Ancestry.com Announces For Extra $9.99, They’ll Lie And Say Your White Great Great Grandfather Didn’t Settle On Stolen Dakota Land And Was Instead The Beloved Inventor Of The Banana Split
LEHI, UT — Ancestry.com has announced that for a $9.99 fee, they will tell customers that their white great great grandfather did not in fact wholeheartedly participate in the coordinated, white supremacist dispossession of Native peoples by settling on Dakota land legally stolen via the suspect Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851 and that he was instead the first man to split a banana down the middle and top it with three scoops of vanilla ice cream.
The new service, called “Gentle Roots” will delete all references to your ancestor’s encroachment on rightful Dakota hunting land in the second half of the 19th century from the internet. Instead they will replace the information with forged newspaper references to a kindly mustachioed eccentric who harmed no one and freely gave away samples of his signature ice cream and banana treat to all he met while traveling around on an old fashioned bicycle singing delightful ditties.
Customers will receive a frameable certificate with a short bio of their white great great grandfather that leaves out any mention of his vehement support of brutal reprisals against the Dakota people following the Uprising of 1862. The bio will, however, describe in detail the night the idea for a new frozen dessert came to him in a dream and how he awoke, kissed his wife on the cheek, and whispered to her “dearest Mabel, I do believe I’ve just invented the banana split!”.
“We’ve found that our clients tend to feel bad that their ancestors were all, almost without fail, xenophobic monsters and that they’re still benefiting to this day from their reprehensible crimes,” said Ancestry CEO Deborah Liu, “but that they tend to feel good if they find out their great great grandfather invented one of the most iconic iced confections of all time”.
Ancestry says that to preserve authenticity, they will not claim that customers’ great great grandfathers were entirely without fault. “We’ll throw in something negative so it’s believable, like ‘once he forgot his son’s birthday because he was too busy deciding whether peanuts or walnuts belong on a banana split’ or something,” said Liu.
In addition to the new service, for an additional payment of $15.99 Ancestry will deny that your white great grandfather was a logger who stole from Ojibwe treaty land and instead say he was the inoffensive silent film star who invented the novelty spinning bow tie.
Finally, for a hefty $99.99, the website will claim that you have no ancestors and are instead the result of an ultimately unsuccessful but still worthwhile attempt to clone John Brown in a laboratory.