Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science

Kim TallBear

Aga 2019 · Tantor Media Inc · Kuchazwe ngu-Donna Postel

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In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerful-and problematic-scientific process that is useful in determining close biological relatives. But tribal membership is a legal category that has developed in dependence on certain social understandings and historical contexts, a set of concepts that entangles genetic information in a web of family relations, reservation histories, tribal rules, and government regulations. At a larger level, TallBear asserts, the "markers" that are identified and applied to specific groups such as Native American tribes bear the imprints of the cultural, racial, ethnic, national, and even tribal misinterpretations of the humans who study them. TallBear notes that ideas about racial science, which informed white definitions of tribes in the nineteenth century, are unfortunately being revived in twenty-first-century laboratories. Because today's science seems so compelling, increasing numbers of Native Americans have begun to believe their own metaphors: "in our blood" is giving way to "in our DNA." This rhetorical drift, she argues, has significant consequences, and ultimately, she shows how Native American claims to land, resources, and sovereignty that have taken generations to ratify may be seriously-and permanently-undermined.

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Kim TallBear is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science.

Donna Postel is fascinated by all kinds of stories and loves telling them. From memoir and biography to literary fiction, romance, mystery, and suspense, Donna uses her innate curiosity, talent, and decades of experience on stage and in the recording studio to bring books to life.