Why so many people claim to be Cherokee-who aren't-and why that matters

“Rose is A Rose is A rose is A rose.” Gertrude Stein’s famous line illustrates our propensity for collapsing words and images into universal meanings, identities that need no interpretation. When we see the word “rose,” she suggests, we picture the rose in our mind’s eye.

But a Cherokee rose is not just any rose. It is a specific kind of rose with a specific history. Native to China, and millions of years old, the Cherokee rose is a non-indigenous invasive species brought to America by the late 1700s, when invasive settlement into Cherokee territory by European colonists forced thousands of Cherokee people off their homeland.

https://new.artsmia.org/stories/why-so-many-people-claim-to-be-cherokee-who-arent-and-why-that-matters/