I think you are making way too much of this.

It seems far too many Americans want to take on Native American Heritage particularly as some sort of Badge of distinguishment.

My own family has the same issue. My grandmother on my father's side was always insisting we had some sort of American Indian lineage several generations back. My mother to this day insists that we have American Indian DNA. In both cases, they like to present it as some sort of Indian princess as part of our genealogical background.

I took a 23andMe test and it showed my turn the illogical DNA is 98% Irish with a little bit of other northern European background- no Native American strains whatsoever. My grandmother has been deceased for years so I couldn't inform her of the error, but I told my mother about it and she insists that that's not true that you have to ask them to check for it. She apparently doesn't understand how DNA tests work.

Far too many families have such anecdotal Word of Mouth family history which probably is not true.