Family "myths" about Native American ancestry in the US vs. Canada.

[wild goose chase]

Sometimes you hear about European-descended Americans with long roots in the country who'd often claim to be "descended from a Native American princess" or have very distant Cherokee ancestry based on some family hearsay only to find out there wasn't any evidence for it. This kind of thing comes up once in a while like what happened with a supposed "controversy" with the American politician Elizabeth Warren.

I've heard this thing from American media but pretty much never by Canadians. Like, it's not really ever a thing here at all. I've never heard a non-Aboriginal or non-Metis Canadian to claim Native or First Nations cultural ties, connections or ancestry unless he/she really does have some connection to the community, whereas in the US it seems to be a popular "family myth" to say you're descended from Natives when you don't really have evidence to back it up -- I wonder why this is?

 

[King of Kensington]

Seems common in the US South where the Native American population isn't very large (except Oklahoma) and many have been in the US so long they don't really know their ancestry. It's probably not so much in the Dakotas, Montana etc. which didn't see white settlement until the late 19th century and where Native Americans represent a significant share of the population.

 

[wild goose chase]

I was wondering why people don't make these claims as often in places like Ontario (don't know about Quebec or the Maritimes) the way you hear about it stateside?
Could it be that more proximity/familiarity with Aboriginals (even not that far away from places like the GTA) in Canada makes people more hesitant to claim tenuous or unverified links based on hearsay, when there is more a large native population nearby?