Refusing epigenetics: indigeneity and the colonial politics of trauma.
Colonisation
Epigenetic trauma
Indigeneity
Intergenerational trauma
Postgenomics
Refusal
Journal
History and philosophy of the life sciences
ISSN: 1742-6316
Titre abrégé: Hist Philos Life Sci
Pays: Switzerland
ID NLM: 8003052
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
18 Dec 2023
18 Dec 2023
Historique:
received:
31
01
2023
accepted:
18
10
2023
medline:
19
12
2023
pubmed:
19
12
2023
entrez:
19
12
2023
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Environmental epigenetics is increasingly employed to understand the health outcomes of communities who have experienced historical trauma and structural violence. Epigenetics provides a way to think about traumatic events and sustained deprivation as biological "exposures" that contribute to ill-health across generations. In Australia, some Indigenous researchers and clinicians are embracing epigenetic science as a framework for theorising the slow violence of colonialism as it plays out in intergenerational legacies of trauma and illness. However, there is dispute, contention, and caution as well as enthusiasm among these research communities.In this article, we trace strategies of "refusal" (Simpson, 2014) in response to epigenetics in Indigenous contexts. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Australia with researchers and clinicians in Indigenous health, we explore how some construct epigenetics as useless knowledge and a distraction from implementing anti-colonial change, rather than a tool with which to enact change. Secondly, we explore how epigenetics narrows definitions of colonial harm through the optic of molecular trauma, reproducing conditions in which Indigenous people are made intelligible through a lens of "damaged" bodies. Faced with these two concerns, many turn away from epigenetics altogether, refusing its novelty and supposed benefit for Indigenous health equity and resisting the pull of postgenomics.
Identifiants
pubmed: 38110801
doi: 10.1007/s40656-023-00596-1
pii: 10.1007/s40656-023-00596-1
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
1Subventions
Organisme : Australian Research Council
ID : DP190102071
Informations de copyright
© 2023. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Références
Aguiar, W., & Halseth, R. (2015). Aboriginal peoples and historical trauma: The processes of intergenerational transmission. National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health.
Arabena, K., Panozzo, S., & Ritte, R. (2016). What hope can look like: The first 1000 days – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families. Developing Practice:The Child Youth and Family Work Journal, 44, 25–36.
Arabena, K., Holland, C., & Penny, L. (2020). Connecting to country: An Australian indigenous metagenomics strategy, environmental scan and research gap report. Karabena Consulting.
Atkinson, J. (2002). Trauma trails, recreating song lines: The transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia. Spinifex Press.
Australian Medical Association (2013). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). (2019). Children living in households with members of the stolen generations, Cat. No. IHW 214. AIHW.
Australian Medical Association (2013). Report Card 2012–2013 The healthy early years – Getting the right start in life. https://www.ama.com.au/system/tdf/documents/AMA_Indigenous_Health_Report_Card_2012_2013.pdf?file%C2%BC1type%C2%BCnodeid%C2%BC35458 .
Balaton-Chrimes, S., & Stead, V. (2017). Recognition, power and coloniality. Postcolonial Studies, 20(1), 1–17.
doi: 10.1080/13688790.2017.1355875
Benezra, A. (2020). Race in the microbiome. Science Technology & Human Values, 45(5), 877–902.
doi: 10.1177/0162243920911998
Blackman, L. (2016). The challenges of new bio psycho socialities: Hearing voices, trauma, epigenetics and mediated perception. The Sociological Review Monographs, 64(1), 256–273.
doi: 10.1002/2059-7932.12024
Bombay, A. (2019). Indigenous knowledge and epigenetics. [PowerPoint slides].
Bombay, A., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2014). The intergenerational effects of Indian residential schools: Implications for the concept of historical trauma. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 320–338.
doi: 10.1177/1363461513503380
Boulton, J., & Taylor, R. (2018). Hidden in plain sight: The burden of trauma and oppression in Aboriginal Australia. Paper presented at the Australian Association of Asian Studies conference on Trauma in History. July 6, 2018.
Brown, A. (2020, March 2). Overcoming health inequalities experienced by Aboriginal Australians: Is there light at the end of the tunnel? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46NV4q0q_Ss .
Cerdeña, J. P., Rivera, L. M., & Spak, J. M. (2021). Intergenerational trauma in Latinxs: A scoping review. Social Science & Medicine, 270, 1–22.
doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113662
Chiapperino, L., & Panese, F. (2018). Gendered imaginaries: Situating knowledge of epigenetic programming of health. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(7), 1233–1249.
doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12779
Conching, A. K. S., & Thayer, Z. (2019). Biological pathways for historical trauma to affect health: A conceptual model focusing on epigenetic modifications. Social Science & Medicine, 230, 74–82.
doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.04.001
Coulthard, G. (2014). Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. University of Minnesota Press.
De Maio, J. A., Zubrick, S. R., Silburn, S. R., Lawrence, D. M., Mitrou, F. G., Dalby, R. B., Blair, E. M., Griffin, J., Milroy, H., & Cox, A. (2005). The Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey: Measuring the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children and intergenerational effects of forced separation. Curtin University of Technology and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. https://www.telethonkids.org.au/globalassets/media/documents/aboriginal-health/measuring_social_and_emotional_wellbeing.pdf
Dubois, M., & Guaspare, C. (2020). From cellular memory to the memory of trauma: Social epigenetics and its public circulation. Social Science Information, 59(1), 144–183.
doi: 10.1177/0539018419897600
Dudgeon, P., Bray, A., Smallwood, G., Walker, R., & Dalton, T. (2020). Wellbeing and healing through connection and culture. Lifeline. https://www.lifeline.org.au/media/xw1hognd/full-report-final-wellbeing-and-healing-through-connection-and-culture-2020-1.pdf .
Fassin, D., & Rechtman, R. (2009). The empire of trauma: An inquiry into the condition of victimhood. Princeton University Press.
Fortun, M. (2008). Promising genomics: Iceland and deCODE genetics in a world of speculation. University of California Press.
Gone, J. P., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2020). Advancing indigenous mental health research: Ethical, conceptual and methodological challenges. Transcultural Psychiatry, 57(2), 235–249.
doi: 10.1177/1363461520923151
Grossi, É. (2020). New avenues in epigenetic research about race: Online activism around reparations for slavery in the United States. Social Science Information, 59(1), 93–116.
doi: 10.1177/0539018419899336
Healing Foundation (2018, July 26). Intergenerational trauma animation. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqx8EYvRbQ .
Jobin, S. (2016). Indigenous studies, determining itself. Native Studies Review 23(1–2), 91–122.
Kenney, M., & Müller, R. (2017). Of rats and women: Narratives of motherhood in environmental epigenetics. BioSocieties 12(1), 23– 46.
Kim, A. W. (2020, July 16). How should we study intergenerational trauma? Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2020/intergenerational-trauma-birth-cohort-study-south-africa.html/ .
Kirmayer, L. J., Gone, J. P., & Moses, J. (2014). Rethinking historical trauma. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 299–319.
doi: 10.1177/1363461514536358
Kolopenuk, J. (2020). Miskâsowin: Indigenous science, technology, and society. Genealogy, 4(1), 21.
doi: 10.3390/genealogy4010021
Kowal, E., & Paradies, Y. (2017). Indigeneity and the refusal of whiteness. Postcolonial Studies, 20(1), 101–117.
doi: 10.1080/13688790.2017.1334287
Kulunga Research Network. (2008). Submission to the Senate Committee inquiry into the Stolen Generation Compensation Bill 2008. Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.
Kymlicka, W. (2007). Multicultural odysseys: Navigating the new international politics of diversity. Oxford University Press.
Lappé, M. (2018). The paradox of care in behavioral epigenetics: Constructing early-life adversity in the lab. BioSocieties, 13(4), 698–714.
doi: 10.1057/s41292-017-0090-z
Lappé, M., & Jeffries, Hein R. (2021). You are what your mother endured: Intergenerational epigenetics, early caregiving, and the temporal embedding of adversity. Medical anthropology Quarterly, 35(4), 458–475.
Lea, T. (2020). Decolonizing trauma theory by way of housing disrepair: The case of Santa Teresa, Australia. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 87(3), 735–761.
doi: 10.1353/sor.2020.0060
Lock, M. (2015). Comprehending the body in the era of the epigenome. Current Anthropology, 56(2), 151–177.
doi: 10.1086/680350
Mansfield, B. (2012). Race and the new epigenetic biopolitics of environmental health. BioSocieties 7(4), 352–72.
Mansfield, B. (2017). Folded futurity: Epigenetic plasticity, temporality, and new thresholds of fetal life. Science as Culture, 26(3), 355–379.
doi: 10.1080/09505431.2017.1294575
Meloni, M. (2017). Race in an epigenetic time: Thinking biology in the plural. The British Journal of Sociology, 68(3), 389–409.
doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12248
Meloni, M. (2019). Impressionable biologies: From the archaeology of plasticity to the sociology of epigenetics. Routledge.
Meloni, M., & Testa, G. (2014). Scrutinizing the epigenetics revolution. Biosocieties, 9(4), 431–456.
Müller, R., & Kenney, M. (2021). A science of hope? Tracing emergent entanglements between the biology of early life adversity, trauma-informed care, and restorative justice. Science Technology & Human Values, 46(6), 1230–1260.
doi: 10.1177/0162243920974095
Murphy, M. (2017). Alterlife and decolonial chemical relations. Cultural Anthropology, 32(4), 494–503.
doi: 10.14506/ca32.4.02
Murray, K. B. (2018). Epigenetics and politics in the colonial present. The Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie, 43(4), 349–388.
National Centre to Close the Gap (February 19, 2014). Australian National University newsroom (website). https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/national-centre-to-close-the-gap .
National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) (2013). NACCHO Aboriginal health news: AMA Aboriginal health report 2012–2013. https://nacchocommunique.com/2013/12/11/naccho-aboriginal-health-news-media-coverage-and-download-ama-aboriginal-health-report-2012-2013/ .
Nerlich, B., Stelmach, A., & Ennis, C. (2020). How to do things with epigenetics: An investigation into the use of metaphors to promote alternative approaches to health and social science, and their implications for interdisciplinary collaboration. Social Science Information, 59(1), 59–92.
doi: 10.1177/0539018419887110
Nieves Delgado, A., & Baedke, J. (2021). Does the human microbiome tell us something about race? Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1–12.
doi: 10.1057/s41599-021-00772-3
Niezen, R. (2003). The origins of indigenism: Human rights and the politics of identity. University of California Press.
Patel, R. A., & Nagata, D. K. (2021). Historical trauma and descendants’ well-being. AMA Journal of Ethics, 23(6), 487–493.
doi: 10.1001/amajethics.2021.487
Pentecost, M. (2021). The politics of trauma: Gender, futurity, and violence prevention in South Africa. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 35(4), 441–457.
doi: 10.1111/maq.12678
Poroch, N., Arabena, K., Tongs, J., Larkin, S., Fisher, J., & Henderson, G. (2009). Spirituality and Aboriginal peoples social and emotional wellbeing: A review. Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. https://www.winnunga.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Spirituality-Review-2009.pdf .
Povinelli, E. (2002). The cunning of recognition. Duke University Press.
Rapp, R. (2018). Epigenetics at work. BioSocieties 13(4), 780–786.
Richardson, S. S. (2021). The maternal imprint: The contested science of maternal-fetal effects. University of Chicago Press.
Richardson, S. S., Daniels, C. R., Gillman, M. W., Golden, J., Kukla, R., Kuzawa, C. W., & Rich-Edwards, J. (2014). Don’t blame the mothers. Nature, 512, 131–132.
doi: 10.1038/512131a
Roberts, E. F. S. (2021). Commentary: Causal enclosures—over and over. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 35(4), 547–552.
doi: 10.1111/maq.12691
Saldaña-Tejeda, A., & Wade, P. (2019). Eugenics, epigenetics, and obesity predisposition among Mexican Mestizos. Medical Anthropology, 38(8), 664–679.
doi: 10.1080/01459740.2019.1589466
Sangaramoorthy, T., & Kroeger, K. A. (2020). Rapid ethnographic assessments: A practical approach and toolkit for collaborative community research. Routledge.
Sharpe, C. (2016). In the wake: On blackness and being. Duke University Press.
Silburn, S. R., Zubrick, S. R., Lawrence, D. M., Mitrou, F. G., De Maio, J. A., Blair, E. M., Cox, A., Dalby, R. B., Griffin, J., Pearson, G., & Hayward, C. (2006). The intergenerational effects of forced separation on the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children and young people. Family Matters, 75, 10–17. https://aifs.gov.au/sites/default/files/ss(2).pdf .
Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of settler states. Duke University Press.
Simpson, A. (2017). The ruse of consent and the anatomy of ‘refusal’: Cases from indigenous North America and Australia. Postcolonial Studies, 20(1), 18–33.
doi: 10.1080/13688790.2017.1334283
Singh, G., Morrison, J., & Hoy, W. (2019). DOHaD in indigenous populations: DOHaD, epigenetics, equity and race. Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, 10(1), 63–64.
doi: 10.1017/S2040174419000023
South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (2016, Aug 1). New research to improve the health of Aboriginal mothers and babies. Sahmri. Retrieved January 22, 2022, from https://sahmri.org.au/news/new-research-to-improve-the-health-of-aboriginal-mothers-and-babies .
Squier, S. (2017). Epigenetic landscapes: Drawing as metaphor. Duke University Press.
TallBear, K. (2013). Native American DNA: Tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. University of Minnesota Press.
Thunderbird Partnership Foundation. (2019) Indigenous knowledge and epigenetics. [PowerPoint Slides]. Presented at Assembly of First Nations Wellness Forum 2019. https://www.afn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Indigenous-Knowledge-Epigenetics.pdf .
Tolwinski, K. (2019). Fraught claims at the intersection of biology and sociality: Managing controversy in the neuroscience of poverty and adversity. Social Studies of Science, 49(2), 141–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312719839149 .
doi: 10.1177/0306312719839149
Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–428.
doi: 10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15
Valdez, N. (2018). The redistribution of reproductive responsibility: On the epigenetics of environment in prenatal interventions. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 32(3), 425–442.
doi: 10.1111/maq.12424
Valdez, N. (2021). Weighing the future: Race, science, and pregnancy trials in the postgenomic era. University of California Press.
Walter, M., & Carroll, S. R. (2020). Indigenous data sovereignty, governance and the link to indigenous policy. In M. Walter, T. Kukutai, S. R. Carroll, & D. Rodriguez-Lonebear (Eds.), Indigenous data sovereignty and policy. Routledge.
Warin, M., Moore, V., Zivkovic, T., & Davies, M. (2011). Telescoping the origins of obesity to women’s bodies: How gender inequalities are being squeezed out of Barker’s hypothesis. Annals of Human Biology, 38(4), 453–460.
Warin, M., Kowal, E., & Meloni, M. (2020). Indigenous knowledge in a postgenomic landscape: The politics of epigenetic hope and reparation in Australia. Science Technology & Human Values, 45(1), 87–111.
doi: 10.1177/0162243919831077
Warin, M., Keaney, J., Kowal, E., & Byrne, H. (2022). Circuits of time: Enacting postgenomics in indigenous Australia. Body & Society, 29(2), 20–48.
doi: 10.1177/1357034X211070041
Watego, C. (2021). Twitter post, 29 July, https://twitter.com/drcwatego/status/1420491444813402112 .
Wirihana, R., & Smith, C. (2014). Historical trauma, healing and well-being in Māori communities. MAI Journal, 3(3), 197–210.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409.
doi: 10.1080/14623520601056240
Yates-Doerr, E. (2011). Bodily betrayal: Love and anger in the time of epigenetics. In F. Mascia-Lees (Ed.), A companion to the anthropology of the body and embodiment (pp. 292–306). Wiley.
Yehuda, R., Lehrner, A., & Bierer, L. M. (2018). The public reception of putative epigenetic mechanisms in the transgenerational effects of trauma. Environmental Epigenetics, 4(2).
Young, A. (1997). The harmony of illusions: Inventing post-traumatic stress disorder. Princeton University Press.
Zubrick, S. R., Silburn, S. R., Lawrence, D. M., Mitrou, F. G., Dalby, R. B., Blair, E. M., Griffin, J., Milroy, H., De Maio, J. A., Cox, A., & Li, J. (2005). The Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey: The social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children and young people. Curtin University of Technology and Telethon. https://api.research-repository.uwa.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/10057115/WAACHSVolume2.pdf . Institute for Child Health Research.