ANCIENT DNA: A LINK TO THE PAST

Breaking the Glass Case | Alexandra Forand 

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It would not be a stretch for me to say that one of museums’ major roles is to illuminate human history. Many museums do this by using timelines or installing a linear progression through exhibits. The first thing audiences see when entering The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) is the massive, multimedia timeline with 100 points in history. While the CMHR’s timeline spans the globe there are timelines that focus on a particular topic, such as a place, a phenomenon, or a certain group of people. For instance, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM) First Nations Gallery traces the history of the first peoples in Saskatchewan, starting nearly 6,000 years ago to present day.

The CMHR's gallery with the timeline on the left (Source).

The timeline that is present the RSM shows a direct link between the people who were present 6,000 years ago to the people present on the land today. With the employment of science when conducting historical and archeological research, especially the study of DNA pulled from ancient humans (known as aDNA), this idea has become doubly enforced. You see, aDNA promotes a different kind of timeline.

The study of, understanding, and potential for ancient DNA has rapidly advanced, providing important insights into a range of biological, historical, and social questions. The study of aDNA has illuminated many answers to questions such as disease, migration patterns, impacts of European colonization and much more, it isn’t without its controversies—namely the ethical issues of collecting human genetic material of the past. 

A hotly debated topic amongst scientists is the peopling of North America, a question aDNA could potentially answer (Source). 

There have been numerous instances reported where scientists have used samples without permission, disregarded customs of communities, and resisted obtaining any form of consent from the people involved in studies (in some cases, these people were involved involuntarily). In 2013, Ian Mosby, an assistant professor at Ryerson, revealed that a number of highly unethical nutritional experiments were performed on children at six residential schools between 1942 and 1952. In turn, Indigenous communities have had to become sceptical of any sort of scientific and social testing to protect themselves, communities, and autonomy.

Ripan Malhi, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Illinois, is part of an effort to change this relationship. In 2011, Malhi helped found the Summer Internship for Indigenous Peoples in Genomics (SING), a weeklong program funded by the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program both aims to train indigenous scientists, but also so bring their much needed perspective to the research. In 2018, SING faculty and alumni publishes ethical guidelines for genomics studies, which call for community engagement, pose questions to tackle, and protocols on how to handle samples and data. You will notice these protocols are very much focused on the present communities and the future of genomics research. But, what about the science of the past? The ethical concerns of research are often not applied to aDNA studies, even though they have implications rooted in the present.

But this is changing.

In October of 2019, the National Science Foundation has awarded 350, 882$ to a collaborative team from the University of Connecticut, The Denver Museum of Nature and and independent scholars across the United States, Europe and Canada. 

(Source.)

“In many cases, aDNA studies continue to fall in a gray area of ethical oversight, despite greater awareness by researchers of the potential pitfalls,” says Deborah Bolnick, associate professor of anthropology at UConn. “With this project, we will include Indigenous leaders in the conversation alongside researchers to attempt to build an ethical framework that encourages positive, collaborative relationships between scientists and Indigenous communities.”

The team hopes to develop resources to enable informed decision making for researchers and indigenous communities in North America.
Both this project and SING inform how research is being done with, for, and by Indigenous communities pertaining to tracing history through DNA. The significance of these interventions cannot be over stated and affect the way the general public understands certain histories of Indigenous communities.

What are your thoughts? I really want to know! Leave a comment or if Twitter and Instagram are more your speed my handle on both is @Ally_but_online.