Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 105: Who Owns Our DNA? W/ Joseph Yracheta! Pt. 2

Transcript

Episode 105: Who Owns Our DNA? W/ Joseph Yracheta! Pt. 2 · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: You must excuse me.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you've learned a lesson.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lesson in honesty.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Honesty to yourself and honesty to others.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: That lesson will stand you in good step on your life.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've all learned a good lesson.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've always heard that honesty is the best policy.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm catching on to why that's over, why that's done, and why that's so.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Ostlantis, where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and along the way, we challenge pseudo-historical distortions and we confront the disinformation that too often surrounds these very topics.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: And Ruben Ariano Tlacate Kat.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: And we are joined once again by Indigenous geneticist Joseph Irrachetta for part two of our discussion about native biodata, DNA sovereignty, and the chilling effects these issues are having on Indigenous people.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you have yet to do so, I encourage you to go back one episode and listen so you can be all caught up on the conversation.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: So as we begin, Joe is talking about how the GOP has had a vested interest in extracting our genetic information for quite some time now.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so, dear listeners, we continue with part two of Who Owns Our DNA?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the GOP has been on the case for a long time.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so in 2007, like I said, with the American Competes Act, they started so again, going back to Publisher Parish, they think all academics are lazy and that they just they're just smoking pots somewhere in a room somewhere.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um so they said you have to do you have to do something, right?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: So that started with Publisher Parish in 1941, I think it was.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then it's just been getting worse ever since then.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, if we're funding your research, you have to do what we say and you have to be quiet about it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Because Einstein and Oppenheimer, after Nagasaki and Hiroshima, went on the road and say, this is terrible.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like we should not be using nuclear energy for this.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: But they couldn't shut them up because of their reputation.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: But ever since then, they're like, we're gonna shut you up with money.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: You can't talk and get money at the same time.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: You can't do your research and do what you want without us having to say so.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of what's been happening in 2007, the American Competes Act, uh, Bidole in 1980, all of these pieces of legislation have all been to co-op academia and co-op research, right?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: This has been a trajectory.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think back in 2007, they saw the writing on the wall with AI because these things were already being used in the military, right?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: And going back to the PIMA, the first AI algorithm was built on the PIMA data.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: If you go to Joanna Radden at Yale, she's got a whole book about how that data was used without the tribe's permission to build some of the first Department of Defense AI platforms.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's terrible.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: So they saw the writing on the wall and they're like, how can we get this moved into the space where we run the show?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's been like that.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: Every so American Competes was last ratified in 2022, and they threw the kitchen sink in there.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, we're gonna own everything.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: So this is kind of like an early version of like what the social uh media does today, where they extract your information that you give to them willingly, and then they kind of turn around and resell it uh and make money off of it that way.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, in a sense, that's what the government was doing with the PIMA, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're they go in and they're like, okay, we're gonna try to figure out who these people are.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, we're gonna keep your data, and if in the future date we need to sell this uh to for whatever purpose, whether it benefits us, uh, the federal government, the military, or if it's uh to generate um revenue, then we're gonna do that as well, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think this kind of ties into something that is in your paper as well, where but you suggest that maybe there's a bold move that uh scientific journals can be making as far as like maybe refusing to publish research involving indigenous data, if the scientists didn't meaningfully involve the community or follow some kind of strict ethical checklist, right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it if if, for instance, if a a scientist is getting paid money from some organization to do the research, that's one thing, right?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and they're supposed to keep their mouth shut because they're receiving the funding, blah, blah, blah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, does a journal have to necessarily publish their work, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and so is is is that a way to mitigate this?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um I I don't I'm not even sure how to describe what's what's happening, this unethical uh use of of uh resource extraction, or do you think that just a journal doesn't really adequately resolve the issue in the long run?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you you guys know as well as I do, um academic journals are getting worse and worse in terms of their fees and access to the data and all the paywalls, and so the result has been either uh preprint servers or totally open access uh journals, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so this has been a fight.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: Or Sci Hub cost.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: This this is the this is the fight, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, should journals be a business, right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: If they're if they're publishing academic work and the pendulum keeps swinging.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but for the most part, journals are on this open data side uh all over the world, including the EU.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um they're like, no, all data has to be open, and you have to provide us with proof that this data set is open.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so we've had this discussion with European journals, American journals, and we're like, no, that's not what the policy says.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: What the policy says is that the data should be accessible, right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: And that could be managed access.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: That could be all the data's here, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the tribe will take a request, we'll work with the tribe.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: If the tribe says no, then the tribe says no.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: They can give a reason, they cannot give a reason.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: But it was accessible.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: There was an application process.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so we fought with the journals, right?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: But mostly they're just like, no, it has to be fully open.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh some of the journals we work, like nature journals, uh, work with indigenous groups and say, yeah, we'll we'll publish anyway um your data if the tribes or indigenous people in Australia, New Zealand, whoever, uh don't want to have their data open and will just publish this paper.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: So some journals are are going along with like Indigenous data sovereignty, and other journals are like, nope, we're you have to be open.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so our thing, especially, yeah, you guys know what the Belmont report is?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: I do not.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the Belmont Report was a ethical report that came after Nuremberg, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: The Nuremberg trials in Germany um with the Holocaust and after Tuskegee syphilis spirit uh experiment here in the United States, where they gave all these uh black male syphilis and didn't tell them and didn't give them treatment, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then, by the way, guess where that got moved?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: That got moved to Guatemala with indigenous people.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um but anyway, the Belmont report was like, we don't want to do these things and harm people again.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and from that came the common rule for the federal departments um and was ratified in 1979.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: But in there, there's only four precepts don't harm the person that you're getting data from.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: There should be some expectation of benefits, protect their privacy and uh make sure they have informed consent.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then not logical things, yeah, and not be coercive.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: Don't give them like a thousand dollars for a blood sample, right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: Don't coerce them, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: And with this open data thing with the journals, I'm like, why aren't we including the journals in the Belmont Report or the common rule?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because it is coercive, at least in an indigenous context, to say we won't publish the research that might benefit you and your people because you won't keep it open.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: So it's coercive.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you either do what the federal government says and make all of your data open, or else we, the journal, will not publish these vital statistics on your behalf.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I've made this argument a billion times, and the journal's all like, well, that's got nothing to do with us.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, yes, it does.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: You're voluntarily, you're voluntarily taking up this US policy uh of open data, and you don't understand the beef between indigenous peoples in the United States and why they don't want to have their data open.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and when you look at something like the Belmont Report, um, which I guess establishes this ethical framework, right, for all this research to take place under.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Even with that in place, it doesn't surprise me uh that you would have pushback from journals because you've even got uh academics and archaeologists, uh like a certain scumbag.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: I won't even say her name because she's don't because she's such a scumbag.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but she sued San Jose State University uh because she was being labeled a racist.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: You have these people who just flat out and they make it a point of pride to absolutely reject indigenous sovereignty or indigenous concerns when it comes to her research, right?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, no, I should have access.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like she calls them, you know, her bones, you know, like this is my lab, these are my remains.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, no, chick, those are not your remains, you know.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: Get the fuck out of here with that.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got people like that who, I mean, she's fallen out of the limelight now, thank goodness.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: But for a while there, she was really being amplified by right-wing media as like this darling of anti-woke archaeology.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, archaeology's becoming woke.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so we need to do away with this.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have just absolute scumbags like that who don't even see us as human beings who are worthy of respect, right?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then on the other side, you have uh in science, there's this uh phrase of the technically sweet, right?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you have people who are driven by this idea that it's totally removed from from uh ethics and morals.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: They're just they just want to know if they can do it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it's the technically sweet aspect of it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's what they're attracted to.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is this even possible?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Can we can we pull this off?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you see this term come up a lot in reference to the guys that worked at the Manhattan Project who they were just like, can we split the atom?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and they got ex they got so wrapped up in the possibility of the research that they were doing that they never bothered to step back and look like, oh, wait, should we be doing this shit?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of bad shit's gonna happen because of this.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have these two, you know, uh kind of related but on the same level, these ideas of you just academics who don't give a shit because they're fucking racist assholes.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then some who are just so caught up in the moment of the research itself that they have this big blind spot of they might not even be bad people per se, but they have this huge blind spot where they're not even thinking about the ethics that go around it.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a third, there's a third category, and they're mostly you know over 70 years old, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: So back in the 90s when or 70s, when things were super racist against native people or black people, they were they were the radicals, they were the heroes, right?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: They were the white saviors on the horse, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but now they're older and they don't want to hand over the reins to people like us, people like us, because they think we're gonna ruin their legacy.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, you guys are the keepers.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you guys are gonna go in the wrong direction with it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like we we did this for you so that your data would be helping all of humanity, and now you guys want to you guys wanna bogard it and keep it down.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's one woman who said, um, yes, I heard the indigenous concerned and they're very, very valid.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I have to go with my own research integrity and my own conviction.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that I'm doing this for them.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh white savior much?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Jeez.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: But going back to this woman that you're talking about, she also makes it hard for us to do our work because um some of the people that she made angry there in California don't want to work with us because now we're all under the same umbrella.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like we're all researchers.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then, like nonprofits, especially like Nature Conservancy, haven't really been a friend to indigenous people.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: So they're like, we don't need these nonprofits coming in and saying they're gonna help us and then not.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so we get painted with the same brush as that woman, and with the same brush as nonprofits who come in with this hero mentality and promise things that they can't deliver on.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, we were you've been working or trying to work with California tribes, but because of her, um, it's been difficult.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, on that same note, I mean, can you touch upon this idea of like universal discovery, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like on the one hand, the goal of uh uh modern science is to find this commonality between all humans, right?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: This universal discovery doctrine, which is something that is supposed to apply to everyone uh in order to advance medicine for the benefit of all humanity, right?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so on the one hand, you have that, and then you have indigenous data sovereignty, which is more about localized uh sovereign protection of indigenous data and indigenous knowledge.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So fundamentally, are these two ideas of universal scientific progress uh and localized data sovereignty fundamentally at odds with each other in the grand scheme of things?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or can you envision maybe a future where um you have the respect for tribal sovereignty and tribal boundaries actually leads to a better method and a better way, a more accurate way of uh conducting scientific research uh that is more trustworthy uh for everyone, not just for the people who are doing um the research, but for both sides, right?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like what what is your vision moving forward?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that last part, exactly.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's the argument we've been making.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know that uh if it's real or it's just pie in the sky kind of fantasy.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: But we're trying to say that whoever you are, if you're a country, if you're a researcher, you're an academic institution, you might go slowly right now and not be competitive with these guys who are stealing stuff.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: But in the long run, the trust that you build and the data that you produce will be of such high quality that eventually you will win this data game because not only are you getting more participants because they trust you and you're sharing benefits or profits, but the data is accurate and it's doing what you promised it was going to do.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because right now with AI, the thing that we complain about is that it's garbage in, garbage out.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: They don't really know, they don't really know us.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: They don't really have the data they need to do anything, to help us.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Right now, they have enough data to steal from us, but they don't have the data to help us.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that so that you're right, that's exactly what we're pitching right now.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is like if you do this in the right way, you might have a liability of slowness, but eventually you're going to be the winner of the race, you know, the turtle in the hare kind of thing.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: But I was gonna go back to how things are are going right now.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: So companies, because Latin America um is terrible, right?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: So they they instead of trying to get what they want out of the United States or Canada, they're going to Latin America and circumventing the Belmont Report by just buying freezers of samples from the 60s, 70s, and 80s from these old criollos and peninsulares who kept the freezers from these indigenous tribes that are now gone, or they identify as mestizo, and saying, you know what?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: You have this big rancho, you're a wealthy guy in Bolivia or Argentina.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: I let me just buy those freezers from you.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the guy's like, I'm 90, I'm gonna die.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: 20 million is enough.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Here you go, take the freezer, right?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: So they're doing that.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of countries like Argentina and Brazil are just giving all of the data from the Amazon and stuff like that to the EU and Denmark, to these big pharma companies, because they're messy.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: So like they're just like, I don't care about those indigenous people, right?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well when they do this in any of these freezers, I have questions.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Are there any clones of Hitler?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Or or are there like, is Hitler's head like chirogenically frozen in any of these?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's what I think of when I think of uh Brazil and Argentina.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, especially Argentina, because Argentina, I mean, it's mainly made up of recent European immigrants from the 20th century, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: At the moment, well, I don't know the demographics, but I know that there's been a lot of immigration from from Europe uh in into Argentina and places like Chile, but especially Argentina, especially like during the aftermath of the Second World War.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I I would venture to guess that a lot of these people who are um doing these sorts of things who don't care about indigenous uh sovereignty and and and what happens to indigenous data are indifferent because it's like what is it to them, right?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so they see kind of a connection to to their fellow brethren from the old country, and they're like, well, this is gonna benefit humanity as a whole.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So they kind of see themselves almost like in the white savior mentality, in a sense, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: But they're doing it for profit as well, like they're getting something out of it, but at the same time, they're patting themselves on the back, hey, I did something good for humanity, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so uh uh just on LinkedIn a little while ago, David Reich, who's um been a problem for us, we wrote a paper against him because he said it's last name is Reich.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's all it's all he goes, I go all over the world collecting data from Indigenous people, and they don't have these concerns.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's just people in English speaking countries like Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, United States, Canada that have a problem with me collecting their DNA.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: I've been doing this forever.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: We helped them with the knowing their ancestors and history and blah, blah, blah.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so, uh, and then also the the new huge data bank in Latin America, they're like, oh, well, we're we're gonna negotiate with the EU on our terms.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, but they're not your terms.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: They're indigenous people's terms.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: You're giving away something that's not yours.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: I said that the reason why it's a problem is because the value, the outsized value of our data has to be put in comparison to our benefit and control of the data.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: So this is the money they're gonna get from it, and this is the control we have.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's the problem.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: And there's just saying, oh, from Latin America, you know, we're we're gonna fight the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny on behalf of the indigenous people.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, no, you're not.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna do those things.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so much so that right now, because that woman that you're talking about in San Jose, the NIH can't get participation from American Indians or First Nations in Canada.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: They're worried about the stuff that's happening in Latin America.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna give them a black eye.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: So they're gonna take NAGPRA-like data that's not protected by NAGPRA.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: So skeletons that are 500, 2,000, 10,000 years old, reanalyze them through genetic technology, harmonize them, curate them for big pharma.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's how they're circumventing this right now.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And what a perfect name for a villain.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: David Reich.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, have you guys seen?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that old movie, The Boys from Brazil?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was like 1978.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: They clone Hitler in Brazil, and there's like this plot to uh to basically populate the earth with clones of Hitler.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, it's it's it's what makes me think of happening when you bring up South America and you know shade shady going on with uh genetics.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: I could see that as being like the hotbed for something like this to go down.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't know how much longer you guys want to talk, but like S.K.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: Villerslev is something we could talk about with the Picuris, right?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: He just got uh well, at least my friends and I put out a paper uh criticizing what he did with the Picuri Pueblo there.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh the the uh what's it?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: You mean the picuris from New Mexico?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, bicuris and the Lagoa Santa uh skeleton in in Brazil, you know, it's like Australian.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Or Austro Australasian, or it's black, or whatever.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, like that whole those two stories are terrible.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: So we, if you go back to Brazil, those mestizo scientists were so happy that they might have found a black skeleton in Brazil to basically disempower us and our claims to the land these nice.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the indigenous, yeah, right, yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it's with this fixation with with uh discrediting indigenous people from our ancestral homelands, and those trying to try to find some other so-called first uh American here, whether it's a Chinese person, whether it's someone from Africa, whether it's a Viking, aliens, right?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like Israelites, Israelites, like please, people are cousins because they have they share our indigenous DNA, but they'd rather have us be African than be indigenous, right?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: And it took seven years from people like Jennifer Raff to look at that same data and and sequence other skeletons in the same uh burial ground to say, no, those are actually our relatives, those are native people, they're not they're not Africans, they're not Australians, they're not Polynesians, they're us.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, getting to that point, uh, not too long ago, there was a common saying being repeated and spread far and wide on the internet that there is no such thing as native DNA.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember this?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: The place they were coming from, is at least as far as I understand it, is the point they were trying to make in a clumsily stated way was that membership in indigenous nations is not exclusively about blood, it is about lineal descent, it is about culture, it is about the tribe, the tribe determines, each nation determines its own standards for membership as a citizen of that indigenous nation.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that you can't just take a DNA test and say, like, oh, now I'm a citizen of this nation, which those are points that I agree with.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the way they were saying it was very clumsy.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's catchy, right?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's easy to remember.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: There's no such thing as native DNA.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so then people started repeating that, and then that phrase started being weaponized against mixed-blood Indigenous people, against unenrolled indigenous peoples, against any indigenous person who was not a recognized citizen of a sovereign indigenous nation.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was being used like a cudgel to just beat them over the head.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: And like, no, you are not a real Indian.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: You were not a real Indian.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I've always pushed back against that that way of framing it, you know, because just scientifically, you can test people and determine if they have indigenous ancestry.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so there is such a thing as indigenous DNA, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: If you have an opinion about that.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: I have lots of opinions.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get them started, correct.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I I I I was uh not really a co-author, but I was a help with some of those papers because it's all Elizabeth Warren, right?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was all around that time.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_05: Right, right.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and then I I wrote and I wrote my own paper.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: But at the time, uh, and you guys probably had the same experience at some point in your life, I was like making myself small in comparison to federally recognized Indians.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: So the way I wrote the paper was sort of speaking to yourself, yeah, making making myself small, uh, not to piss off my northern cousins.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: But now I'm like, yeah, we're gonna trash that whole thing.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: Challenge.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: But it's it's just like with us, right?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh burying uh Aztec rituals in the Catholic Church, right?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: You you do that as a strategy to survive, right?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: And and you might tell the grandchildren, the great grandchildren, but eventually that gets lost, and then people are like, oh, we're Catholic.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we've always done it this way.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's a tradition.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: You're not you're not Catholic.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: Those are Aztec traditions.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, these are all indigenous traditions, indigenous food ways, indigenous culture, uh, indigenous forms of kinship that you now think of as Hispanic or Catholic or whatever, but that's just because we forgot.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because our ancestors hid that shit because they had to.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: For survival.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the same thing with American Indians.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's like they, because of the laws about non-racial preference and all that kind of stuff, they said we are not a racial group.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: We are a political entity.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: We are nations, we're domestic dependent nations, and we can include black people in our nation, mixed bloods in our nation.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: We get to decide who is a member and who's not a member.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's the argument that they were making.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: There's no such thing as native DNA because we're not a racial classification.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: We are a nation just like the United States or whatever, you know, melting pot nation, which there are not many, right?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, China's an ethnostate, Israel's an ethno-state, France is an ethnostate, but they make this this fake narrative that there's these mixed groups, uh, and they include American Indians as part of it.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: But it was a strategy, and they forget that it was a strategy, right?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: So now that you hear these uh American Indian scholars say that there's no native DNA, but they also say, oh, we were mixed before Europeans came because the Lakota mixed with the Ponka and the you know, the uh the Apache mixed with the Pueblo.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, that's not the same, dude.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: That is not the same.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, there are no full bloods left.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: We couldn't do genetic science if there weren't full bloods left.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: Because the way we do it is we we we take the person, we take their parents, and if they have grandparents, their grand great-grandparents, and then their great-grandparents.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: And by that you have an estimation that these people have all been in the same place forever, right?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: And they're gonna be less mixed than other people.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: The second thing we do is we compare them to ancient skeletons and to see how much they match.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: And the third thing we do is go over large geographies, like, oh, well, this Apache group and these grandparents all match.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now they match the skeleton that we found in in uh in Peru, and it also matches this other skeleton we found in Montana.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's how we do it.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like we're just pulling these things out of our ear, right?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we match the DNA pre and post-Columbian and by geography.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's and so, yeah, there is Native American DNA.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then we compare it to people of mixed descent and say, how much of this can we match to the white fraction of the database?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: And how much can we match to the indigenous fraction of the database?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: The only way that that that that statement is right about the not having any uh there isn't such a thing as Native American DNA is that in the recent past, there wasn't a lot of data.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: So the databases are deficient in our data.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing is there's not a good algorithm, right?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: And the technology that they use, which is mostly SNP panels, which were crappy back in the day, but are better.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: So now as things are getting better, we have better reference, we have a better algorithm, and we have better technology.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: We can say these things are native, they're not African, they're not European.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's frustrating because for a while there, the common uh argument being made was that Chicanos can't possibly be indigenous peoples because you know, and then they they would use like all of these this framework of identifying native people from Mexico, right?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: So they were using like a Mexican framework of well, this is how indigenous groups are identified in Mexico.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, yeah, but we're like United States, like we we're in a whole different country.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: We're different, we've been displaced, and so now we're here.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: So our experiences as native people are different than other experiences.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: We've all experienced colonialism in different ways, and nobody's experience is more valid.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: And to your point, if you just compare Canada to the United States, the United States is strict blood quantum, right?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then tribes on their own decided to go bilineal descent.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: In Canada, it's not, it's very complicated.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: There's like seven different kinds of status of Indian up there.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think only three of them get any kind of benefits.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: But basically they said if your dad was European, then the kids and the mom are all European.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: If the dad was native, the kids and the and the um and the mom are native.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's got nothing to do with blood quantum.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: That is a cultural thing.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: So the definition across the Americas of who is and who is indigenous is very different.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: And when they apply the American, the US racialized context to Mexico, they're wrong every single time.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's interesting now that you frame it that way, because I guess uh I I knew that, but it's it's not something that comes to mind when I'm thinking about these things.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I I compare it to the way that, especially like in Powell's public events and in the US, when you hear Native people talk about native, they always want to include Canada as being part of that same conversation, the US and Canada, but always stops at at the southern border.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're you're left out, you're cut out of the conversation of indigenity and Native American, and then you know it's like, well, wait a minute, like in Canada, they have this cultural thing about who can and cannot be uh you know identified as indigenous.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: The US has its own individual tribal way of lineal descent or cultural or political entity identification.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: So what makes these two special that allows them to uh you know uh use the term Native American exclusively, right?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: To and to the and to the to the exclusion of people south of the winter, right?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I sometimes I I is it because it's a language thing, is it become mainly anglophone?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's again like David Reich, like David Reich said, that English speaking countries have a lot of political clout and economic economic clout where other people have to just shut up and listen, right?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: So the three three ironies of what you just said is of course Canadian, Alaskan, and American Indians are mixed.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: We know that, right?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: They've lost their languages.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: They've mostly lost their food ways.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: Is that true of Mexico?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: We have a lot of the genetics left, we have a lot of the food ways left, we have a lot of uh native language speakers left.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: The second uh second irony is that they see themselves as related to Polynesians, like Hawaiians and New Zealanders and Australians more than us, their relatives south of the border, because they speak English.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then the final and then the final irony is that all those tests of 23andMe and Ancestry and that kind of stuff that that they use to identify whether or not somebody's native, guess where they got the data?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: From Mexico.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: So wait, so not only did they get the corn, the beans, and the squads from Mexico, but they're also getting their DNA results from Mexico to prove that they're indigenous.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well here in New Mexico, we have a very popular myth that the people of New Mexico are not actually Mexican, we're not actually indigenous, but that they're the descent they call themselves Hispanos or Indo-Hispanos.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: They'll use one of those two terms.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea is that they're the descendants of this direct lineage of Spanish colonizers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a reason why they think that, right?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's a whole historical reason that has to do with American colonization and resistance to Anglo racism and whatever.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there's a reason why that exists.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: But when the DNA test started coming out, all these Spanish northern New Mexicans were suddenly crestfallen because they're getting these results back, and they're like, What the fuck?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mean I have all this native DNA, right?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Coming from Mexico, because as the data sets get updated and expanded, they started differentiating which indigenous groups, you know, by region.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so their region was all coming back from Mexico.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was really jumping on that.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: I saw that as a perfect opportunity to dispel myths, to correct history, and to like have these open conversations about it.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: But then this whole there's no such thing as native DNA came out.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: Conveniently.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Conveniently.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so it really hindered what I was trying to do because all of a sudden they had this reply to where like, oh well, I read that it's there's really no such thing as native DNA.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: So this is all just like reading your palm or tea leaves.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like fantasy made up stuff.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I don't think it is.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they've actually caught murderers uh based on DNA evidence.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: So there's something there.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: But this saying that there's no such thing as native DNA gave them this out.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, God damn it, I wish that people would stop repeating that because it's but is that still not a thing, though?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's bigger, I think, because again, everybody fears this DNA stuff.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think, like you just pointed out, uh, Mexicans or Latinos don't want to be told they're indigenous, but some of the northern tribes don't want to be told they're not.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: So everybody's trying to lose whatever argument they can to say like we're all just one big happy human family, right?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: And now we have uh pretendians, whatever color they are, also saying there's no such thing as native DNA and that there was a uh African population here.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like that lots of people are using that saying now.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Jeez.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever came up with that, you are a complete moron.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I was gonna say, you guys, so I was the same as a lot of Mexicans where my mom taught me not to like Chicanos and my first sort of conversation.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: My first confrontation was with Dr.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: Sintley, right?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's my friend at EW Madison and his wife Patricia.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and uh we had these conversations.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: We had these conversations all the time, and and he kept trying to bring me into some of his uh work and and figure out why I didn't like Chicanos, but you guys convinced me, I'm like, I'm I'm Chicano.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um but the the reason was because of this this idea of authentic ind indigeneity in Mexico or the United States, and I you guys really convinced me that displaced or not, we we're still here.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like we didn't come from no place else.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so that goes to the broader conversation of who's indigenous.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like in Africa, obviously they're indigenous, right?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: Regardless if they have French or German admixture, they're still indigenous, right?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times um they after they kicked out the colonists, they don't say they're indigenous because they feel like it's primitive, right?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: Or they can't get a bank loan from Europe if they say they're indigenous, right?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's all these reasons, but they're obviously indigenous.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: They're from Africa, they ain't come from nowhere else.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: The same thing with the Irish.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: The Irish genetically are not like the rest of the British Isles.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: They're indigenous.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: They lost their language, they lost most of their traditions, they're all Christianized, they're Catholic, right?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: But nobody would argue that they're indigenous, they're indigenous.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: So there's lots of ways to be indigenous, but in with this American narrative that you have to be federally recognized, that you have to have a reservation, blah, blah, blah, this and that.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um card.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but they don't even fit their own definition.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you were displaced from uh Georgia to Oklahoma and you're supposed to be tied to the land, how are you tied to the land when you got displaced to another state?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: So you brought up earlier uh Picuris.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so that's here in New Mexico, and I was wondering if you could uh elucidate uh on that a little bit.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so again, you guys can help me out.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: Again, these things are perspective and definitional, right?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: So when Kenny Wickman, the ancient one, was being disputed, right?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think most of us believed he was related to those people, right?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: But and it should have not been a contest because NAGPRA says if it's found on a reservation or federal land, it belongs to the tribes.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: But because of these white researchers, they're like, well, no, maybe you know it's old enough where it's not an actual native priest.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so then it was in court for 15 years.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: The skeleton was stored at the Burke Museum at the UW, and it wasn't until this hero, S.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: Key Village Slabs, says, I will help you and I will do genetic testing on it.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so those five tribes let him do it.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: And indeed, that skeleton was related to those five tribes and related to us.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you go back and look at the data, that skeleton is more related to us than it is to like tribes in Montana or South Dakota.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a big win.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: They got the skeleton back.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: But guess where the data is?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: The data is in England.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: So the tribes didn't get the data back.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: So it's still being used.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: So this guy is considered a hero.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I fight with some of those people in Washington State.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, don't say bad things about Eskey Village Lamb, he's a hero.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, if you go to YouTube and you see his video and the bad things he says about indigenous people, he is not your hero.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: He made it, he made a recreation of that whole story and made himself look good by talking bad about natives.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like he's not a hero.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, next he's with the Picuris, right?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: And they ostensibly are protecting uh uh um manifesting indigenous data sovereignty, but that data is also in England.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: And what was that data used for, the Picuris?
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: So the problem that that so there were two articles, one with some indigenous scientists that were for it, and then some indigenous scientists were against it.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: So me and my Hawaiian brother Caleb Fox were like, this is not a good thing.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: This is not a good thing, he is not a hero.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: So the Picuris wanted to fight the Navajo for the Chaco Canyon, right?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there are some Pueblo tribes that are on that council to decide what happens with Chaco Canyon.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: I thought there was also some Mexican tribes, I don't know, that that they kind of group government.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's not, unfortunately.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: There should be.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there should be.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, the Picotes were left out, and they want to be on the on the council or whatever it is, the board.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: So Eskey said he could help them.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: And we're like, that's not how that works.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like federal law and tribal sovereignty and all those other things, there's other ways to get on that board if they felt like they had a uh a say-so in Chaco Canyon.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Well, I can help you because I can prove you're related to those skeletons.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: So he took these questionable skeletons that were held at a museum and the data and compared it to modern living people.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he indeed showed a relationship, a genetic relationship with epiquities and these skeletons.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, those that other data and skeletons were probably taken unethically, right?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't think he described that to the tribes.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: Then the second part is the data is not there.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they say we get to decide how the data is used, who gets to look at it, blah, blah, blah.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: But it's in England.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: And then the last thing is he is pitting a relative against a relative, the Picotese against the Chaco Canyon, in a thing where I don't think they can win.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: Not with that kind of data.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: But going back to like the so you guys are really good, I think, at trying to create unity, right?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: And and uh just for the record, just for the just for the record, we were talking about uh how to be indigenous, the Gerafuna are indigenous, the Kalanago are indigenous, the Mesquita are indigenous, and they're they have African ancestry.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody would nobody would fight that.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to find ways to come together.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: So putting this fight between the Picotis and the Navos not the way, because guess what?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: The in at some point in Chaco Canyon, the Y haplotype from the Pure Pecha all the way from Mitchell Khan shows up in Chaco Canyon.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: Because of that fact, do you think they're gonna let any Pure Pecha have any say so?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: They should have Chaco Canyon, no, right?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: And we can beef all day with them.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: We have to find a different way to find uh a commonality to say we are all in the Southwest, northern Mexico, we are all inheritors of Chaco Canyon.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's what they that's what native biodata is trying to do.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's like we we aren't enemies of each other right now at this moment in time when they're trying to extract all this information from all of us, that we have to get together on these things.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like Kinawa still beefing with the pure pechas.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: That would make zero sense, right?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: But but here in the US.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Makes sense because if you're competing for recognition from the federal government, if you're competing for resources for money, and when you have companies coming in and making these big grandiose promises to various tribes, if you help us do this thing, you know, we'll give you you know, for eggs, we'll give you why, right?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if in the process of us giving you the why for that eggs, that means we're going to trample on tribe Z, then so be it, because historically speaking, well, yeah, there are enemies and we're not the same people, even though we were supposed to have moved on beyond tribal uh uh animosities, uh, you know, and become, you know, pan-tribal, uh, you know, um, and and fighting the same colonization, right?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: But that still is is I mean, if even within Native American tribes that are fairly recognized, there's that kind of animosity.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of prospect do we have as Chicanos and others who are indigenous but are not recognized by this government, right?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like there's this tier system that is in taking place, and even among the top quote-unquote tier of the native tribes that are recognized, there's all this infighting.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and in fact, I mean, clearly, I don't we don't have to get into this now, but like recently during uh our visit, uh, you mentioned that there's even uh certain pueblos that are disenrolling members, right?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like like yeah, that's an active thing that's going on, not just with the public, it's happening throughout Indian country.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of people who are being disenrolled because of resources, right?
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is an ongoing thing.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know like where the commonality that we have that we share as indigenous people is finally going to set the precedent so that we do become a unified front against all these things that are uh that the colonizers have put in place to divide us and conquer us.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's still going on to this day from the very beginning with the Mexica and and the various uh alliances that the the people who were against the Mexica made with the the Spanish to defeat them.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: And since that point forward, it's always been divide and conquer, divide and conquer, and it still continues to this day.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: My answer, my answer would be how would Chicano stand a chance?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's because we are in the NS Moschingon, that's why.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: David, David, David Reich and Asky Vellers Lab also wrote two papers the same summer that basically said uh with the advent of corn in Mexico 4,500 years ago, our blood spread north and south.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we are part of Inca, we are part of the Amazon, we are part of North America, uh, both the United States and Canada.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can do a genetic test and find people in Canada that are related to Mexicans because of the explosion of corn as a technology.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's our blood.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it is.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: So that was another thing.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: So, like all of these researchers, the Dr.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: Raf and a bunch of other ones, they knew a long time ago, back in 2006, that we not only had uh Denisovan and Neanderthal in us um before Columbus, uh, but there's two other lineages in the Americas that aren't described anywhere else.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: So we we have these ancient hominid lineages also makes us unique for biopharma, right?
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Is that that we have hominids in our bloodline that they're desperately trying to figure out, right?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: And and so I mean you're you're exactly right.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then for the molars, uh you can have uh three cusp molars or um uh four rooted molars.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's also a Neanderthal trait.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I found out again because of this corn expansion thing, that there's a bunch of Mexican indigenous people who don't have any wisdom teeth.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: Fascinating.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's weird.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, we could probably talk forever, but we should probably uh uh wrap this up.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh are you well, first, thank you for joining us.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: Are you on any of the socials?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like if if people wanted to get a hold of you and find out more about your research, how would they go about doing that?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we have uh native bio.org.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's our website.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: We also have uh something called d4itdr.org.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the NIH gave us$12 million, which became$9 million, and then they took it away, so we lost six million dollars under this administration.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: The idea was that we would create the first national tribal data repository to finally put a lot of these issues to bed.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: So that was under Biden.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: They were trying to do the right thing.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Trump took that money away, so we started to build it.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: We still have the website.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh my, you just look up my name, I'm on Blue Sky, LinkedIn.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um whatchamacallit, Substack.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we we did this in a good way, in that good way.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: We created a lot of good medicine with these hard truths.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: But you know what they say about medicine?
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't always taste good, but it's always good for you.