Bottom line, for years she used her claim to advance her academic career and for PR (e.g. she contributed a "Mexican Oatmeal Soup" * to a cookbook titled "Pow Wow Chow", saying she is Cherokee). The data analysis she released shows that somewhere in English or Spanish colonial times (the Spanish conquered Mexico nearly a century before Jamestown) there may have been a North, Central, or South American Indian in her family tree, maybe.
* Oats are a Eurasian grain, with ancestors in Mesopotamia and especially suited to cooler climes like Russia, Canada, and the (probably Northern) US. The main seasonings and savories in her recipe were salt, onion, and garlic. In other words,
Traceyhaha's soup was Faux-Mex,
.