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> When Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues looked at the Colville DNA, they found that it was the closest match to Kennewick Man among all the samples from Native

> When Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues looked at the Colville DNA, they found that it was the closest match to Kennewick Man among all the samples from Native Americans in the study. > The DNA of the Colville tribe contains Asian-like pieces of DNA not found in Kennewick Man. They may have gained that genetic material by having children with the Arctic peoples. > “We were hesitant,” said Mr. Boyd, of the Colville Tribes. “Science hasn’t been good to us.” Eventually, the Colville agreed to join the study; the other four tribes did not. It's a shame that a history of distrust has developed. It sounds like we could extensively map out migration patterns of our pre-historic fellow humans, if their DNA were available. What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA?

maxlybbert 11y ago
(From the article): "[T]he Havasupai Indians of Arizona won a court case in 2010 to take back blood samples that they argued were being used for genetic tests to which they didn’t consent." Personally, I don't know that I would care if somebody was running genetic tests on my blood. However, the idea that some scientist somewhere might learn something about you that you don't know does creep some people out.
Mz 11y ago
What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA? Perhaps you have not seen the movie "The last of his kind" which maps out how we hunted Indians to extinction or casually exposed them to deadly infections, like small pox, that wiped out entire tribes and then, afterwards, piled their skulls up in our museums to study so as to satisfy our scientific curiosity. Why should Native Americans trust white scientists?
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Would they trust Native American scientists? Are they satisfied with their current histories? Do they not really care much to know how their ancestors moved across the continents?
  - Mz 11y ago
    I am 1/32 Cherokee. I am sure I would not be embraced by Native Americans as one of them. But I also surely do not implicitly trust white scientists. Or any scientists. I come from a long line of really paranoid people. This is why we live.
    - nycticorax 11y ago
      He said "it's a shame" not "they're being stupid". Because these physical anthropologists are probably not part of some grand conspiracy against Native Americans or anyone else. They probably just want to know how humans originally migrated into the Americas. Because, you know, they're scientists, and scientists are curious.
      - Mz 11y ago
        The problem with your remark is the implicit assumption that there is more "shame" in the lack of trust Native Americans have for whites than in the atrocities committed by whites that engendered that lack of trust, as if scientific curiosity justifies sweeping aside their very legitimate concerns and the long history of genocide here. Anyway, I do not plan to participate further in this discussion. My absence is not to be read as tacit admission of having lost the argument or some such. My concern is the HN algorithm. I don't want it dumped from the front page because excessive replies from me trip some unthinking, automatic algorithm switch.
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        > The problem with your remark is the implicit assumption that there is more "shame" in the lack of trust Native Americans have for whites than in the atrocities committed by whites that engendered that lack of trust I don't see any reason to infer that message from the remark in question. The remark is about the refusal and distrust, and notes that the distrust is a shame. In neither states nor implies anything comparative about the relation between that and any other situation that may or may not also be a shame, including, inter alia, those that contributed to the one being discussed.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
omegaworks 11y ago
You can design viruses that the general population is more resistant to. The United States is not a stranger to germ warfare in pursuit of its interests. http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Spring04/warfare.cfm http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Spring04/warfare.c...
- orthecreedence 11y ago
  Or, conceivably, you could design viruses to wipe a specific population out.
mullen 11y ago
> What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA? Everything. From the Native American perspective being connected to the land is entire basis of their argument. If you show that the Native Americans of today are not the Native Americans of long long ago, then you can undermine the argument that they did not own the land that white people stole from them. In a twisted way, you can't steal land from a group of people that stole it in the first place. Also, this is not about land, this is about mining, fishing and gaming rights and government recognition. If someone wanted to undermine any of that, they could show that the Native Americans do not own the land they sit on because they are not the True Native Americans. It is all to the Tribes advantage to make evidence of Kennewick man connection to non-Native Americans go away.
- nyolfen 11y ago
  this is drivel. those rights are recognized because of treaties signed between bands of natives and the US government, not some nebulous conception of who was there first. if that were the case, americans of european descent would be ejected from america en masse. those groups were acting to respect the sanctity of their ancestors.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA? What nefarious purpose could you further by profiling the DNA of a particular ethnic population? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon

maxlybbert 11y ago

(From the article): "[T]he Havasupai Indians of Arizona won a court case in 2010 to take back blood samples that they argued were being used for genetic tests to which they didn’t consent." Personally, I don't know that I would care if somebody was running genetic tests on my blood. However, the idea that some scientist somewhere might learn something about you that you don't know does creep some people out.

Mz 11y ago

What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA? Perhaps you have not seen the movie "The last of his kind" which maps out how we hunted Indians to extinction or casually exposed them to deadly infections, like small pox, that wiped out entire tribes and then, afterwards, piled their skulls up in our museums to study so as to satisfy our scientific curiosity. Why should Native Americans trust white scientists?

stephengillie 11y ago
Would they trust Native American scientists? Are they satisfied with their current histories? Do they not really care much to know how their ancestors moved across the continents?
- Mz 11y ago
  I am 1/32 Cherokee. I am sure I would not be embraced by Native Americans as one of them. But I also surely do not implicitly trust white scientists. Or any scientists. I come from a long line of really paranoid people. This is why we live.
  - nycticorax 11y ago
    He said "it's a shame" not "they're being stupid". Because these physical anthropologists are probably not part of some grand conspiracy against Native Americans or anyone else. They probably just want to know how humans originally migrated into the Americas. Because, you know, they're scientists, and scientists are curious.
    - Mz 11y ago
      The problem with your remark is the implicit assumption that there is more "shame" in the lack of trust Native Americans have for whites than in the atrocities committed by whites that engendered that lack of trust, as if scientific curiosity justifies sweeping aside their very legitimate concerns and the long history of genocide here. Anyway, I do not plan to participate further in this discussion. My absence is not to be read as tacit admission of having lost the argument or some such. My concern is the HN algorithm. I don't want it dumped from the front page because excessive replies from me trip some unthinking, automatic algorithm switch.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > The problem with your remark is the implicit assumption that there is more "shame" in the lack of trust Native Americans have for whites than in the atrocities committed by whites that engendered that lack of trust I don't see any reason to infer that message from the remark in question. The remark is about the refusal and distrust, and notes that the distrust is a shame. In neither states nor implies anything comparative about the relation between that and any other situation that may or may not also be a shame, including, inter alia, those that contributed to the one being discussed.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

omegaworks 11y ago

You can design viruses that the general population is more resistant to. The United States is not a stranger to germ warfare in pursuit of its interests. http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Spring04/warfare.cfm http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Spring04/warfare.c...

orthecreedence 11y ago
Or, conceivably, you could design viruses to wipe a specific population out.

mullen 11y ago

> What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA? Everything. From the Native American perspective being connected to the land is entire basis of their argument. If you show that the Native Americans of today are not the Native Americans of long long ago, then you can undermine the argument that they did not own the land that white people stole from them. In a twisted way, you can't steal land from a group of people that stole it in the first place. Also, this is not about land, this is about mining, fishing and gaming rights and government recognition. If someone wanted to undermine any of that, they could show that the Native Americans do not own the land they sit on because they are not the True Native Americans. It is all to the Tribes advantage to make evidence of Kennewick man connection to non-Native Americans go away.

nyolfen 11y ago
this is drivel. those rights are recognized because of treaties signed between bands of natives and the US government, not some nebulous conception of who was there first. if that were the case, americans of european descent would be ejected from america en masse. those groups were acting to respect the sanctity of their ancestors.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA? What nefarious purpose could you further by profiling the DNA of a particular ethnic population? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon