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Throughout her academic career, Kim TallBear has worked to bring down barriers in scientific research for Indigenous peoples. But changing long-held beliefs and developing new, more inclusive approaches to the sciences is no easy task.

“Too many Indigenous scientists have been raised with the idea that science is separate from their Indigenous culture. And in fact, it doesn’t have to be that way at all,” she says.

“We really need to counteract this idea that our Indigenous and all science students get in mainstream science, which is that [science] somehow lies outside of the world of politics and culture. It does not. It’s deeply entangled with societal norms and priorities.”

As a professor in the Faculty of Native Studies and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Society, TallBear is deeply aware of the power scientific knowledge holds. But she also sees opportunities to make it more inclusive and respectful of Indigenous values.

“I’m not a scientist myself. I am a social scientist who thinks a lot about the power of science — both the power of science to do good and the power it’s had to do bad in our communities,” she explains. 

Even traditional definitions of what has been considered knowledge and western science have led to harm for Indigenous communities, TallBear explains. She points to past portrayals of Indigenous peoples as “backwards, irrational, illogical, spiritual” instead of “scientific” and knowledgeable as being particularly problematic, having been used as justifications for Indigenous dispossession.

“These pronouncements made by the sciences and other disciplines helped justify colonialism, land theft, the theft of our children,” she explains.

To ensure future scientific research is beneficial to Indigenous communities and is not exploitative of the land or people involved in the research, TallBear has been working to increase Indigenous capacity in scientific fields. She sees it as an opportunity to build Indigenous sovereignty and reclaim some of what has been lost through colonization, while also furthering scientific understanding.

“Having Indigenous scientists who really are connected to the community, they ‘get’ all of this,” she says. 

“A good Indigenous scientist doesn’t only have expert scientific training. They’re working in relationship to community goals and priorities. They have expert knowledge about how to act in community and how to relate well with the community. “

One of the ways TallBear has worked to increase Indigenous representation was through the Summer Internship for Indigenous Peoples in Genomics (SING) Canada program. She co-founded the program based on a similar initiative that has been operating in the United States since 2011. 

The SING Canada program involved a one-week intensive workshop designed to introduce Indigenous students to the study of genomes — the complete set of genes or DNA found in a cell. The field, she explains, is of critical importance to many Indigenous communities, as data collected through genomic research — and in fact, all scientific research — is an important resource to be protected.

“[Indigenous communities] want control of their data because they know that having data helps them maintain and get returned control of their governance authorities and their lands,” says TallBear. “So they’re doing science to support their governance, but they’re being protective sometimes because the settler state has taken everything.”

The next generation of scientists

As TallBear explains, the SING program helped students conduct mainstream scientific research while incorporating traditional knowledge and ethical research practices that respect the values and priorities of the communities involved in the research. For many Indigenous students, it helped to bridge the gap between western science and Indigenous values — a divide that is sometimes seemingly impassible when students are instructed to stay objective and distanced from their work.

“What we’ve heard from a lot of young Indigenous students is, they’ll go into a big biology lecture or a lab on campus and feel very uncomfortable and feel like, ‘Why am I doing this? What does this have to do with my people and serving my people?,’” she says. “We help them make those links.”

By encouraging Indigenous students to enter the field of genomics, TallBear hopes SING Canada laid the foundation for future research with Indigenous communities that is ethical, inclusive and respectful of Indigenous values. 

TallBear notes that past participants from the Canadian program have since gone on to work in careers in bioethics or become advocates for ethical research practices.

“So you’re seeing these small-scale, personal individual changes and eyes opening, and you’re also seeing these people then moving along in their careers and making interventions on federal policy levels,” she says.

Ultimately, SING Canada was just one of many efforts to diversify the sciences by broadening the perspectives held by researchers. It’s what TallBear refers to as ‘rainbowing up the laboratory.’

“We need people coming out of diverse cultures and with diverse bodies and life experiences, because they’re going to ask a more diverse array of questions. They’re going to think about methodological complications that a typical white, male, non-religious scientist might not otherwise think of,” she says. 

“We’ve got people whose subjectivity has been produced by this idea that you can be disembodied, that you can be completely neutral, that you can stand outside of the society in which you’re asking these questions — and frankly, that’s just not the case.”