Reviews NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 192 JESSICA BARDILL Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science by Kim TallBear University of Minnesota Press, 2013 IN THIS FOUNDATIONAL MONOGRAPH, TallBear builds on her previous and ongoing cultural anthropological work about the concept of “Native American DNA” and the applications of that concept within scientific and genetic genealogy communities, as well as what the concept may mean for tribal communities and their sovereign determinations of citizenship. TallBear refuses aspects of anthropological inquiry that would make tribes and their citizens the subjects of her work. This refusal then allows TallBear to focus on the scientists actively creating and utilizing the concept of “Native American DNA” in their work and within larger relations of power. TallBear delineates the “co-constitution” of Native American DNA as a concept created by science and culture, nature and society. Using Donna Haraway’s idea of “partial knowledges,” TallBear questions the empirical gaze that would pretend to both be nonsituated and contain the possibility of complete knowledge. She then demonstrates how that gaze guides scientific inquiry and interpretation. One important contribution and critique offered in this text is the clarification of anachronistic misapplications of the terms “genetics” and “DNA” to understand historical uses of “blood” in various sources. Here TallBear encourages Native American and Indigenous studies scholars specifically to recognize that genetics as the basic unit of heredity comprised of DNA (and literal and figurative ideas stemming from that foundation) only emerged after 1953, and thus conflating “blood” with genes in earlier texts is a modern confusion, not an accurate representation. Her warning also responds to scientists who use modern and ancient samples of DNA to examine human migration patterns through comparisons of changes in small regions of the genome. By inferring that these small differences in genes correlate to particular movements of peoples over time, the scientists contribute to what TallBear names “genetic fetishism” in both the scientific and lay communities. TallBear shows that this reliance on, and desire for, genetic information helps to perpetuate older racial and scientific thinking. TallBear also shows how the conceptual construction of Native American NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 Reviews 193 DNA emerges from centuries-old racial scientific thinking that grouped humans into particular distinguishable categories that had varying relationships to continents. The division (such as Europe and Asia) and collapse (such as the Americas) of these continents into familiar references undergirds the newer but continuous notion of biogeographical ancestry, used in reference to both modern and ancient humans. While TallBear’s previous work forcefully asserted the difference between tribe and race, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science engages with arguments that conceive of Indigenous peoples as tribal as well as racially constructed , and thereby expands on her previous contributions by thinking about the turn to genealogical criteria for tribal citizenship with the support of Kristi Gover’s work on tribal constitutions. For both Native and non-Native scholars entering the field, the Introduction provides a clear overview of “Native American DNA” as a specific constructed concept, as well as how one’s entry into both a disciplinary field and the field site itself are already constituted through particular knowledges. Helpfully, the Introduction reviews the situated nature of knowledge for TallBear and others, including credit to her interlocutors and theoretical touchstones across various disciplines. The strongest chapters in the text are “Racial Science, Blood, and DNA” and “The Genographic Project: The Business of Research and Representation.” In the former, TallBear sets the stage for readers to understand her particular work but also to interrogate their own spaces of knowledge production. She further demonstrates how her case studies differ from similar work by Alondra Nelson and Sandra Soo-Jin Lee. The chapter on the Genographic Project explores the evolving ethical, rhetorical , and problematic storytelling of a large project that brings together issues of capitalism, scientific pursuit of particular questions of identity and migration, and Indigenous peoples. The conclusion offers hope in the face of these valuable lessons about questionable corporate representation, astutely critical genetic genealogists, and research focused on spin and pursuing a particular history in order to perpetuate power through a...
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Feb 17, 2014
Zhang Ling + 1
Open Access