Can DNA Determine Who is American Indian?

By Kim TallBear, Phd., Associate, Red Nation Consulting

There is talk in Indian country about how DNA can decide tribal enrollment and prove American Indian ancestry. Some of this is coming from DNA testing companies anxious to sell costly services to tribes.

Self-determined tribes struggling to control identities and resources must make decisions about the risks and benefits of DNA testing. Some tribal decision-makers display healthy skepticism as they talk about the complicated nature of identity, family, and community. Biological connection is not the sole important factor in determining who belongs. Cultural knowledge and connection to a land base are also valued. Many Indian people are also concerned about loss of privacy and control if outsiders hold biological samples. Other tribal decision-makers have expressed interest in DNA testing and still others need more information.

Do Not Rely on DNA Testing Companies for Information
DNA testing companies are not in business to provide accessible and balanced information on DNA technologies. Their brochures generally contain shallow scientific detail. I suspect this is partly because these scientist-entrepreneurs do not know enough about the cultural politics of tribal membership to apply science to such questions.

At a recent "tribal enrollment workshop" (that played out like a three-day sales pitch for DNA testing) a company representative claimed that DNA technology is "100 percent reliable in terms of creating accurate answers" to questions of tribal enrollment. But tribes should ask "which questions can this technology provide answers to?"

Sometimes the biological connection of an enrollment applicant is in question. In this case, a tribe might call for a DNA test of the individual to prove relation to an enrolled member. More often, tribal enrollment and identity questions center around two issues that DNA cannot inform: cultural affiliation and the distribution of money and services. Like "blood quantum" DNA is an imperfect answer to the cultural question. Neither a higher blood quantum nor DNA can guarantee greater cultural attachment. In addition, casino tribes issuing per capita payments want to distribute money to as few people as possible; they often impose non-biological barriers to enrollment. What does DNA matter in these cases?

Overview of DNA Testing

In general, two types of tests are offered to help American Indians prove ancestry: "DNA fingerprinting" and tests for "Native American haplotypes" or lines of descent.

The DNA fingerprint is the type of test used in criminal cases to prove, for example, that a bodily fluid found on a crime victim belongs to an individual suspect. This test is also used to establish paternity and maternity when the DNA of parent and offspring are compared.

One company sells this test as a paternity and maternity test and claims that it will ensure that "only Native Americans that deserve to be members of your tribe will be." However, most tribes do not decide enrollment solely based on simple biological connection. For example, blood quantum attempts to quantify one’s Indian-ness; it is not used to prove parentage. And parentage is not usually in question.

Another company promises to help individuals establish their "identity as a Native American" by testing for Native American DNA. But what is "Native American DNA" and is it relevant to tribal enrollment?" A paper by the Nevada-based Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB) explains why DNA is not a valid test of Native American identity:

Scientists have found … "markers" in human genes that they call Native American markers because they believe all "original" Native Americans had these genetic traits … On the mitochondrial DNA, there are a total of five different "haplotypes" … which are increasingly called "Native American markers," and are believed to be a genetic signature of the founding ancestors. As for the Y-chromosome, there are two primary lineages or "haplogroups" that are seen in modern Native American groups

IPCB points out that "Native American markers" are not found solely among Native Americans. While they occur more frequently among Native Americans they are also found in people in other parts of the world.

A second problem with tying markers to Native American identity is that mitochondrial DNA and Y marker testing show only one line of ancestry each. Therefore, Native American ancestors on other lines are invisible.

IPCB addresses a third crucial problem with DNA testing for identity: Genetics cannot help determine specific tribal affiliations for living people or ancient human remains. This is because "[n]eighboring tribes have long-standing complex relationships involving intermarriage, raiding, adoption, splitting and joining. These social historical forces insure that there cannot be any clear-cut genetic variants differentiating all the members of one tribe from those of nearby tribes."

So "Native American markers" can tell something about an individual’s biological descendancy along a few ancestral lines over archaeological time. But how does this inform tribal enrollment? Many individuals around the world no doubt possess markers and yet have no close biological, social or cultural attachment to a living tribe. In contrast, individuals with strong connections might not have the markers because their American Indian ancestors are not on the lines of descendancy covered by the tests. DNA testing fails to provide definitive answers on either biological or cultural connections to a tribe.

What Does It Cost and Who’s in Control?

DNA testing by a private company is expensive. Depending on the type, tests range from $150 to $600 per individual.

One DNA testing company offers DNA fingerprinting for two to three individuals (an individual plus one or both biological parents) for $500. They advocate tribal-wide DNA testing. To estimate cost, the number of tests for a tribe of 10,000 members might be 4,000 (an average of 2.5 people per test). At $500 per test the cost to test all members would be $2 million. This same company advertises a more costly "individual DNA identity system" to accompany tribal-wide testing. This is a programmable identification card that stores a tribal member’s information (i.e. enrollment number, health services, voter registration, and a DNA profile). This company charges $320 to produce each individual card totaling $3.2 million for a 10,000-member tribe.

A tribe determines information to be included on the card and maintains the database. However, the tribe sends (often confidential) data to the company and they generate the cards. The company notes that they purge the data after producing the card. Yet tribes relinquish a good deal of sovereignty by sending confidential data to be consolidated by a private company. No doubt, many tribal members would object to the invasion of privacy.

Tribes should also consider the logistical nightmare of doing DNA tests on all members, especially those living off reservations. In summary, DNA testing does not seem to provide cost-efficient, politically tenable, or substantive solutions to most cases of tribal enrollment.

Seek Reliable Advice

Unfortunately, there is no single source for information on DNA technologies and tribes. Nonprofit organizations and academic resources used in conjunction are a good start. The Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG) located in Cambridge, Mass. can provide general information about genetics (www.gene-watch.org). The Genetics and Identity Project at the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics has on-line information on genetics and American Indian Identity available at http://www.bioethics.umn.edu/genetics_and_identity/index.html.  IPCB’s paper on DNA and Native American identity and other documents on genetics are available at http://www.ipcb.org/publications/briefing_papers/files/identity.html. IPCB is well-networked on genetics issues affecting indigenous peoples and can help tribes find technical assistance.

Kim TallBear is an associate with Red Nation Consulting and a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota. She specializes in tribal program development and strategic planning and has worked with many U.S. tribes, tribal organizations, and federal agencies. She is a Ph.D. student in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on racial formation among American Indians, specifically how DNA and blood influence identity and community belonging. She is a 2003 recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Identity and Genetic Ancestry Tracing

By Carl Elliott , associate professor,  Paul Brodwin , associate professor 

Tracing genetic identity can lead to resolution of uncertainty but can cause more problems than it solves. Will establishment of genetic identity be cohesive or divisive?

What can our genes tell us about who we are? The answer to that question depends on exactly what you want to know. In 1997, a Virginia pathologist and his colleagues used Y chromosome testing to corroborate (and in another case, fail to corroborate) the claims of families of African- Americans who believed themselves to be the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his slave mistress, Sally Hemings.¹ Researchers have used genetic testing to uncover evidence of genetic markers in the Lemba, a black southern African tribe whose oral history and customs have long suggested Jewish ancestry.^2-4 In June 2002, the results of a genetic ancestry study were announced to a gathering of Melungeons,⁵ a "mixed ancestry" group in eastern Tennessee and Virginia⁶ whose ethnic origins have been clouded in mystery for centuries.⁷

Genetic ancestry tracing is not a purely academic exercise. A geneticist at Howard University has announced plans to offer commercial genetic ancestry tracing to African-Americans who want to trace their genetic lineage back to the areas of Africa from which their ancestors were captured and brought to America as slaves.⁸ The past few years have also seen the emergence of several commercial genetic testing ventures offering fee-for-service paternity testing, tests for evidence of Jewish ancestry, native American ancestry, or, in the case of Oxford Ancestors, a genetic connection to one of the so called "seven daughters of Eve."⁹

Role of Ancestry in Identity

What should we make of these developments? Well before the advent of molecular genetics, the calculation of ancestry played an important and controversial part in political identity, as in the "one drop rule" in the Jim Crow South, in which one drop of Negro blood disqualified a person from the legal privileges associated with being white. Even today, determinations of ancestry or "blood" affect citizenship rights throughout the world; the right of return of displaced people; membership in tribal bands of aboriginal people in north America; and affirmative action eligibility (social programs intended to reduce social and sexual discrimination) in the United States. Determining one's ancestry through genetic evidence would fundamentally transform these types of political identity. But political identity is not the only form of identity in which genetics can play a potent part. Genetics can affect questions of ethnic identity (such as who counts as Cherokee or Maori), religious identity (who counts as Parsee or Jewish), family identity (who counts as a descendant of Thomas Jefferson), or caste (who counts as Brahman or Dalit).¹⁰ These identities overlap in various ways, and genetic evidence will not affect them all equally. But clearly confusion looms when genetic markers conflict with other kinds of markers of group membership, such as a shared culture or historical narrative. Does it make you any more English, or Sioux, or Jefferson if your identity has been corroborated by a genetic marker?¹¹

Such questions are complicated still further by the limitations of the genetic technology. Two main techniques are currently being used: mapping polymorphisms on the Y chromosome to trace paternal ancestry and on mitochondrial DNA to trace maternal lines. ^{12 13} Both techniques take advantage of the fact that some genetic material is passed down unchanged from parent to childin the case of the Y chromosome, from father to son; and in the case of mitochondrial DNA, from mother to child (both male and female). The problem is that mapping Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms will trace only two genetic lines on a family tree in which branches double with each preceding generation. For example, Y chromosome tracing will connect a man to his father but not to his mother, and it will connect him to only one of his four grandparents: his paternal grandfather. In the same way, it will connect him to one of his eight great grandparents and one of his 16 great great grandparents. Continue back in this manner for 14 generations and the man will be still be connected to only one ancestor in that generation. The test will not connect him to any of the other 16,383 ancestors in that generation to whom he is also related in equal measure.

This may sound like a slender thread on which to hang an identity. Yet identities have hung on far more slender genetic threads than this. Just as it once took only a single genetic line to disqualify a person from being counted as white in the American south, today it takes only a single genetic line to connect a person to the British Royal Family, to get him or her a German passport, or to qualify him or her as a member of the Jewish Cohanim. Two years ago, after a bitter monetary dispute, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma passed a resolution that will effectively expel most black Seminoles, or Seminole Freedmen.¹⁴ The Freedmen are the descendants of former slaves who fought alongside the Seminoles in the Seminole Wars and who have been officially recognised as members of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma since 1866. The new constitution says that to be part of the tribe, a person must show that he or she has one eighth Seminole blood.¹⁵  

Many observers worry that this new genetic information will be given too much authority in deciding questions about identity. Media accounts have often treated tracing of genetic ancestry as the final answer to extremely controversial questions - as if genetic tests had authoritatively settled the question of whether the Lemba are really Jewish or the question of from what African tribe can an individual African-American legitimately claim descent.¹⁶ Yet the actual answers to these questions are far more complex.

Genetics Versus History

One general point of controversy turns on the question, who gets to decide who is a member of the group? For example, many Lemba maintain that they are Jewish, and the genetic studies bolster their case. By what do other Jews say? The question of who counts as Jewish has a long history with a complex set of rules. The rules passed down by the Lemba over generations may well differ from those of other Jewish populations, and it is not immediately obvious which group gets to decide who counts as "really" Jewish. (This question would become even more pressing if a Lemba were to apply for Israeli citizenship.¹⁷) Similar difficulties arise with the question of who counts as a native American. The US federal government has one set of rules, enshrined in law, and individual native American tribes have others. Genetics (or "blood quantum") has one role in one set of rules and another quite different role in others. ^{18 19} Whose rules should take priority?

Another point of controversy turns on the relative priority given to genetics as opposed to other accounts of identity. For the Lemba, it has been a matter of happy circumstance that Y chromosome studies have tended to corroborate their oral history of Jewish ancestry. The tests might have turned out otherwise, and if they had, which account should be believed, the one told by genetics or the one told by the Lemba? Similar questions arise for individual genetic ancestry tracing. What if you have always been told that your ancestry is Scottish but genetic tests indicate that your Y chromosome traces back to Nigeria? 

In the bitterly contested case of Thomas Jefferson's descendants, many outside observers simply treated genetic testing as the final arbiter of kinship. Those tests corroborated the ancestry claims of the descendants of Eston Hemings, but they failed to do so for the descendants of Thomas Woodson, another of Sally Hemings' children who was said to be Jefferson's illegitimate son. Yet it is not entirely obvious that genetics should be treated as the final answer to claims of kinship. Most ordinary kinship claims are not subjected to the rigours of genetic testing. How many cases of false paternity and adoption would emerge if they were? It is also possible to imagine genetic tests contradicted by historical evidence. Suppose, for example, that evidence were to emerge indicating that Thomas Jefferson himself believed that Thomas Woodson was his son and treated him as such. Might not this change the way we looked at his family's ancestry claims?

Science or Hobby

Perhaps genetic ancestry tracing will evolve into little more than a popular hobby, like internet genealogy. Yet it is also possible that as it becomes more reliable, genetic ancestry tracing will be embraced by the courts, the media, and various political institutions as the most authoritative measure of identity. This outcome may be even more likely if more groups, encouraged by the stories of the Lemba and the Hemings family, decide to put their own narratives to the genetic testto see if genetic ancestry tracing can confirm their own origin story, their family history, or their claims to group membership. It is worth remembering that genetic ancestry tracing has the potential to disrupt identity claims as well as to corroborate them. Given the imprimatur of science carried by genetics, those disruptions may be hard to repair.

Footnotes

Funding: National Human Genome Research Institute (Ethnicity, Citizenship, Family: Identity after the Human Genome Project, R01-HG02196-01).

Competing interests: None declared.

References
1.  Foster EA, Jobling MA, Taylor PG, Donnelly P, de Knijff P, Mieremet R, et al. Jefferson fathered slave's last child. Nature 1998; 396: 27-28 [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]  

2.  Spurdle AB, Jenkins T. The origins of the Lemba "Black Jews" of Southern Africa: evidence from p12F2 and other Y-chromosome markers. Am J Human Genet 1996; 59: 1126-1133 [ISI][Medline] .

3.  Thomas MG, Skorecki K, Ben-Ami H, Parfitt T, Bradman N, Goldstein DB. Origins of Old Testament priests. Nature 1998; 394: 138-140 [CrossRef][ISI][Medline] .

4.  Thomas MG, Parfitt T, Weiss DA, Skorecki K, Wilson JF, le Roux M, et al. Y chromosomes travelling south: the cohen modal haplotype and the origins of the Lembathe "Black Jews of Southern Africa." Am J Hum Genet 2000; 66: 674-686 [CrossRef][ISI][Medline] .

5.  Reed JS. Mixing in the mountains. Southern Cultures 1997; 3(4): 25-35 .

6.  Price ET. The Melungeons: a mixed blood strain in the southern Appalachians. Geographical Review 1951; 41: 256-271 .

7.  Balloch J. A question of origins: study examines Melungeon heredity. Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee) 2002 June 21:A1.

8.  Wright G. Gene test may link African Americans to ancestral roots. Seattle Times 2000 April 5.

9. Brown K. Tangled roots? Genetics meets genealogy. Science 2002; 295: 1634-1635 [Free Full Text]  

10.  Bamshad M, Kivisild T, Watkins WS, Dixon ME, Ricker CE, Rao BB, et al. Genetic evidence on the origins of Indian caste populations. Genome Res 2001; 11: 994-1004 [Abstract/Free Full Text] .

11.  Elliott C. Adventures in the gene pool. Wilson Quarterly (in press).

12.  Cavalli-Sforza LL. Genes, people and languages. New York: North Point Press, 2000 .

13.  Bradman N, Thomas M. Why the Y? The Y chromosome in the study of human evolution, migration and prehistory. Science Spectra 1998; 14: 32-37 .

14.  Glaberson W. Who is a Seminole and who gets to decide. New York Times 2001 Jan 29:A1.

15.  Johnston J. Resisting a genetic identity: the Black Seminoles and genetic tests of ancestry. J Law Med Ethics (in press).

16.  Saulny S. A spiralling trail back to Africa: DNA is breakthrough in writer's search. New York Times 2002 Feb 26:B1.

17.  Brodwin P. Genetics, identity, and the anthropology of essentialism. Anthropological Quarterly 2002; 75: 323-330 [ISI] .

18.  Brownell MS. Who is an Indian? Searching for an answer to the question at the core of Federal Indian law. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 2000/1;34:275-320.

19.  Tallbear K. DNA, blood and racializing the tribe. Wicazo SA Review 2002; 17: 2-19.

Credits:

http://www.indiancountry.com/?1070457107

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/325/7378/1469

Carl Elliott , associate professor, Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota, N504 Boynton, 410 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN

Paul Brodwin , associate professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI.