Self-Indigenization, Whiteness and Genocide with Kim TallBear

Join Kim TallBear, PhD in person or online for this Indigenous Speaker Series presentation. Self-indigenization, also sometimes referred to as “pretendianism,” is often described as a problem of “Indigenous identity.” In this talk, Kim TallBear, PhD, rejects that characterization. Instead, she turns her gaze back onto settler-colonial society. What is their problem? Why do so many settler-state citizens insist on self-identifying as Indigenous without Indigenous nation recognition of their claims? Kim TallBear draws on Critical Indigenous Studies, anthropology of whiteness and critical race theory to analyze self-indigenization as a manifestation of whiteness and a late-colonial technique of Indigenous genocide.

Kim TallBear, PhD (she/her) is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, a Dakota nation in present-day South Dakota. She is professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Kim TallBear is the co-founder of the Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) Canada. She has advised the President of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) on issues related to genomics and Indigenous peoples. She has also advised museums on exhibits related to race and science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous governance and to Indigenous self-definitions, Kim TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly Indigenous current affairs podcast, Media Indigena. She is also a regular media commentator in outlets such as CBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, the LA Times, APTN, and the BBC on topics pertaining to Indigenous peoples, science, and technology; on the politics of self-indigenization; and on Indigenous sexualities. She is a former Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation (PETF) Fellow (2018-2021). She is a board member of the Oceti Sakowin Writers’ Society, a tribal writers’ society for Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota writers. You can also follow her monthly posts on her Substack newsletter, Unsettle: Indigenous affairs, cultural politics & (de)colonization.