Native Americans zero in on bioengineering schemes
Ron Selden, Indian Country Today, Rapid City, S.D.
Saturday, September 30, 2000

Native American beliefs hold that all life is sacred and should not be tampered with. That's why Native activists from around the nation are taking aim at bioengineering projects that clone animals, create new plant species, and splinter human genes into their tiniest fragments.

What's especially galling to tribal high-tech opponents is that most of the research is done for profit, often at the expense of indigenous peoples and their traditional ways.

"Anything that's living can now be owned," maintains Judy Gobert, chairwoman of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism based on Nevada's Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation.

Gobert, dean of Salish Kootenai College's math and sciences program on Montana's Flathead Reservation and chairwoman of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, says biotech companies, backed up by the federal government, know no boundaries when it comes to studying Native American peoples.

"It's becoming a little more twisted as it goes along," Gobert told a recent national gathering of Indian health leaders in Billings. "They want your genes. They want the things that make us up as human beings."

Researchers have long been intrigued about the migration of peoples across the former land bridge between the Aleutian Islands and Russia. Studies of northern-tier peoples have been going on for decades, but Gobert says the new twist is that DNA samples are now being used to determine who may have come from whom and where. DNA is short for deoxyribose nucleic acid, the codebook for genetic origin.

While some of the research has undeniable value, Gobert says tissue, blood, hair and other samples are often obtained without the informed consent of donors, who may have unknowingly contributed the samples through routine medical exams or through other sources who didn't reveal the material might be sold to third parties.

Gobert, a former acquired immune deficiency syndrome researcher, says she discovered a few years ago that her own blood was used for an Indian Health Service AIDS study without her direct consent. When she questioned federal officials about the matter, she was told the study was "in the national interest," so specific permission was not needed.

"It's very insidious," she says. "They're treating us like we're stupid Indians again. There are secondary uses going on all over the place."

Gobert said at least 300 Indian tribes have been targeted for study by the National Institutes of Health, other government agencies and private biotech firms. She maintains most tribes, already suffering shortfalls in basic health care services, will see no benefits from the studies.

"They want to know why our hair is brown and why our eyes are black," she says. "They're looking for the differences between us, but it's based on faulty science."

One high-profile battle over DNA research involves the so-called "Kennewick Man," a 9,300-year-old skeleton found in 1996 along the Columbia River in Washington state. Scientists, including two from the Smithsonian Institution, want to determine the skeleton's genetic origin.

Umatilla Indians contend the bones should be reburied immediately, without further study. Researchers sued, arguing that there's no proof the skeletal remains are related to the tribe. The issue remains in court.

Researchers also have special interest in Native peoples because some groups have unusual immunity or propensity for various diseases, and scientists want to figure out why. But Gobert says the biotech field has become so commodity driven that Indian genetic samples are now available over the Internet for as little as $209. Patents on plant, animal, and genetic material can be obtained by nearly anyone, and few ethical guidelines are in place to ensure that basic human rights are not violated, she says.

"It's sexy science," she says. "They can get a lot of money for it. There's big money behind this, and that's what it's all about."

"This is colonialism, just like land patents" that opened up reservation lands to non-Indian settlers, adds Brett Lee Shelton, an attorney who directs the council's policy and research program.

"Now they want to breach the boundaries of your own bodies."

Also stirring up "biopiracy" opponents is creation of new plants and alteration of plants and animals through genetic engineering. Transgenics, which breaks down natural borders by crossing species that would not normally interbreed, has resulted in scientists injecting "fish genes into tomatoes, petunia flower genes into soybeans, bacteria genes into corn, cow growth hormones into chickens, and human genes into tobacco, kiwi fruit, mice and sheep," reports one of the group's publications.

"It's hard to keep track of it all," Shelton says, adding it is a violation of Native American values to dice up cells, manipulate natural systems and artificially suspend life in test tubes and freezers.

While genetic engineering has produced new strains of food crops that are at least temporarily resistant to various pests and diseases, activists also worry about potential unintended consequences, such as unleashing new biological materials that could wipe out native plant and animal species.

Another aspect of the biotech battle, Gobert and Shelton say, is the effort by some pharmaceutical companies to surreptitiously obtain information about plants and herbs used traditionally by Native peoples for food and medicines. Once the companies get the details through "bio-prospecting," some try to patent their uses.

"Then they get the copyright and they own our knowledge," Shelton says.

Gobert said the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have already banned non-Indian outsiders from collecting medicinal plants within their reservation. The tribes in 1998 also approved a resolution condemning the federally financed Human Genome Diversity Project, as well as other "unethical genetic research on Indigenous peoples."

The diversity project has drawn particularly heavy fire from Indian leaders, who say minorities are a central part of the study to determine how genetic makeups are distributed.

"Expressing a sense of urgency, the HGD Project proposes to collect the DNA samples of Indigenous peoples and store the collections in gene banks in order to 'avoid the irreversible loss of precious genetic information,'" the council says. "Referring to Indigenous populations as 'isolates of historical interest,' the HGD Project plans to immortalize the DNA of disappearing populations for future study."

Opponents say this attitude diminishes Native peoples to "mere research subjects, with little regard for the continued livelihood of the targeted population."

Gobert and Shelton say some biotech companies have become so desperate to continue research projects their representatives approach Indian school children in California and offer them $100 for a single blood sample. Other targets, Shelton says, are indigent Indians who live in urban areas, especially those "who are down on their luck."

"This is something that's going on very quietly. They're not going to tell you exactly what's going on."

Activists say it's important for tribal governments to band together and fight attempts to alter the natural world. They say tribes also need to prod the federal government into exercising its trust responsibility to protect Indians from this latest round of theft.

"In former times, our ancestors fought their battles on land and in courtrooms," the council says. "Today, some of the battles have moved to scientific laboratories and patent offices. Our weapons are awareness, knowledge, and choices, rather than arrows, guns and treaties."

"It's greed and racism fueling this thing," adds Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council member Kevin Howlett. "People need to know the potential for disaster is there.".