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

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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.