Kim TallBear

TallBear was born in 1968 at a public hospital in Pipestone, Minnesota. She grew up moving back and forth between the Sisseton and Flandreau reservations in South Dakota. 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 through her maternal grandfather. Her Indigenous descent comes from her mother's side. She also has some Cree and Métis ancestry from Canada. 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. 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. Nevertheless her mother also emphasized thinking practically about education, viewing it as the only way out of poverty. == Education and career ==

TallBear pursued post-secondary education for the first two years at the Texas Christian University in Texas than later switched to the University of Massachusetts in Boston to obtain an undergraduate degree in community planning. She then completed her master's degree in environmental planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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. == 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. 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. This raised many questions surrounding how one can claim Native American ancestry and who can decide if these claims are true or false. TallBear and Cherokee Nation citizens 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. Despite Cherokee Nation citizens' challenging Warren’s claims, and TallBear's academic research and work on the subject, Warren initially defended her ancestry claims. She later apologized. "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". She pursued this topic of study through a blog written under an alter ego, "The Critical Polyamorist". TallBear was part of a panel discussing decolonizing institutions such as relationships, at the National Women's Studies Association meeting in 2016. TallBear's critiques of monogamous, heteronormative colonial relations focus on their incompatibility with an environmentally sustainable world. For TallBear, moving beyond the current environmental problems of the neoliberal nation state requires expanding understandings and practices of kinship. TallBear's focus on kin goes to the "decolonization" of intimacy: relationships outside of what she describes as settler-colonial relationship 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 == References ==