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Article
Indigenous Knowledge
in a Postgenomic
Landscape: The
Politics of Epigenetic
Hope and Reparation
in Australia
Megan Warin
1,2,3
, Emma Kowal
4
and Maurizio Meloni
4
Abstract
A history of colonization inflicts psychological, physical, and structural
disadvantages that endure across generations. For an increasing number of
Indigenous Australians, environmental epigenetics offers an important
explanatory framework that links the social past with the biological present,
providing a culturally relevant way of understanding the various inter-
generational effects of historical trauma. In this paper, we critically examine
the strategic uptake of environmental epigenetics by Indigenous researchers
1
School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
2
Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
3
The Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, University of Adelaide, Adelaide,
South Australia, Australia
4
Alfred Deakin Institute, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia
Corresponding Author:
Megan Warin, School of Social Sciences, Napier Building, University of Adelaide, Adelaide,
South Australia 5005, Australia.
Email: megan.warin@adelaide.edu.au
Science, Technology, & Human Values
1-25
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0162243919831077
journals.sagepub.com/home/sth
and policy advocates. We focus on the relationship between epigenetic
processes and Indigenous views of Country and health—views that locate
health not in individual bodies but within relational contexts of Indigenous
ontologies that embody interconnected environments of kin/animals/matter/
bodies across time and space. This drawing together of Indigenous experi-
ence and epigenetic knowledge has strengthened calls for action including
state-supported calls for financial reparations. We examine the consequences
of this reimagining of disease responsibility in the context of “strategic bio-
logical essentialism,” a distinct form of biopolitics that, in this case, incor-
porates environmental determinism. We conclude that the shaping of the
right to protection from biosocial injury is potentially empowering but also
has the capacity to conceal forms of governance through claimants’ identifi-
cation as “damaged,” thus furthering State justification of biopolitical inter-
vention in Indigenous lives.
Keywords
biopolitical economy of hope, Indigenous Australians, environmental epige-
netics, strategic biological essentialism, biosocial damage
Introduction
It is well-documented that Indigenous peoples around the world have con-
sistently rejected genetic research for ethical, cultural, and political reasons
(Reardon and TallBear 2012; Kowal 2016). Genetic research conducted on
“socially identifiable” populations can reinforce essentialist biological con-
cepts of race (Foster, Bernsten, and Carter 1998; Tsosie 2007), and Indi-
genous populations have raised concerns over issues of consent, cultural
ownership, the use (and abuse) of DNA and other bodily products, and the
many differences between scientific and Indigenous understandings of bod-
ies and kinship (Dodson and Williamson 1999; Reardon 2005; TallBear
2007; Garrison 2013; Hook 2009). In Australia, these concerns occur in a
historical context where Indigenous people have been the focus of biologi-
cal research that supported scientific claims of inferiority, the “doomed
race” theory, and, later, policies of assimilation that removed children of
“mixed” ancestry from their families (Anderson 2002; Human Rights and
Equal Opportunity Commission [HREOC] 1997; McGregor 1997). Due to
this fraught history, Indigenous Australians have, until recently, remained
cautious about genetic and genomic research, and so very limited research
has been conducted in this population (Kowal 2013).
2Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
In sharp contrast to this resistance to genetic research, the recent rise of
epigenetics has been embraced by Indigenous peoples in Australia, New
Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Over the last five to ten years, there
has been a remarkable increase in the use of environmental epigenetics
1
as an
explanatory framework that draws upon the relationship between biological
mechanisms and social lives to understand ongoing intergenerational Indi-
genous disadvantage and ill-health (Kowal 2016; Kowal and Warin 2018).
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (hereafter Indigenous Aus-
tralians) remain the least healthy population group in Australia (Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare 2015), and it is well-documented that rapid
cultural destruction, coupled with decades of slow violence in the form of
government policies and marginalization from mainstream society, is to
blame (Atkinson, Nelson, and Atkinson 2010; Boulton 2016).
This paper argues that the uptake of Indigenous epigenetics in Australia
points to a “political economy of hope” among those that produce and
consume biological knowledge (Rose and Novas 2005; Petersen 2015). In
this variation of Rose and Novas’s concept, biology is no longer a blind
destiny but mutable, improvable, and potentially reversible. Epigenetics
introduces a distinctive pathway to this view of the biological as a hopeful
domain open to environmental and structural intervention and manipula-
tion, a pathway that expands the potential sources and mechanisms of
intervention in Indigenous people’s lives.
We begin our exploration into this particular bioeconomy of hope with a
vignette describing an event where a prominent Indigenous academic used
the concept of epigenetics to frame Aboriginal health in an optimistic light
(in comparison to the negative framing of “deficit discourse,” Fogarty et al.
2018). This framing is paradigmatic of the collective narrative of hope, co-
constituted by Indigenous histories, environmental epigenetics, and health
that we examine in this paper.
Following a description of the study, we broaden the argument by
describing how the molecular embodiment of colonial oppression provides
a biological explanation for the intergenerational transmission of historical
trauma. Moreover, we suggest that epigenetics is an appealing conduit for
this discourse as it reconfigures singular and bounded concepts of the envi-
ronment and personhood toward more dynamic and relational models. For
many Indigenous people, personhood is not located in individuals but
known in relation to other persons, Country, and across time and space.
Epigenetics appears to correspond to Indigenous aspirations, to foster legal
and human rights, and to reflect Indigenous knowledges. Thus, in the con-
text that we write about, dominant (and counterhegemonic) Indigenous
Warin et al. 3
conceptions of personhood align with epigenetics and reinforce each other.
As we explore, epigenetics is used in specific ways in the biopolitical
economy of hope surrounding Indigenous health discourses. The uncer-
tainty of the science, particularly surrounding the reversibility of epigenetic
changes and their transgenerational inheritance, is, however, generally
overlooked. The alignment of epigenetics and Indigenous knowledge is
therefore provisional, dependent on features of human epigenetic change
and inheritance that are not yet clear in the scientific literature.
In the final sections, we question whether the humanitarian usage of
epigenetics to reinforce notions of acquired multigenerational bio-injury
as a platform for political reparations may give rise to new forms of biole-
gitimacy (Fassin 2000, 2009) in which the epigenetic body is used as an
historical testimony of colonial violence.
2
In our argument, we coin the term strategic biological essentialism to
understand the biological turn in the representation of Indigenous rights.
Strategic essentialism, a term attributed to Spivak, describes the process by
which a minority group represents particular qualities as (culturally or
biologically) inherent to the group in order to foster claims for social justice
and rights. A strategically essentialist claim strategically overlooks the fact
that qualities (e.g., connection to land or vulnerability to the state) are not
homogenously shared across groups: qualities are represented as inherent in
what Spivak ([1985] 1996) describes as “a scrupulously visible political
interest” (p. 214).
In the case of Indigenous epigenetics, we point to the limitations of
strategic biological essentialism. Enacting forms of citizenship through
identification with a history of biosocial deprivation may not only lead to
intensified biopolitical attention from the State but also consolidate quasi-
essentialist notions of specific biological difference among certain popula-
tions seen as epigenetically different (e.g., with distinctive methylation
profiles as a result of their prolonged exposures to pathogenic environ-
ments, Mansfield 2012, 2017; Meloni 2016). In conclusion, we argue that
while epigenetics offers a bioeconomy of hope that the effects of settler
colonialism can be recognized and reversed, the conjunction of epigenetics
and Indigenous knowledges may lead to new forms of biolegitimacy that
reproduce essentialisms.
Epigenetics and the Political Economy of Hope
In “The Politics of Life Itself,” N. Rose (2007) suggests that a defining
feature of contemporary power in advanced liberal democracies is
4Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
governance through freedom within a political economy of hope. A polit-
ical economy of hope involves a grassroots and collaborative approach to
the promises of new biomedical technologies such as the molecular links
between environmental factors and chronic disease in epigenetic research.
Such political projects, as Rose and Novas (2005) argue, engender new
forms of biological citizenship and biosociality in which patients and
communities advocate for greater awareness and improved services in
collaboration with medical experts, pharmaceutical companies, and gov-
ernment bodies.
A version of this biopolitics of hope was recently demonstrated by a
plenary speaker at an Australian conference on the developmental origins of
health and disease (DOHaD) and epigenetics. DOHaD is now an interna-
tional field of research that focuses on the epidemiological associations
between maternal health, prenatal, and intrauterine fetal development and
susceptibility to chronic disease in adult life (Warin et al. 2011). Professor
Sandra Eades (2015), a Noongar woman from Mt. Barker, Western Aus-
tralia, medical doctor and eminent health researcher, presented on “life
course and epigenetics.” She warned the predominantly clinical audience
that her presentation was going to be different: “I want to tell you a ram-
bling story of how I make sense of life course and DOHaD and that might
contribute to Indigenous health over time.” She immediately positioned her
Indigeneity alongside DOHaD and epigenetics. “This is a story about his-
tory” she said, “but not my life from birth to death, this is about life course
across many people’s lives—and this fits with the DOHaD story.” Drawing
from numerous federally funded medical studies that she has led and been
involved in as a biomedical researcher, she talked about the problems of
obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases in many Indigenous Austra-
lian communities. She recounted research demonstrating that maternal
stress shortens the telomere length in offspring (telomeres are the “caps”
at the end of chromosomes and their length is associated with aging and
cancer) and how exposures such as smoking or poor nutrition in pregnancy
effects DNA methylation, birth weight of babies, and adult onset disease
across generations.
Eades juxtaposed her discussion of these scientific findings within her
own biography, tracing intergenerational transmission of noncommunicable
diseases by showing photographs of her family members. She couched her
biography in terms of cycles of disease risk that weaved in and out of bodies
over several generations, pointing to positive changes in her mother’s and
her own generation—such as eating simple foods incorporating bush tucker
(traditional foods)—that have reversed biological mechanisms and
Warin et al. 5
produced resilience to ill-health. She concluded by returning to the theme of
the conference: “We really are linked to our past—through mechanisms
such as epigenetics, microbiomes, telomeres & others ... [I’m giving you] a
cyclical view of health across generations and science is catching up with
that spiritual view of health” (Eades 2015). In response to her presentation,
a British Australian geneticist from the audience suggested that
“epigenetics is almost a plausibility [sic] of what Aboriginal people have
known for thousands of years.” In this statement, he privileged Indigenous
knowledges and portrayed Western science as belatedly “catching up,”
inverting the hierarchy that usually organizes and prioritizes data and
knowledge at a scientific meeting.
While the congruence between child development and Indigenous
knowledge has been demonstrated through previous initiatives such as the
Strong Women/Strong Babies/Strong Culture program of the 1990s, (for an
overview of this program, see http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/key-
resources/programs-projects?pid¼357 and Lea 2008) what was striking
about this presentation was not just the positioning of Indigenous knowl-
edges alongside molecular biology but the embodiment of these differing
epistemologies and ontologies through Sandra’s multigenerational biogra-
phy and biology. She spoke to relations of kin and ancestry, of Country, of
time and place, of histories, of loss of land, and of multiple bodies enfolded
through multiple times and spaces. She drew direct reference to these for-
mulations of biography and biology within the political economy of hope
engendered in postgenomic sciences—the hope that the adoption of healthy
lifestyles, improved social determinants such as Indigenous education and
housing, and cultural resilience can have positive, intergenerational biolo-
gical effects.
It was Eades’s use of epigenetics to frame her notion of intergenerational
Indigenous health that led us to further investigate emerging forms of
biopolitics constituted through Indigenous epigenetics. This paper draws
on our experiences of participating in these genetic, epigenetic, and DOHaD
forums (conferences, seminars, workshops); analysis of relevant media,
policy, and reports; and five key informant interviews conducted in 2016
by Warin.
3
Interviewees included Indigenous and non-Indigenous Austra-
lian researchers working directly in Indigenous epigenetics and DOHaD (on
neurodevelopment, pregnancy and nutrition, fetal alcohol syndrome, and
genetics). The focus of these interviews was to explore whether and how
Indigenous and scientific epistemologies intersect within DOHaD and epi-
genetic research. Snowball sampling was used to identify potential partici-
pants across Australia, and informed consent was obtained for
6Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
semistructured interviews that took place in person or via telephone. Two of
the interviewees identified as Indigenous Australians, and all were conduct-
ing research through Australian universities (in collaboration with govern-
ment Departments of Health, Aboriginal Primary Health Care, and
Indigenous Community Health).
Before going further, it is important to note that (as one of our inter-
viewees explained) epigenetics is not a word you will hear “on the ground”
in Indigenous communities; there is as yet, no “everyday of epigenetics”
(Pentecost 2016). Currently, it is predominantly Indigenous academics,
Indigenous Health Organizations, and medical bodies that are advocating
epigenetics as a tool to understand Indigenous health. However, we still
consider it useful to analyze these nascent discourses before they dissemi-
nate further into Indigenous health practice and policy.
The authors of this paper do not identify as Indigenous, and we are
mindful that there are certain cultural and gendered knowledges/practices
that are not appropriate to explore or publish. As a medical anthropologist,
Warin has a decade of experience working in a life-course research group
and more recently with Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers on
urban Indigenous experiences of food and pregnancy in an Australian met-
ropolitan city. Kowal is also a medical/cultural anthropologist and a phy-
sician who has two decades of experience working in Indigenous health
research and has long-standing research expertise in the area of genetics and
Indigenous Australians, and Meloni has international expertise in the his-
torical, ethical, and biopolitical implications of epigenetics.
The Molecular Embodiment of Historical Trauma
In academia and among health activists, constructs of historical trauma have
proliferated in the last two decades, in the context of growing legitimation
of notions of trauma and victimhood (Fassin and Rechtman 2009; Niezen
2013). The concept of historical trauma is often used to “describe the impact
of colonization, cultural suppression, and historical oppression of many
Indigenous peoples” (Kirmayer, Gone, and Moses 2014, 300; Lock
2015). It is widely acknowledged that Indigenous Australians have experi-
enced trauma as a result of colonization, and in many Indigenous families
and communities, the effects of this trauma continue to be passed from
generation to generation (Atkinson, Nelson, and Atkinson 2010).
Within health research (including Indigenous health), historical trauma
has been most clearly embraced by those affiliated with the social determi-
nants of health and explored through the lens of racism (Carson et al. 2007;
Warin et al. 7
Berkman and Kawachi 2000; Kuzawa and Sweet 2009, Krieger 2003; Para-
dies et al. 2015). All of the interviewees recognized these close links
between historical trauma, racism, and poor Indigenous health. One
researcher who has worked in remote and urban Indigenous settings com-
mented: “there is so much trauma going on in present day communities and
Indigenous people have long talked about it being as a result of many past
atrocities and traumatic experiences.”
In the last five to ten years, understandings of the effects of trauma on the
health of Indigenous people in Australia and other First Nation peoples
(in the United States, New Zealand, and Canada) have expanded to incor-
porate epigenetics and epigenetic-inspired models, significantly broadening
the ways in which trauma is embedded in the body. For example, in their
work on historical trauma among Indigenous Americans and Alaskans,
Walters and colleagues (2011) state that “scholars [are now pointing] to
the amassing of evidence at the cellular level that powerful stressful envi-
ronmental conditions can leave an imprint or ‘mark’ on the epigenome
(cellular genetic material) at key development periods, that can be carried
into future generations with devastating consequences” (p. 11).
Recent Australian reports on intergenerational trauma and its effects
have begun to incorporate epigenetics. Boulton (2016), for example, sug-
gests that in Australia, “there is emerging evidence that intergenerational
patterns are in part mediated through epigenetic factors ...in relation to
response to stress ...malnutrition ...central adiposity ...diabetes ...[and]
cardiovascular disease” (p. 3), which must be contextualized within the
historical frame of colonization. The enfolding of structural violence and
trauma into individual and collective bodies is referred to by one Indigenous
Australian scholar, who draws explicitly on US epigeneticist Michael Skin-
ner’s work, as “communal wounds” (Gilbert 2017). The molecular embodi-
ment of historical trauma thus shores up what (as one interviewee said)—
“Aboriginal peoples have known for years” that past injustices are embo-
died collectively and passed on through generations via poor mental and
physical health, addiction, and violence. Epigenetics is therefore, as another
interviewee put it, “consistent with Indigenous knowledge systems.”
At a recent presentation at the Lowitja Institute’s
4
International Indigen-
ous Health and Wellbeing Conference in Melbourne, one of the invited
keynote speakers (Indigenous scholar professor Katrina Walters, a member
of the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation) metaphorically represented historical
trauma as the embodiment of both the breeze that blows over generations
and the water that the ancestors carry in all of their bodies across genera-
tions. Drawing explicitly on DOHaD and epigenetic discourses, she moved
8Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
beyond a static model of bodies to one of epigenetic memories in which
“our bodies, our minds, our spirits are inextricably linked across the flows
of time, space and place” (Walters 2016). Historical trauma, she said, is
“not something innate to our biology but something we accumulate over our
lifetime and over our ancestors’ lifetimes as well” (Walters 2016). Despite
Walters’s claim that trauma is “not innate to our biology,” we consider her
notion of bodies shaped by trauma as a novel form of biopolitics. Once
accumulated in the body, trauma becomes innate to local Indigenous biol-
ogies (Lock 2015), transmitted to future generations.
This accumulation of biosocial injury across generations is now appear-
ing in Indigenous Australian health research and reported in official gov-
ernment documents, with epigenetics cited as further evidence for new
interventions and urgent action. The Australian “First 1000 Days” organi-
zation provides an example. Internationally, the movement promotes opti-
mum nutrition in pregnancy and early childhood to minimize future disease
(UNICEF, n.d.). The Australian First 1000 Days model is Indigenous led
and explicitly embraces concepts of historical trauma, DOHaD, and epige-
netics in order to make claims about rights, social justice, equity, and
embodied, multigenerational damage. This program is supported by a dis-
course of hope. Led by the chair of the council and Research Advisory
Committee, Torres Strait Islander woman professor Kerry Arabena, the
Australian First 1000 Days team state that “this is what hope can look like”
and foregrounds the “need to be healed from the experiences of disposses-
sion and colonization and the intergenerational impacts of poorly designed
and executed policies” as a key aspect of providing good antenatal and early
childhood environments (Arabena, Panozzo, and Ritte 2016, 28). Intervie-
wees in our study pointed to recent policy documents from National Abori-
ginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO 2013) and the
National Health and Medical Research Council forum on research transla-
tion in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health (2016), which identify
epigenetics as a priority policy area (see also Australian Medical Associa-
tion 2013). The head of the national peak body for Indigenous-controlled
health services has stated that “epigenetic modifications can be passed from
mother to child, with implications for the health of immediate and subse-
quent generations” (Australian Government 2016).
These links between epigenetics and Indigenous health, expressed by the
most senior and influential Indigenous health researchers and leaders,
embrace a specific representation of epigenetic science. The popularity of
epigenetics within Indigenous health discourses is not matched by the nas-
cent state of the science, a version of “epigenetic hype” seen more generally
Warin et al. 9
(Ha¨fner and Lund 2016; Deichmann 2016). In particular, two aspects of
epigenetics—transgenerational inheritance and reversibility—are much
more controversial and contingent than one would suspect from Indigenous
health reports and presentations from Indigenous researchers. It is well
established that epigenetic changes have intergenerational effects through
two mechanisms: direct parental effects on the gametes or fetus or grand-
parental effects via the ova of the female fetus. However, transgenerational
inheritance—that is, inherited epigenetics effects in the absence of expo-
sure—is controversial. Evidence that epigenetic effects can be transgener-
ationally inherited in humans is highly contested, although this is
considered to have been established in nonhuman animal models (for an
overview, see Hanson and Skinner 2016). Despite this, claims of the role of
epigenetics in intergenerational trauma generally assume that epigenetic
changes are transmitted beyond one or two generations (e.g., Walters
et al. 2011). Second, discourses of epigenetics in Indigenous health imply
that epigenetic changes are reversible through interventions and that these
changes can be sustained through time—both claims that are currently
scientifically unclear. Epigenetic profiles differ between cells, organs, and
across time, complicating efforts to design and evaluate epigenetic inter-
ventions (Kundaje et al. 2015; National Human Genome Research
Institute).
Rather than inaccurate or just premature, the representation of epige-
netics as uncontroversially transgenerational and reversible is best under-
stood as the rationality underlying the bioeconomy of hope surrounding
Indigenous health discourses. In the next section, we explore further the
apparent congruence between epigenetics and Indigenous knowledges.
The Openness of Epigenetic Environments and
Indigenous Ontologies
The entanglement of social and biological environments and the porousness
of bodies to the effects of historical trauma are key elements of the appeal of
epigenetic discourses for Indigenous people. Although “the environment” is
by no means a singular term in the social and life sciences and has a
complex history (Pearce 2010; Warin and Martin 2018), epigenetics chal-
lenges us to rethink prevailing body/environment configurations that have
become mainstream in the West since the making of the modern body of
biomedicine (Cohen 2009). While a full compartmentalization of the body
from the environment was more an ideal than a reality in biomedical prac-
tice (Nash 2006), especially in the colonies (Anderson 2006), and theories
10 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
of disease have always involved penetration of bodily boundaries before
and after the rise of the modernistic body of biomedicine, the idea of an
impermeability and stability of hereditary material has been an established
dogma since the late nineteenth century (after Weismann and the rise of
genetics, see Meloni 2016). This notion (which took place at the same time
as the rise of germ theory) contributed to a shift in the locus of causation in
etiological theories from the outside to the inside of the body, supporting a
view of a stable and insulated biological individuality in which each indi-
vidual possessed, from birth to death, unique genetic material walled off
from environmental signals (Buss 1987; Gilbert, Sapp, and Tauber 2012).
In as much as a gene could interact with a certain environment in an
interactionist view of genetics, a neat distinction between these two factors
was never seriously in question during the twentieth century. Epigenetics,
and the wider notion of a “reactive genome” that cannot be completely
distinguished from its environment (Keller 2015), represents a profound
disturbance for these ideas of an immured and invariable genomic code and
hence for wider notions of the body as distinct from the environment (Lock
2015).
Another way to think about the relative openness of epigenetic mechan-
isms is through temporality. Genetic variation is, like epigenetics, a product
of interactions between genes and the environment (Hellenthal et al. 2014).
However, while genetic changes occur in a random way (mutations) and
over the slow timescale (or “deep time”) of evolutionary adaptation, epi-
genetic changes occur in the “real” time of lived experience and memory
and are directly triggered by environmental inputs. The epigenome appears
as a much more fine-grained “biosocial archive” (Relton, Hartwig, and
Davey Smith 2015) where microevents occurring throughout the life course
(exposure to toxins, diet, stress) leave stable molecular imprints that can
today be detected via epigenetic biomarkers. The “postgenome”—a concept
of the genome that includes epigenetics—is thus thought to be “far more
fluid and responsive to the environment than previously supposed”
(Jablonka and Lamb 1995, 26). It is rewritten as an “an exquisitely sensitive
reaction mechanism” (Keller 2015, 10) that can change (at the level of
expression) within the parameters of the human life span (Lappe´ and Land-
ecker 2015). In this more permeable and “plastic” view of biological life,
the environment is not something that simply happens outside bodies as an
exposure but works in and through highly relational entities and telescopes
differing time and spaces in a nonlinear fashion. Within an epigenetic
temporality, pasts and futures can coalesce in the present.
Warin et al. 11
Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers we interviewed recognized
the porousness of bodies and environments and the enfolding of past, pres-
ent, and future epigenetic temporalities as congruent with Indigenous per-
spectives on “Country” and well-being. They noted that the Indigenous
concept of Country is not synonymous with “the environment” but better
understood as a vital force and an interconnected web of social, ecological,
and spiritual relationships. Country epitomizes the way of existing in and
viewing the world that might be termed the “relational ontology” of Indi-
genous Australians (McCoy, Tuck, and Mckenzie 2016; see also Arabena
2015). As with all cultural understandings of health, Indigenous understand-
ings of health are presented as diverse and complex (see Gee et al. 2014).
Key elements, however, are interconnectedness and relationality between a
range of human and nonhuman entities and places. Well-being is main-
tained through relationships of mutual care of kin and a range of nonhuman
and country affiliations and obligations that are described by Law or
Dreaming and encoded within the landscape (D. Rose 1992, 1996; Reid
1982). Individuals identify places and ancestors as parts of themselves, “in
which people and land are almost inseparable” (Myers 1986, 25).
This entanglement of person, bodies, and environments was clearly evi-
dent in interviewee perspectives on the potential affinities between Indi-
genous health and epigenetics. One non-Indigenous developmental
researcher suggested that the Indigenous health workers she worked with
might not necessarily hold a “scientific knowledge of epigenetics,” but they
positioned the environment (rather than the individual) as central to health
and well-being:
If we look after the environment the environment looks after
us ...Indigenous cultures and people are so intimately connected to the land
and environment and other people and relationships, and every one of those
things can create an epigenetic change ...if you’re well connected to land
and well connected to ancestors and traditions, [then] you will have a long
and healthy life. So that to me, kind of speaks to the really unconscious
understanding of epigenetics.
Another Indigenous life scientist recounted: “we certainly understand
what it means to be connected ...across time, to place, to person, to family,
to understanding, to history and the environment in which we live.” This
interconnectedness was cited by three interviewees as key to both epige-
netic processes and Indigenous ontologies, so much so that core concepts of
DOHaD and epigenetics were said to be “very interwoven into [Indigenous]
12 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
cultural knowledge.”
5
Here, as Montoya (2011) reminds us in his ethno-
graphy of genetics and type 2 diabetes in Mexico, epigenetic knowledge
gains “plausability, not through any inherent power of science, but by
reinforcing already-existing cultural and political forms” (Wailoo et al.
2012, 14; see also TallBear 2013).
Trauma, Epigenetics, and Biopolitics
In May 2017, on the twenty-year anniversary of the landmark Bringing
them Home report on the Stolen Generations,
6
Indigenous Australians
handed the prime minister a report seeking a national reparation program
for all Aboriginal children forcibly taken from their families prior to 1970.
In commenting on this report, CEO of the national Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Healing Foundation, Richard Weston (2017), drew on every-
day understandings of historical trauma and its relationship to epigenetics,
when he stated:
Trauma affects the way we think, act and behave. It is overwhelming and
changes the way our brain and body works. For Aboriginal people that were
taken from their families it has caused incredible suffering for individuals and
communities in many different ways over many generations.
While Weston didn’t specifically mention epigenetics as a mechanism of
transgenerational transmission of trauma, other Indigenous scholars have
made these links. Indigenous social work academic Gilbert (2017), for
example, researches the impacts of trauma on the Stolen Generations and
has been inspired by Skinner’s (2015) popular work on “ancestral ghosts.”
She suggests that “up to seven generations can be impacted upon by what’s
happened to the generations before. This has been explored through
research through the Jewish populations where people are still experiencing
trauma from generations earlier” (Gilbert 2017). While there is uncertainty
about the molecular pathways and processes that may be influenced by
inherited epigenetic changes, Gilbert draws upon historical trauma and
epigenetics to underpin and rationalize her own culturally situated under-
standing of the collective and intergenerational embodiment of the impacts
of forced removal and racism.
Australian governments are beginning to respond to Indigenous concerns
with schemes to provide financial compensation (e.g., for stolen wages) and
to fund activities that support healing, although these responses are both
belated and highly inadequate. In 2007, the Tasmanian government set up a
Warin et al. 13
$AUS 5 million Stolen Generation Fund, and in 2017, the South Australian
government set up a similar scheme. The New South Wales government
offers financial compensation to survivors of the Stolen Generations under a
multimillion-dollar policy acknowledging the harm inflicted on Aboriginal
communities by the forcible removal of children. The scheme included a
$AUS 5 million “healing fund” to address “the impacts of trauma not only
for survivors but also for their families, descendants and communities”
(New South Wales Government 2016). The Healing Foundation, an Indi-
genous mental health organization set up in response to a landmark report
about the Stolen Generations (HREOC 1997), believes that around 17,000
Indigenous Australians today are direct victims of the Stolen Generations,
but over one-third of the Indigenous population—over 114,000 people—are
direct descendants of those victims. The work of the Healing Foundation is
aimed at stopping the “cycle of trauma,” so that these descendants, and their
future descendants, can avoid inheriting the trauma of their ancestors (Heal-
ing Foundation, n.d.).
How will the cycle of intergenerational trauma be stopped? One answer
was given at a health conference in 2015 by Associate Professor Mark
Wenitong, another leading Indigenous medical doctor and health
researcher. In many presentations (e.g., “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islan-
der Health—the Narrative—Epigenetics to Agency”), Wenitong draws on
histone modification and methylation to explain poor Indigenous health.
7
“These things are heritable, they are not genetic changes, but they are
heritable across generations. So it means if we want to stop some of these
changes happening we need to start now.” In a presentation in which the
concept of hope was central, he called for maternal and child health pro-
grams based on epigenetic evidence, alongside empowerment, cultural con-
tinuity, and economic participation (Wenitong 2015).
Given the popularity of epigenetic discourse among leading Indigenous
scholars and researchers, it seems inevitable that epigenetic-based health
programs will emerge, although it is not yet clear what form they will take.
It is therefore a critical time to consider the models of biopolitics of race,
biosocial identities, and biological citizenship that may flow from epige-
netic thinking. Such models would not constitute a return to a “geneticized
conceptualization of race” (e.g., a notion of “race as a fixed genetic
characteristic,” Morning 2011, 2014; Frank 2015), but a biopolitics that
draws on plasticity—specifically environmental determination of genomic
expression—highlighted by the particular version of epigenetics we have
addressed here. This emerging landscape problematizes any attempt to
neatly parse the social and the biological, as social constructionist critiques
14 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
of race have thought possible (Morning 2011). By illuminating new mole-
cular pathways through which social experience permeates gene expres-
sion, epigenetics returns us to views of biology as porous and
“impressionable” matter.
The social impressionability of biological matter is, however, no less
fraught with dangers of biopolitical intervention than any view of a fixed
and unchangeable biology (Meloni 2016, 2019). The recognition of being
“plastically” shaped by an external environment or lifestyle does not dimin-
ish but goes hand in hand and possibly even intensifies the need to intervene
in time, in the specific window of opportunity where human biology is
receptive to social intervention. Further, an epigenetic biopolitics may lead
to a condemnation of one’s condition if the accumulated effects of historical
burden have made their cause irredeemable. Although the responsiveness of
the epigenetic body to the environment is appealing to some Indigenous
people, bodies that are deeply permeable to outside forces are no less
vulnerable to forms of vigilance and disciplinary practices than bodies that
are seen as stable and permanent (Meloni 2019; N. Rose 1998, 170).
These dangers were recognized by all of the interviewees. One informant
suggested that if there is no attention to the “malleability” of epigenetics,
then the science can be presented as “very deterministic—there’s always a
risk that people start to adopt eugenic approaches ...and it will weaken
social policy rather than strengthen it.” Another interviewee noted the
“slippery slope” between epigenetic-inspired pre- and postnatal health care
and eugenics, suggesting:
There will be people saying they would like to understand epigenetics to see
if we can treat a disease better, but there will be people who say “We’d like to
think about epigenetic screening prenatally to weed out all those who are
unfit.” It’s a very small voice at the moment ...but I know quite a senior
person who does have certain views about the worth of some people ....
This argument echoes the long and often forgotten history of “nurturist
eugenics” (Meloni 2016, 101-107.), an eugenics that posited the primacy of
environmental factors in shaping the acquired biology of “vulnerable” or
“risky” social groups. Often led by doctors and social activists rather than
biologists, this strand of the eugenic movement sought to challenge the
supposed fatalism and lack of humanity of mainstream eugenicists by stres-
sing the effects of nurture on human heredity. However, the well-
intentioned claims of empowerment of specific populations were used by
others to argue for the acquired inferiority of these same groups. For
Warin et al. 15
example, calls to address the “racial poison” (Saleeby 1914) of alcohol that
aimed to improve environmental conditions for every child became a plat-
form for others to call for restricted citizenship for members of
“degenerated” stocks and their offspring (Meloni 2016, 106).
Such contradictory logics of empowerment and intensified governance
highlight the inherent dangers of engaging strategic biological essentialism.
To use suffering bodies to legitimate human rights, as Fassin (2000, 2009)
reminds us in his concept of biolegitimacy, is a political tactic that can
provide certain types of leverage. In the case of Indigenous epigenetics,
this tactic leverages a biopolitics of hope and is gaining visibility for new
ways to address Indigenous ill-health, healing, and reparation. But through
this strategic biological essentialism, the environment may become essen-
tialized, enfolded into a powerful language of damage that justifies heigh-
tened biopolitical governance.
Conclusion
In this paper, we have examined why some Indigenous researchers and
policy makers in Australia and other postcolonial contexts are linking nar-
ratives of historical trauma, DOHaD, and environmental epigenetics to
frame the negative intergenerational consequences of past injustices and
make claims for stronger investments in health and health care, particularly
in early life.
While the evidence for transgenerational transmission of trauma remains
uncertain,
8
the political economy of hope has forged ahead, offering new
pathways for redemption. For Rose and Novas (2005), hope is aspirational,
promising political and economic benefits. However, hope is also an ambig-
uous space. As we have argued, these types of claims for reparations may
become the source of a new political hope but also the platform to remake
essentialist distinctions and single out special human groups based on their
unique exposure to a history of social hardship that is enfolded into the body
and transmitted as biological difference (Meloni 2017). In other words,
even though the appeal of epigenetics is an apparent corrective to biological
determinism and essentialism, Indigenous epigenetics may simply produce
a new form of biological essentialism that is environmentally and histori-
cally determined but no less essentialist.
Indigenous Australians’ embracing of environmental epigenetics can be
counterproductive, for in engaging in strategic biological essentialism,
power relations may be concealed. Epigenetics may offer new strategies
to lobby for protection from biosocial injury but also has the capacity to
16 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
conceal forms of governance that may follow from the identification of
biological damage. In her work on Aboriginal children, epigenetics, and
politics in British Columbia, Murray (2018) sounds a warning to such
colonialist dynamics. She argues that an epigenetically grounded Early
Development Instrument is based on the eugenic-based classification of
“vulnerable Aboriginal children” (Murray 2018, 225), furthering State jus-
tification for biopolitical intervention in Indigenous lives (such as forced
relinquishment of children).
In the context of Indigenous health in Australia, there will be multiple
political possibilities and moral claims about the use, value, and interpreta-
tion of environmental epigenetics. While the discourse of epigenetics
inspires optimism for many Indigenous Australians through a rhetoric of
freedom that corresponds to their own ontologies and life experiences,
supported by the authority of expert medical discourses, in practice, it has
the potential to swing from one form of determinism to another. People may
no longer be “determined” by “their genes” but by their milieux, history,
and social and physical location (molecularly incorporated into the body),
thus fostering emerging forms of environmental determinism and
“environmental biopower” (Lorimer 2017). These complex power
dynamics need to be acknowledged in the Indigenous engagement with
epigenetics and the biopolitical strategies in which it is discursively
wielded.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank all the research participants who generously shared their
time. Thanks to participants from The Biopolitics of Epigenetics Symposium (Uni-
versity of Sydney); the Parental Responsibility, Epigenetics and DOHaD: Emerging
Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Reproduction in the Postgenomic Age (Brocher
Foundation, Geneva); and the Ongoing Legacies of Discrimination and Violence
Network (OLIRN; Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, University of Ade-
laide) for incisive feedback on earlier drafts.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was funded by a Univer-
sity of Adelaide, Faculty of Arts Research Grant. Warin’s work is supported by an
Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT140100825). Kowal’s research
Warin et al. 17
is supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT160100093).
Meloni’s work is supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship
(FT180100240).
ORCID iD
Megan Warin https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8766-1087
Notes
1. There are many different interpretations and subfields of epigenetics (see also
Stotz and Griffiths 2016; Pinel, Prainsack, and McKevitt 2017). In this paper, we
focus on environmental epigenetics; how environmental exposures might have a
role in altering gene expression that can lead to disease phenotypes that can be
transmitted across generations.
2. On the use of genetics for “humanitarian” purposes, see Nelson (2012, 20-31).
3. Ethics approval for this project was granted from the University of Adelaide
Human Research Ethics Committee (H-2016-045).
4. The Lowitja Institute is Australia’s National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Health Research, named in honor of their patron, Indigenous
nurse, leader, and Elder Dr. Lowitja O’Donoghue.
5. Another approach to this argument could focus on Indigenous conceptions of
personhood that are inextricably social, with autonomy distributed through net-
works of “individuals” rather than experienced individually (see Strathern
[1988], Lamoreaux [2016], and Macdonald and Boulton [2016] for how this is
expressed in parenting practices and conception beliefs).
6. The Stolen Generations are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
who were forcibly removed from their families under successive federal govern-
ment policies and religious institutions between 1910 and 1970.
7. The version of this presentation with the above title was downloaded by Kowal
from the Internet on August 31, 2016 (URL not available, file available on
request). It is a ppt prepared by Mark Wenitong for the Future Health Leaders
National Conference 2015. The talk is recorded on YouTube with the amended
title “Where are we at with Indigenous health in Australia?” https://www.youtu
be.com/watch?v¼nj96IYE-6FE
8. Scientific uncertainty has never been an obstacle to forms of translation of
science into policy as the case of eugenics well represents (Bashford and Levine
2010; Turda 2010; Meloni 2016). Scientific “truths” do not have to be settled for
power to have effect and emerging debates on translation of epigenetics support
this case. The difference, however, in the translation of epigenetics, is that dis-
courses of stabilization are coming from the group whom historically have
18 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)
rejected the biologicalization of Indigenous lives and knowledge. We thank the
journal editor for highlighting the significance of this problem.
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Author Biographies
Megan Warin is a professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of
Adelaide, South Australia. She is a medical anthropologist who investigates bodies,
food, and eating across the social and life sciences. She is the author of Abject
Relations; Everyday Worlds of Anorexia (2010) and Fatness, Obesity and Disad-
vantage in the Australian Suburbs: Unpalatable Politics (2019).
Emma Kowal is a professor of anthropology at the Alfred Deakin Institute and
Convener of the Science and Society Network at Deakin University. She is a cultural
anthropologist who previously worked as a medical doctor and public health
researcher in Indigenous health. She is the author of Trapped in the Gap: Doing
Good in Indigenous Australia.
Maurizio Meloni is a social theorist and a science and technology studies scholar.
He is the author of Political Biology: Science and Social Values in Human Heredity
from Eugenics to Epigenetics (Palgrave 2016), Impressionable Biologies: From the
Archaeology of Plasticity to the Sociology of Epigenetics (Routledge, 2019), coedi-
tor of Biosocial Matters (Wiley 2016), and chief editor of the Palgrave Handbook of
Biology and Society (2018). He is currently ARC Future Fellow in the Alfred Deakin
Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Australia.
Warin et al. 25
