Native American DNA is not simply found in bodies, both living and dead, and in hi-tech laboratories. Drawing from history, genome science, ethnography, textual and policy analysis, TallBear shows how the scientific object is forged through social and material processes. Scientists like all of us yearn for knowledge of human origins. Genealogists buy genetic ancestry tests hoping to get proof of an Indian in the family tree. U.S. tribes use parentage tests to confer membership. Vestiges of 19th-century race science mix with 20th-century multi-culturalism and molecular knowledge to re-script Na ... More

Native American DNA is not simply found in bodies, both living and dead, and in hi-tech laboratories. Drawing from history, genome science, ethnography, textual and policy analysis, TallBear shows how the scientific object is forged through social and material processes. Scientists like all of us yearn for knowledge of human origins. Genealogists buy genetic ancestry tests hoping to get proof of an Indian in the family tree. U.S. tribes use parentage tests to confer membership. Vestiges of 19th-century race science mix with 20th-century multi-culturalism and molecular knowledge to re-script Native American identities in the 21st century. A transition is afoot from blood- to gene-talk. The risk is that Native American sovereignty and claims to land and resources based in law, sometimes implemented through old-fashioned notions of blood, will be undermined. Many scholars critique Native American blood as a racist idea. But TallBear argues that the turn to new genetic identities, perceived by many as scientifically robust, is even more risky. She argues for indigenous peoples to govern and engage proactively with genome research in order to protect their rights.