Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate scholar
Kim TallBear (born 1968) is a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the University of Alberta, specializing in racial politics in science.[1] Holding the first ever Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment, TallBear has published on DNA testing, race science and Indigenous identities, as well as on polyamory as a decolonization practice.
Early life
TallBear was born in 1968 at a public hospital in Pipestone, Minnesota.[2] She grew up moving back and forth between the Sisseton and Flandreau reservations in South Dakota.[2] During this time, she was mostly raised by her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, until the age of fourteen when she went to live full time with her mother in St. Paul, Minnesota.[3]
TallBear is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota, as well as a descendant from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma.[4] Her Indigenous descent comes from her mother’s side. Her father, who was only present in her life up to age three, is white. TallBear has two sisters and one brother, whose father is Floyd Westerman, a Dakota Sioux musician, actor and political activist.[2]
TallBear’s household growing up was a politically active environment and TallBear says her mother in particular helped to shape her understanding of research and academic thought as being a part of a colonial project.[2] Nevertheless her mother also emphasized thinking practically about education, viewing it as the only way out of poverty.[2]
Education and career
TallBear pursued post-secondary education at the University of Massachusetts in Boston obtaining an undergraduate degree in community planning. She then completed her master’s degree in environmental planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3]
After graduating, TallBear worked for 10 years as an environmental planner for United States federal agencies, tribal governments, and national tribal organizations.[3] She later worked for a non-governmental, Indigenous environmental research organization in Denver.[2] This organization started holding workshops that researched the implications of mapping of the human genome and the genetic research on Indigenous peoples.[2] It was through this workshop that TallBear found a desire to continue her education, and subsequently completed her PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz in History of Consciousness in 2005.[3]
In 2010, TallBear was elected to be a member of the Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), and served in the position until 2013.[3] In late 2016, she became the first ever Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment.[5] As she is an anthropologist specializing in the cultural intersection of science and technology, TallBear is a frequent media commentator on issues of Tribal membership, genetics and identity.[3]
Areas of study
DNA and Indigenous identities
TallBear’s first book, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, was released in 2013 by the University of Minnesota Press. Described as a "provocative and incisive work of interdisciplinary scholarship", the book examines the science of hereditary genetics and the problematic consequences for Indigenous identities.[6][7][8] Specifically, TallBear’s critique focuses on the ways the language employed by genetic scientists—and its subsequent marketing of DNA testing—can reduce what it means to be Indigenous to genetically determined characteristics.[7][6] TallBear’s research shows how this often relies on traditions of scientific racism historically directed at Indigenous populations.[6][7][8] The assertion of genetic determinism, TallBear argues, is often at odds with generations of cultural traditions Indigenous communities have used to collectively self-identify—traditions that focus on relationships, and shared value systems negotiated by social relations.[8][6]
TallBear's work documents Indigenous communities across a diverse range of contexts in order to demonstrate the ways Indigenous identities are muted and amplified to the advantage of settler populations.[6][7] In defending the ethics of Indigenous jurisdiction over their own identities, TallBear argues Indigenous Peoples know their history better than settlers.[9][3] In light of this, TallBear has drawn attention to the problems of the settler scientific community attempting to direct the boundaries of Indigenous identities.[7][9][6] TallBear points to the history of the scientific community negatively impacting Indigenous communities as a reason for researchers to approach issues of Indigenous identity with deep care and respect for these histories.[9][6] TallBear has criticized researchers who do not invest considerable time in building relationships with the Indigenous populations with which they wish to study.[9][6] For TallBear, the need for embedded research stems from the important role cultural practices and specific relational contexts play in shaping Indigenous identity.[9][6]
Critiques of Elizabeth Warren's claims to Indigenous ancestry
In 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren released the results of a DNA test to prove her claim to Cherokee Native American ancestry.[10] This raised many questions surrounding how one can claim Native American ancestry and who can decide if these claims are true or false.[10]
In Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, TallBear argues that genetic testing is a scientifically unreliable method.[10] Since much of her work coincides with much of this situation, TallBear published a post to her Twitter in 2018 titled, “Statement on Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test”. In the statement, she claims the situation ultimately as settler-colonial definitions of who is Indigenous.[11]
TallBear and Cherokee Nation community members have defended their arguments by explaining how tribal governments do not use genetic ancestry tests, instead using forms of biological and political relationships to define their citizenries.[12] Despite the Cherokee Nation community members challenging Warren’s claims, and TallBear’s academic research and work on the subject, Warren initially defended her ancestry claims.[12][13] She later apologized.[14]
"The Critical Polyamorist" and decolonizing relationships
In her later work, TallBear is focused on sexuality, specifically on decolonizing the valourization of monogamy that she characterizes as emblematic of "settler sexualities".[15] She pursued this topic of study through a blog written under an alter ego, "The Critical Polyamorist".[16] TallBear was part of a panel discussing decolonizing institutions such as relationships, at the National Women's Studies Association meeting in 2016.[17]
TallBear's critiques of monogamous, heteronormative colonial relations focus on their incompatibility with an environmentally sustainable world.[18] For TallBear, moving beyond the current environmental problems of the neoliberal nation state requires expanding understandings and practices of kinship.[18] She argues Indigenous conceptions of kin provide opportunities for this transition.[18] TallBear’s critical polyamory places emphasis on looking beyond human-centric intimacy to also incorporate relational ways of being with place and other non-human dimensions to relationships.[19] TallBear’s focus on kin goes to the “decolonization” of intimacy: relationships outside of what she describes as settler-colonial relationship structures.[19]
