Strategies of Elimination: “Exempted” Aborigines, “Competent” Indians, and Twentieth-Century Assimilation Policies in Australia and the United States

Despite their different politics, populations and histories, there are some striking similarities between the indigenous assimilation policies enacted by the United States and Australia. These parallels reveal much about the harsh practicalities behind the rhetoric of humanitarian uplift, civilization and cultural assimilation that existed in these settler nations. This article compares legislation which provided assimilative pathways to Aborigines and Native Americans whom white officials perceived to be acculturated. Some Aboriginal people were offered certificates of “exemption” which freed them from the legal restrictions on Aboriginal people’s movement, place of abode, ability to purchase alcohol, and other controls. Similarly, Native Americans could be awarded a fee patent which declared them “competent.” This patent discontinued government guardianship over them and allowed them to sell, deed, and pay taxes on their lands. I scrutinize the Board that was sent to Oklahoma to examine the Cheyenne and Arapaho for competency in January and February 1917, and the New South Wales Aborigines’ Welfare Board, which combined the awarding of exemption certificates with their efforts to assimilate Koori people into Australian society in the 1940s and 1950s. These case studies reveal that people of mixed white/indigenous descent were more likely to be declared competent or exempt. Thus, hand in hand with efforts to culturally assimilate Aborigines and Native Americans came attempts to reduce the size of indigenous populations and their landholdings by releasing people of mixed descent from government control, and no longer officially recognizing their indigenous identity.En dépit des différences de leur politique, de leur population et de leur histoire, il existe certaines similitudes frappantes entre les politiques d’assimilation des Autochtones adoptées par les États-Unis et l’Australie. De tels parallèles sont très révélateurs des dures pratiques sous-jacentes à la rhétorique de l’édification humanitaire, de la civilisation et de l’assimilation culturelle dans ces nations pionnières. Cet article compare les lois qui ont fourni des moyens d’assimiler les Aborigènes et les Autochtones américains que les représentants blancs percevaient comme acculturés. Certains Autochtones se sont vu offrir des certificats d’« exemption » qui les libéraient des restrictions légales imposées au mouvement des peuples autochtones, droit de résidence, achat d’alcool, et autres contrôles. De façon semblable, les Autochtones américains pouvaient recevoir des lettres patentes les déclarant « compétents ». Celles-ci interrompaient la tutelle gouvernementale et leur permettaient de vendre, de transférer par acte notarié et de payer des taxes sur leurs terres. L’auteur a analysé à fond le Comité qui a été envoyé à Oklahoma pour examiner la compétence des Cheyenne et des Arapaho en janvier et février 1917, ainsi que le New South Wales Aborigines’ Welfare Board, qui combinait l’attribution des certificats d’exemption à leurs efforts pour assimiler le peuple Koori dans la société australienne des années 1940 et 1950. Ces études de cas révèlent que les personnes de descendance mixte blanc/indigène avaient davantage de chance d’être déclarées compétentes ou d’être exemptées. Ainsi, de pair avec les efforts d’assimiler culturellement les Aborigènes et les Autochtones américains sont venues les tentatives de réduire les populations indigènes et la taille de leurs propriétés foncières en dégageant les personnes de descendance mixte du contrôle gouvernemental, et d’éliminer la reconnaissance officielle de leur identité autochtone

Characterisation of retroviruses in the horse genome and their transcriptional activity via transcriptome sequencing

The recently released draft horse genome is incompletely characterised in terms of its repetitive element profile. This paper presents characterisation of the endogenous retrovirus (ERVs) of the horse genome based on a data-mining strategy using murine leukaemia virus proteins as queries. 978 ERV gene sequences were identified. Sequences were identified from the gamma, epsilon and betaretrovirus genera. At least one full length gammaretroviral locus was identified, though the gammaretroviral sequences are very degenerate. Using these data the RNA expression of these ERVs were derived from RNA transcriptome data from a variety of equine tissues. Unlike the well studied human and murine ERVs there do not appear to be particular phylogenetic groups of equine ERVs that are more transcriptionally active. Using this novel approach provided a more technically feasible method to characterise ERV expression than previous studies

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements