Celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day With A New Finding In My Ancestry DNA

"The Northern Rio Grande Basin" 
DNA Map

Ancestry.com has recently updated the map that displays the region of my Indigenous DNA! With constant research being done, The percentages of my DNA readings are always being updated. I like to compare the difference in my DNA with my siblings and my grandson's once in a while because they are, of course, my closest matches and with updated research, the numbers vary from time to time.

For instance, 62% of my DNA comes from the Iberian Peninsula. European lines have been defined and have never changed since I have been doing ancestry research. The percentages of which region of the Iberian Peninsula change from time to time, as Ancestry does more research, but overall of my DNA readings from the general Iberian Peninsula stay the same. 

The big news is that this year, 2026, ancestry.com finally introduced new and refined regions of Indigenous North American DNA. For the longest time my DNA report looked like this map below. I am 18% indigenous but the map included California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Northern and Mexico. Having done 15 years of ancestry research, I knew that my indigenous DNA came from somewhere in New Mexico.

The other day I opened ancestry.com and they had finally categorized indigenous DNA and there's a map of "The Northern Rio Grande Basin" which stretches across most of New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Arizona and a very small part of Texas and Northern Mexico. This land is the ancestral home of the Pueblo, Navajo, Apache and Ute Native Americans. I am so happy to have this categorized because I have always been so proud of my family's homeland of New Mexico. Yes, 62% of my DNA is from Spain but 38% of my DNA is from New Mexico!