Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science
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In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerfulтАФand problematicтАФscientific 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 тАЬmarkersтАЭ 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 todayтАЩs science seems so compelling, increasing numbers of Native Americans have begun to believe their own metaphors: тАЬin our bloodтАЭ is giving way to тАЬin our DNA.тАЭ 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 seriouslyтАФand permanentlyтАФundermined.
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Kim TallBear is associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.
