Decolonizing Science and Technology

Kim Tallbear was at home in South Dakota, prepping to interview an older generation of Native women. She was a graduate student at the time and the women weren’t just any elders; they included Tallbear’s mother, as well as her mother’s friends. Tallbear’s standard procedure would have been to have everyone in the group sign informed consent forms, turn on a tape recorder, and get on with it. She was there in a professional capacity to ask Native people for their perspectives on genetic work. But she couldn’t do it. She felt very uncomfortable even thinking about doing it. 

“And then it struck me,” she said. “Wait a minute, who cares what we think about genetic work? The real problem is what non-Native people think about it.” That’s when Tallbear said she decided to “turn the gaze” onto white scientists. “Think about who gets to study versus who gets studied. So that’s when I decided I’m actually an anthropologist of white people,” she said.

Tallbear, professor of Native studies at the University of Alberta and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, recounted the events, during the Provost’s lecture on diversity on March 15. Her talk, “Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation to Decolonialization in Science and Technology,” addressed efforts to transform scientific training and research to increase benefits for Indigenous peoples.

The lecture series was created as part of Penn’s action plan for faculty excellence and diversity, said Interim Provost Beth A. Winkelstein, who introduced the speaker. “It’s an opportunity to hear from our faculty, as well as experts beyond Penn, about why and how diversity, inclusion, and equity matter in our scholarship, teaching, and clinical practices,” she said. 

Colonial ideas about race have Indigenous peoples and people of color as objects of scientific curiosity, Tallbear said, and decolonizing science and technology is a growing topic of interest, study, and policy.

“Decolonialization envisions the wholesale overhaul of the academy to fundamentally reorient knowledge production based on balancing power relations between Indigenous peoples and Canadians, transforming the academy into something dynamic and new,” Tallbear said, quoting authors Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz.

For TallBear, this means the restitution of Indigenous land and life. “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” she said. “When I think about how to achieve proper decolonization, even in small ways in my own programs, what I’m thinking is: How do we get stuff back in order to support the self-determination and the self-governance of our communities?”

Tallbear gave the Canadian immigration test, which she had to take, coming from South Dakota, as an example. She said the test now includes questions pertaining to Indigenous history and treaties. “It’s not very much, but it’s important that newcomers to Canada also get a sense of whose traditional lands they are coming into,” she said. “I think that’s kind of an important move.”

On the academic side, Tallbear cited the Summer Internship for Indigenous Peoples in Genomics (SING). Founded in 2011 by white scientists, SING is now entirely run by Indigenous professors, including Tallbear herself. 

 

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