INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, TECHNOSCIENCE, & ENVIRONMENT

Roderick R. McInnes I first wrote the blog entry below last November, a reaction to an important address given November 3, 2010 at the American Society for Human Genetics (ASHG) by outgoing president, Rod McInnes of McGill University. President McInnes's address, Culture: the Silent Language Geneticists Must Learn--Genetic Research with Indigenous Populations, was published in the March [...]

In a guest editorial in Anthropology Today, UC Berkeley anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes describes her experience and that of other faculty from across UC Berkeley who expressed concerns this past May when we first learned about the College of Letters & Sciences (L&S) 2010-11 "On the Same Page" (OTSP) program. Instead of the usual freshman experience centered around [...]

There have been sensationalist claims in the press during the last week following the publication in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology of Ebeneserdottir et al's A New Subclade of mtDNA Haplogroup C1 Found in Icelanders: Evidence of Pre-Columbian Contact? Following the press, I was prepared to read an article that way over-reached the evidence in its concluding [...]

Yesterday at the DCI National Tribal Enrollment Conference, several tribal enrollment department staff members told us about individuals attempting to apply for tribal membership using genetic ancestry test results as documentary proof of their right to be enrolled. In my forthcoming book I speculate that this phenomenon might arise. It is here. There are two widespread educational deficiencies that [...]