The South African Khoe-San communities are no strangers to exploitative research. One research team is trying to provide genetic ancestry results to community members. But they still face many challenges.
Genetic ancestry tests may sound like a bit of fun, but in an era marked by increasing xenophobia, it’s important to be aware of the interplay between genetics and ideas of race.
The results of genetic ancestry tests are grossly over-simplified. A new study shows the tests reinforce what you want to believe rather than offering objective, scientific proof of who you are.
Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who authorities suspect is the so-called Golden State Killer responsible for at least a dozen murders and 50 rapes in the 1970s and ‘80s, during his arraignment on April 27, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif.
(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
A public genealogy data base was used to track down the so-called “Golden State Killer,” raising concerns about the privacy of using public sites to fill out our family trees.
We want to know we are connected - yet we crave to be unique. Moral white panic is also involved and so is big business.
(Shutterstock)
The current craze to search for our ancestry is complicated and paradoxical. We want to know we are connected – yet we crave to be unique. Moral white panic is also involved and so is big business.
Métis Family and a Red River Cart, 1883.
(State Historical Society of North Dakota, A4365)
New census data sheds light on the country’s Indigenous population. In Eastern Canada, the rise in people claiming to be “Métis” is a controversial case of “settler self-indigenization.”