Keynote Address Reflection
During this week’s Technocultural Futurisms conference, I attended Dr. Alondra Nelson’s Keynote Speech. She focused specifically on DNA testing for African Americans in the United States. Because of the history of African American slavery in this country, many people have been unable to trace their ancestry beyond a few centuries. DNA is changing that. As African Americans learn more about their past, they are able to have a sense of kinship with their descendants. Parts of their identity that had been taken away from them by white slave traders can now come back to them.
One example provided by Dr. Nelson was the Georgetown 272 project. This project was started by researchers at Georgetown University who wanted to find the ancestors of the 272 men, women, and children enslaved by Jesuit priests. Dr. Cellini, the head of the Georgetown Memory Project, asserted that the slaves were not just a disembodied group of nameless people; they have real names and real ancestors. The project was able to find many of the descendants and offer them benefits at the university. It brought up many important questions, including: what should be the form of reparations paid to their descendants? What should descendants do with this information? Many universities, including Brown and Harvard, are seeking to answer these questions as well.
More reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html
However, this sort of work isn’t easy for anthropologists to understand. Dr. Nelson discussed some of the challenges of finding descendants through DNA through the example of the African Burial Ground Project. This research, done by Lehman College, sought to understand the remains of buried slaves near their campus. Their research came under much scrutiny from the various groups that claimed kinship with the remains. One such group, the Descendants of the African Burial Ground, claimed that the researchers had created narrow typologies for the remains. They believed the scientists were disembodying the buried slaves from their culture, instead putting them in stark scientific categories. Disagreements such as this one show how complicated studying remains can be. Remains are a part of people’s culture, and must be studied respectfully.
This is related to an article we read at the beginning of the semester entitled “The Ethical Battle Over Ancient DNA” by Michael Balter. The author wrote about the controversies surrounding the study of Native American DNA. In accordance with NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) all museums that use Native American artifacts must have the consent of the tribe associated with them. Additionally, Native American DNA must be taken only with fully informed consent. When scientists break the spirit of this rule (or the rule itself) they hurt the cultures they are trying to display. This is related to Dr. Nelson’s talk because it also involves controversy over how to handle the DNA of people under scientific study. Both this article and her talk showcase how culturally important DNA is to any cultural group. Therefore, DNA should be treated with much care and consideration.
