Kim TallBear facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Kim TallBear
TallBear in 2017
Born	1968 (age 56–57) Pipestone, Minnesota, Minnesota, U.S.
Nationality	Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate
Alma mater	University of Massachusetts at Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Santa Cruz
Title	Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Alberta
Doctoral advisor	Donna Haraway

Kim TallBear (born 1968) is a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. She is a citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, an Indigenous nation in South Dakota. Professor TallBear studies how science and technology affect Indigenous peoples and their identities.

She holds a special position called the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment. This means she is a leading expert in how science, technology, and the environment connect with Indigenous communities. Her work often looks at DNA testing, how ideas about race are used in science, and what it means to be Indigenous.

Early Life and Background

Kim TallBear was born in 1968 in Pipestone, Minnesota. She spent her childhood moving between the Sisseton and Flandreau reservations in South Dakota. During these years, her grandmother and great-grandmother were her main caregivers. When she was 14, she moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to live with her mother.

TallBear is a citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota. She also has family ties to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Her Indigenous heritage comes from her mother's side of the family. Her father, who was white, was only part of her life until she was three years old. Kim TallBear has two sisters and one brother. Her brother's father is Floyd Westerman, a Dakota Sioux musician, actor, and activist.

Growing up, Kim TallBear's home was very active in politics. She says her mother especially helped her understand that research and academic ideas can sometimes be part of a colonial way of thinking. However, her mother also taught her that education was important for practical reasons, like finding a way out of poverty.

Education and Career Path

Kim TallBear went to college at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She earned a degree in community planning. After that, she got her master’s degree in environmental planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After finishing her studies, TallBear worked for 10 years as an environmental planner. She worked for different groups, including the U.S. government, tribal governments, and national Indigenous organizations. Later, she worked for a non-governmental group in Denver that focused on Indigenous environmental research. This group started workshops to explore how mapping the human genome and genetic research might affect Indigenous peoples. These workshops inspired TallBear to go back to school. She earned her PhD in 2005 from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In 2010, TallBear was chosen to be a member of the Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). She served in this role until 2013. In late 2016, she became the very first Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment. As an anthropologist who studies how science and technology connect with culture, TallBear often shares her ideas with the media. She talks about topics like tribal membership, genetics, and identity.

Key Areas of Study

DNA and Indigenous Identities

Kim TallBear's first book, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, came out in 2013. This book looks closely at the science of heredity (how traits are passed down) and how it can cause problems for Indigenous identities. TallBear argues that the way genetic scientists talk about DNA testing, and how it's advertised, can make being Indigenous seem like it's only about your genes.

Her research shows that this idea often uses old ways of thinking from scientific racism that have historically harmed Indigenous groups. TallBear explains that saying identity is only about genes often goes against the cultural traditions Indigenous communities have used for generations to define themselves. These traditions focus on relationships, shared values, and social connections.

TallBear's work shows how Indigenous identities are sometimes changed or used to benefit non-Indigenous people. She believes Indigenous peoples know their own history better than others. Because of this, TallBear has pointed out problems when the scientific community tries to decide what it means to be Indigenous. She reminds researchers that science has a history of negatively affecting Indigenous communities. She says researchers should approach Indigenous identity with great care and respect for these histories. TallBear believes researchers need to spend a lot of time building relationships with the Indigenous communities they want to study. This is because cultural practices and specific relationships are very important in shaping Indigenous identity.

Critiques of Elizabeth Warren's Ancestry Claims

In 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren shared the results of a DNA test. She did this to try and prove her claim of Cherokee Native American ancestry. This event brought up many questions about how someone can claim Native American ancestry and who gets to decide if these claims are real.

In her book, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, TallBear explains that genetic testing is not a reliable way to prove ancestry. Since her work is very relevant to this situation, TallBear posted a statement on Twitter in 2018 called “Statement on Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test”. In her statement, she said that the situation showed how non-Indigenous ideas were trying to define who is Indigenous.

TallBear and members of the Cherokee Nation community have explained that tribal governments do not use genetic ancestry tests. Instead, they use family relationships and political connections to define who is a citizen of their nation. Even though the Cherokee Nation and TallBear challenged Warren’s claims, Warren first defended her ancestry. She later apologized for her claims.

Decolonizing Relationships

Kim TallBear has also discussed how to "decolonize" institutions and relationships. This means rethinking how things are set up to move away from old colonial ways of thinking.

TallBear suggests that some traditional ideas about relationships might not fit with creating a world that is good for the environment. She believes that to solve today's environmental problems, we need to broaden our understanding of "kinship" (family and community ties). She argues that Indigenous ideas of kinship offer new ways to think about these connections. TallBear's focus on kinship aims to "decolonize" how we think about close relationships. This means looking at relationships outside of what she calls "settler-colonial" structures.

Selected Works

Articles

• "Dossier: Theorizing Queer Inhumanisms: An Indigenous Reflection on Working Beyond the Human/Not Human" in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol. 21(2-3), 2015: 230–235.
• "The Emergence, Politics, and Marketplace of Native American DNA" in The Routledge Handbook of Science, Technology, and Society, eds. Daniel Lee Kleinman and Kelly Moore. London: Routledge, 2014: 21–37.
• "Tribal Housing, Co-Design & Cultural Sovereignty" in Edmunds, David S., Ryan Shelby, Angela James, Lenora Steele, Michelle Baker, Yael Valerie Perez, and Kim TallBear Science, Technology, & Human Values 38 (6) (2013): 801–828.
• "Genomic Articulations of Indigeneity" in Social Studies of Science 43(4) (August 2013): 509–534.
• "Your DNA is Our History." Genomics, Anthropology, and the Construction of Whiteness as Property," co-authored with Jenny Reardon in Current Anthropology 53(S12) (April 2012): S233–S245.
• "The Illusive Gold Standard in Genetic Ancestry Testing," co-authored with Lee, S. S-J., D. Bolnick, T. Duster, P. Ossorio in Science 325 (5943) (July 3, 2009): 38–39.
• "Commentary" (on Decoding Implications of the Genographic Project for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage)" in International Journal of Cultural Property 16 (2009): 189–192
• "The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry," co-authored with Bolnick, Deborah A., Duana Fullwiley, Troy Duster, Richard S. Cooper, Joan H. Fujimura, Jonathan Kahn, Jay Kaufman, Jonathan Marks, Ann Morning, Alondra Nelson, Pilar Ossorio, Jenny Reardon, and Susan M. Reverby in Science, 318(5849) (October 19, 2007): 399–400
• "Narratives of Race and Indigeneity in the Genographic Project" in Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Vol. 35(3) (Fall 2007): 412–424.

Books

• "Beyond the Life/Not Life Binary: A Feminist-Indigenous Reading of Cryopreservation, Interspecies Thinking and the New Materialisms." in Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal's edited Cryopolitics, published 2017 by MIT Press
• "Dear Indigenous Studies, It's Not Me, It's You. Why I Left and What Needs to Change." in Aileen Moreton-Robinson's edited Critical Indigenous Studies: Engagements in First World Locations, published 2016 by Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016: 69–82
• Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, published 2013 by Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
• “DNA, Blood and Racializing the Tribe,” in Jayne O. Ifekwunige's ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader, published 2003 in Wicazo Sá Review Vol. 18(1) (2003): 81–107, then in 2004 by London and New York: Routledge

Images for kids

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  TallBear in 2017