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

博士生Jill Bennett Gaieski将在西奥多·G·舒尔博士(宾夕法尼亚大学)的指导下，探索社会文化对收到关于身份的基因组数据的反应。这项研究解决了向不同人群传播基因数据所产生的一些复杂结果，对这些数据来说，这些数据可能对医疗、政治和身份问题至关重要。该项目关注的是百慕大圣大卫岛上自称为“百慕大原住民”的人。这个社区声称，美国原住民的祖先可以追溯到17世纪新英格兰被英国殖民者强行从家乡带走的人，然后被奴役，并作为该岛第一波种植园工人的一部分被运送到百慕大。在重新发现他们的土著历史的努力中，圣大卫岛民目前正在合作进行一项基因祖先研究，调查这些声称与北美土著社区有关的联系。该项目有两个主要目标。首先，Gaieski将研究基因组结果的接收影响土著遗传主张的过程，以及这些对身份的理解所产生的行为，以及遗传知识接收对个人和群体参与者福祉的影响。其次，她将研究实践和流离失所的文化和历史记忆如何代代相传，并由寻求了解其本土过去的社区和个人以不同的方式持续和动员起来。为了实现这些目标，Gaieski将使用档案、人种学和调查方法。她还将记录百慕大土著社区以前没有记录的口述历史和传统。此外，她将采访关键的社区成员，记录对形成和保持他们独特身份至关重要的文化知识，无论是在历史上还是现在。重要的是，随着基因组学越来越多地作为恢复历史的工具，理解基因数据如何与社会、政治和意识形态观点交织在一起，以塑造对身份和由此产生的行为的理解是至关重要的。这项研究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.