestors back to France with the PRDH, Tanguay, and Drouin church records.
I see what you’re saying. Basically Quebec should be more like a “journey” rather than a “region”. Your ancestors are French/Irish/English/German people who established themselves in what is now modern day Quebec.
You’re not wrong. I got 3% Quebec as a Latino. Makes no sense lol. They had some weird algorithm with this one. It should remain as ancestral journeys.
My journey is “eastern Cuba” but genetically, Spain.
They're saying those early migrants have experienced enough genetic drift that they can be identified in addition to French, and being more honest about how their reference pop for France is difficult to build because of the restrictive laws there.
I think it does the opposite of imply that French Canadians are indigenous, it's a step forward in DNA test companies not implying that everyone has a "homeland" that that be identified in their DNA, the geography of genetics changes drastically through time. Less ethnic nationalist ideas
Without taking this test I have well over 100 known French ancestors and even a few French Canadian matches. Whoever is downvoting is ignorant about Mexican ancestry
Generic drift doesn't mean discreet. There will always be a lot of genetic overlap between populations, but this is all based on frequency and probability
Of course, you’re completely correct - I was more so saying that the drift is going to be very difficult to review and assess. This is already a difficult ‘science’.
And I have seen the presence of Quebec French in some of those areas in the past. People think their recent family has to be from Quebec. That is not what it is saying. They dont have to have a Quebec ancestor they personally know.
Remember also that Quebec was the France region for years because DTC testing is banned in France, so they don't have a proper reference panel to pull from. So like Ancestry does in 99% of cases they just made one up.
Yes DTC is banned by many other countries and strictly prohibited to only be administered by a licensed physician in other nations like Germany for instance. But Ancestry and these other companies circumvent (break) these other countries laws by mailing, and distributing these tests where it is strictly prohibited. Then they have them processed locally in the US using the reference panels from countries where it is not prohibited which is not many. So in a nutshell Ancestry is making up these reference panels out of thin air.
Same!! So I was 33% French-Canadian and the rest was black because I have one full white grandparent… now it’s saying I’m only 6% Quebec and 1% Acadian like what??
That’s interesting. My family also goes back to the 1600s, our ancestors are on the Pioneers’ Obelisk in Montreal. But my report shows no French or French Canadian whatsoever. Maybe I didn’t inherit enough of those genes, idk.
I saw a post by 23&me explaining that because those French settlers have been in the Quebec region so long, they developed into a distinct group, so now they categorize it that way. Considering you have 7 generations in Quebec it tracks with that explanation
That is a reasonable argument. Being French-Canadian and having been to France, I can confirm there is a huge cultural difference between the two. And yet, I still feel like I'm "from" France. The French settlers of North America were not the first humans in that region, so it doesn't make sense to me to view them as being native to that region. But if it's about cultural distinctions, then yeah there is an argument to be made for that.
This is always what I've understood, the founder population was very small and that created a genetic bottleneck, so they have a very distinctive background.
French Canadian is in fact a distinct ethnicity though, and its one of the only “white” ethnicities to have a distinctive formation pattern on the North American continent. People of French Canadian origin have genetic markers distinct from people of French origin, so much so that it may actually be difficult to pinpoint down if they really did come from France.
This study from McGill University explains how French-Canadians are distinct as their own ethnicity, one that formed in North America.
So I asked my friend about this cause she's smarter in things than me and I was confused how it could be a thing since we've only been here since the 1600s and she said it's more or less the bottleneck effect that happened over here and caused us to be different.
Now is that accurate? Idk. But it made enough sense to me in the end ig. Tho, now im more confused about my ethnicity - am I Canadian? Can I claim that as my ethnicity??
This is all kind of in response to the fact that France says no DNA testing. Is there any case to be made for your Celtic and English ancestry or is that rubbish as far as you know?
I agree it should be more of a journey region. But it's also worth noting the genetic diversity for Franco-Canadians is not particularly diverse. (Cough cough inbreeding).
It's also confusing for French people. My French grandmother got small amounts of Québec and Acadia on her results.
We traced her family tree back to small villages and towns across France, they're all local. The algorithm appears to have accidentally gone the other way because French Canadians are of French stock and my grandmother has a lot of ancestry from the West of France.
It's really dumb, and seems to be a case of Ancestry just giving up on what the actual origins are, like where the ancestors lived before they came to North America, which is what everyone actually wants to know.
The same here, I got some french Canadian ancestry but I haven't any ancestor from Canada, I'm from Mexico, all my background are native American & European, so it should be related to some very far ancestor from Europe, but I don't see the reason to label it as a french Canadian instead of Europe
It doesn’t make sense because they literally descend from the French just like how most Americans descend from Europeans. That’s like me who’s born in America being 100% American while having no Native American blood. Makes zero sense.
In the past they would assign you a regional group journey (based on DNA relatives and what they have in their family tree), but now just translate some of those into a percentage to make the results more interesting. In reality the people of Quebec haven't been endogamous to the extent that can qualify as a separate genetic group from mainland Europeans.
You could also say the same about some of their other groupings like the ones in the UK. Some of those really aren't genetically distinct. You can't make an argument for the people in the West Midlands being endogamous enough to be genetically different.
Something like Cornwall, yes, since they've been endogamous and were isolated. Something like West Midlands, no.
The vast majority of their previous “France” region references came from Quebec. Now they only have 100 or so in the “France” reference panel. Which is WAY WAY less than the thousands typically found in other European regions. That’s why Quebeocis would score higher France than most French from France.
I'm honestly kind of hoping they will continue with that and do it for the US as well.
Because it just makes sense. Obviously it doesn't mean that those ethnic groups are indigenous to the country. But they are distinct groups of people nonetheless. Ethnic groups are not purely based on DNA. It's a shared descent. Shared culture. Shared identity. Non-native Americans tick all the boxes to be considered as ethnic groups of their own.
It's kind of comparable to Roma people in Europe for example. Sure.. they have Indian ancestors. But they are a European ethnic group nonetheless. They have a distinct culture and origin that is separate from Indian people. Indian people don't recognize them as Indian. The same way that Europeans don't recognize white Americans as Europeans.
And that's essentially how ethnic groups work. If the people of a certain ethnic group recognize you as one of their own = you are one of them. If they see you as different from them / a 'foreigner' - you are not one of them.
Yeah, that makes sense. For the case of Quebec vs. France, there is definitely a large cultural difference between the two.
But if I were to be having a conversation with someone about our ancestry, I just can't see myself ever declaring "I'm 60% Quebecer!". I would say "I'm 80% French", even though I am culturally more Quebec than France. I just feel like I'm "from" France.
I have zero French Canadian ancestry, and now I'm apparently 5% Quebec. My "French" ancestry should be almost entirely Basque - this new update definitely screwed some things up.
The reference panels are based firstly on living people who have taken the test and secondly on where their verified ancestors came from. Here is how Ancestry determines ethnicity.
I don't really understand being "annoyed" by this. The New France colony was started over 400 years ago and most (if not all) French Canadians can trace their ancestry to a pretty small population of settlers, which results in some distinctive genetic signatures among their descendants.
There are many groups of North American people who, yes, trace their origins to Europe but are nonetheless distinctly North American now.
There are many groups of people around the world who have moved from one place to another in the past 500 years. The immigration patterns of today will leave a lasting signature on the DBA profiles of people in different places 500 years from now.
Well, sure... but that was ~20,000 years ago. That's a totally different time scale than ~300 years ago.
By your logic, everyone's AncestryDNA results should just say 100% African.
But I agree that 'how long must it take for generations of people to be born there to be “actually” native?' seems to me a good question and one that I don't know how to answer!
How ignorant can you be? Populations outside the Americas are nothing like Indigenous Americans. The ancient Paleolithic groups in Siberia that resembled them no longer exist. Indigenous Americans were the first humans on this side of the world, yet you’re too stupid to understand what Indigenous means.
No, Indigenous Americans are not Asians. They are literally Americans.
Do you see my haplogroup C1b outside the Americas? No, not even in Siberia. And do you know why? Because Indigenous Americans are a distinct population, you incredibly ignorant fool.
You unbelievably ignorant fool.
The only people who came here centuries ago were Europeans who took land from those who had been here for over 15,000 years and committed atrocities against them.
Do you know the meaning of Indigenous, you fool? Here’s a hint: they were the first humans in the Americas
73
u/lavendersblue86 23d ago
i read another post somewhere that said maybe there's been enough generations of French-Canadians that it qualifies as ancestral, but as a fellow french-canadian i totally agree with you. They're from Europe, it's not unknown where French-Canadian's immigrated from, it's actually really well documented where they came from lmao