DDIG: Implications of Genetic Data Knowledge on Identity in a Native American Descendant Community

博士生吉尔班尼特盖斯基，在博士西奥多G。Schurr（宾夕法尼亚大学），将探讨社会文化对收到身份基因组数据的反应。这项研究涉及向各种人群传播遗传数据所产生的一些复杂结果，这些数据可能对医疗、政治和身份问题至关重要。该项目的重点是百慕大圣大卫岛上自我认定的“土著百慕大人”。 这个社区声称有一个土著美国人的祖先，追溯到17世纪世纪新英格兰被英国殖民者强行从他们的家乡带走的个人，然后被奴役，并作为岛上第一批种植园工人的一部分被运到百慕大。 为了努力重新发现他们的土著过去，圣大卫岛民目前正在合作进行一项遗传祖先研究，调查这些声称与北美土著社区的联系。 首先，Gaieski将研究基因组结果的接收影响独立性声明的过程，以及从这些对身份的理解中产生的行为，以及遗传知识接收对个人和群体参与者的福祉的影响。 其次，她将研究如何实践和流离失所的文化和历史记忆是跨代传递，并通过社区和个人寻求了解他们的原生过去差异化的持续和动员。 为了实现这些目标，Gaieski将采用档案，人种学和调查方法。 她还将记录以前没有记录的口述历史和传统的土著阿迪亚社区。 此外，她将采访关键的社区成员，以记录文化知识，这是核心的形成和维护他们的独特身份，无论是历史上和现在。重要的是，随着基因组学越来越多地成为恢复历史的工具，关键是要了解基因数据如何与社会，政治和意识形态的角度来塑造对身份的理解和行为，从他们流。 本研究报告寻求这些及时问题的答案。

Doctoral student Jill Bennett Gaieski, under the guidance of Dr. Theodore G. Schurr (University of Pennsylvania), will explore the socio-cultural responses to the receipt of genomic data on identity. The research addresses some of the complex outcomes arising from the dissemination of genetic data to various populations for which such data maybe critical to medical, political and identity issues. This project focuses on the self-identified "Native Bermudians" of St. David's Island, Bermuda. This community claims an indigenous American ancestry traced to individuals who were forcibly taken from their native homelands in 17th century New England by English colonists, then enslaved, and transported to Bermuda as part of the island's first wave of plantation workers. In their efforts to rediscover their native pasts, St. David's Islanders are presently collaborating in a genetic ancestry study that is investigating these claimed links to indigenous communities in North America.There are two primary objectives of this project. First, Gaieski will examine the processes by which the receipt of genomic results influences claims of indigeneity and the behaviors that flow from these understandings of identity, as well as the effects that genetic knowledge receipt has on the well-being of individual and group participants. Second, she will examine how cultural and historical memory of practice and displacement is transmitted across generations, and differentially sustained and mobilized by community and individuals seeking to understand their native pasts. To accomplish these objectives, Gaieski will employ archival, ethnographic, and survey methods. She will also document previously unrecorded oral histories and traditions in the Native Bermudian community. Furthermore, she will interview key community members to document the cultural knowledge that is central to forming and maintaining their unique identity, both historically and at present.Significantly, as genomics becomes increasingly available as a tool for recovering histories, it is critical to understand how genetic data gets interwoven with social, political and ideological perspectives to shape understandings about identity and the behaviors that flow from them. This study seeks answers to these timely questions.