Standing With and Speaking as Faith

Kim TallBear is an associate professor, faculty of native studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience & Environment. She is also a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Fellow. TallBear is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Building on her research on the role of technoscience in settler colonialism, TallBear also studies the colonization of Indigenous sexuality. She is a regular commentator in US, Canadian, and UK media outlets on issues related to Indigenous peoples, science, and technology as well as Indigenous sexualities. She is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast, Media Indigena. She is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota. Recommended reading: TallBear, K. (2014). Standing With and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-Indigenous Approach to Inquiry. Journal of Research Practice, 10(2). Kim was the featured speaker for the Standing With and Speaking as Faith event on January 27, 2021, 1:00-2:30 p.m. PST. Moderated by IRDL Scholars Hailley Fargo and Jamillah R. Gabriel.https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/irdl-speakerseries/1000/thumbnail.jp

Crafting, Communality, and Computing: Building on Existing Strengths To Support a Vulnerable Population

In Nepal, sex-trafficking survivors and the organizations that support them have limited resources to assist the survivors in their on-going journey towards reintegration. We take an asset-based approach wherein we identify and build on the strengths possessed by such groups. In this work, we present reflections from introducing a voice-annotated web application to a group of survivors. The web application tapped into and built upon two elements of pre-existing strengths possessed by the survivors -- the social bond between them and knowledge of crafting as taught to them by the organization. Our findings provide insight into the array of factors influencing how the survivors act in relation to one another as they created novel use practices and adapted the technology. Experience with the application seemed to open knowledge of computing as a potential source of strength. Finally, we articulate three design desiderata that could help promote communal spaces: make activity perceptible to the group, create appropriable steps, and build in fun choices.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'20

The Local, the ‘Indigenous’ and the Limits of Rethinking Peacebuilding

© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2021.1882755Recent critical perspectives on peacebuilding have sought to shed light on experiences so far marginalized by mainstream approaches. In particular, critics have pushed peacebuilding towards radically different ways of thinking about governance, conflict and peace, by engaging with narratives, experiences and knowledge coming from societies perceived as not invested in modernity or liberalism, such as Indigenous communities. Whilst this may force theory to confront questions of human-centrism, colonial erasure, and structural violence, turning to Indigeneity without questioning the impact of liberal peace ‘thinking', might further elicit marginalization and appropriation, and simply ‘save’ liberal peacebuilding through the back door.Peer reviewe

The nature of the body in sport and physical culture: from bodies and environments to ecological embodiment

This article raises the ecological substance and relational co-constitution of bodies as a generative question for sociologists of sport and physical culture. It proceeds from our observation that recent research on the materiality of athletic bodies, and on the environmental issues in which sport is implicated, tends to run on parallel tracks. By exploring how biological, environmental, and social natures cohere in the making and unmaking of healthy bodies, our aim is to connect and extend these vibrant areas of research. We do so by developing the concept of “ecological embodiment,” a descriptor for a fluid state of becoming and a sensibility for thinking about hierarchical socioecological entanglements. To illustrate this concept, we draw on a study of whey protein powder, a key ingredient in contemporary fitness cultures

Science and Whiteness- DNA and Indigeneity Symposium

During the 19th century, the American School of Anthropology enfolded Native peoples into their histories, claiming knowledge about and artifacts of these cultures as their rightful inheritance and property. Highlighting several cases, this talk describes how similar enfoldments continue today—despite most contemporary scientists’ explicit rejection of hierarchical ideas of race. This talk highlights extra-legal strategies that can address tensions between indigenous peoples and genome scientists and their facilitators—ethicists, lawyers, and policy makers. Dr. Kimberly TallBear is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Native Studies. She is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota, descended from the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, and raised on the Flandreau Santee Sioux reservation in South Dakota and in St. Paul.&nbsp

Close Encounters of the Colonial Kind

This essay is voiced by “IZ,” a character personifying the evolving field of “Native American” or “Indigenous” studies in the United States. IZ was introduced to readers in Aileen Moreton Robinson’s edited volume Critical Indigenous Studies: Engagements in First World Locations (2016), in which Moreton-Robinson wrote: “Twenty years into this century, Indigenous-centered approaches to knowledge production are thriving” and our “object of study is colonizing power in its multiple forms, whether the gaze is on Indigenous issues or on Western knowledge production.” Today, “critical Indigenous studies” represents a coming together of multiple national engagements by Indigenous scholars and sovereignty movements with universities around the world. In this essay, IZ’s object of study and critical polydisciplinamorous Indigenous engagement is a scientist searching for signs of “intelligent” life off-Earth

Standing With and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-Indigenous Approach to Inquiry

This research note is part of the thematic section, Giving Back in Solidarity, in the special issue titled “Giving Back in Field Research,” published as Volume 10, Issue 2 in the Journal of Research Practice

Indigenous Bioscientists Constitute Knowledge across Cultures of Expertise and Tradition : An Indigenous Standpoint Research Project

 This talk explains my recent Indigenous Science Studies research project – an ethnography of Indigenous bioscientists in the U.S. – as it is informed by two key Feminist Science Studies frames, “feminist objectivity” and “feminist standpoint theory.” Most often, anthropological projects focused on Native Americans derive from outside the Native American community and often turn Native American social and cultural practices into anthropological curiosities and sites of difference from the non-Indigenous observer. However, from my longstanding location within U.S. Native American social, cultural, educational, and professional circles, this Indigenous standpoint project examines cultural and social conditions that lead U.S. Native Americans to work as bioscientific researchers. The Indigenous standpoint in this research is not mainly concerned with assessing Native American social or cultural difference from the mainstream. Rather, this research investigates how Indigenous participation in bioscience can help make Western bioscience more multi-cultural and democratic, while also serving Native American community capacity-building and self-governance. This talk also advocates that Indigenous Studies scholars pay greater attention to the role of science and technology as they seek to do research that supports Indigenous sovereignty. Both Nation States and Indigenous Nations increasingly govern through science. However, in its U.S. formation, Indigenous Studies is more focused in humanities fields. It engages too little with the physical and bio- logical sciences and with technology fields. If Indigenous Studies scholars ignore the role of technoscience in both limiting and facilitating Indigenous sovereignty, they limit their relevance for Indigenous communities