Genealogy, Volume 8, Issue 4 (December 2024) – 22 articles

In Rwanda, following the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, many people were found guilty of genocide crimes and imprisoned. Their children ended up in a situation of ambiguous loss during and after a parent’s imprisonment. The article presents the multidimensional impact of this loss on the everyday lives of these children and their families according to key themes as they emerged from an ethnographic study in which 21 children and their family members participated. Themes include changed family dynamics and family stress, economic deprivation, incomprehension of a parent’s criminal past, the social stigma of being a child of a génocidaire, and strategies used to make the loss bearable. The uniqueness of the ambiguous loss as experienced by children of perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda compared to those of perpetrators of the Holocaust or other mass crimes relates to an amalgam of factors specific for the context of post-genocide Rwanda; major ones being the severity of genocidal crimes and gacaca courts Rwanda chose as its main form of transitional justice. The case study illustrates how using the prism of intergenerational relations helps to understand some of the transformative and enduring effects of a crisis that deeply affects a society. Full article

Background: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American Indian (AI) adolescents and young adults in the 15- to 24-year-old age group and is the third leading cause of death in the 10- to 14-year-old age group. Methods: Key informant interviews were conducted with AI youth (n = 10) ages 12–18, and young AI adults (n = 10) ages 19–24 to gather input on activities and programs to decrease AI suicidal-related behaviors in Nebraska. These interviews were 45 min in length at maximum. Themes were created once the interviews were completed. Results: The overarching theme was creating and implementing more suicide prevention programs and cultural activities for these age groups. Respondents identified three important characteristics that they believe all programs should have: (1) positive reinforcement, (2) culturally-centered activities, and (3) strength-based approaches that are not from a negative or punitive viewpoint. Conclusion: The results from these interviews can be used to build strengths-based approaches to promoting positive mental health in Indigenous communities and can lead to other successful programs and activities. Full article

This paper explores the challenges of measuring and classifying the East African Asian population in Aotearoa New Zealand. As a particularly diverse country, New Zealand has a significant and varied population of immigrants from South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, along with immigrants of South Asian origin, from Fiji, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and East Africa. New Zealand’s system of ethnic classification relies on self-identification, with a broad definition of ethnicity encompassing heritage, ancestry, culture, language and feelings of belonging. However, the collection of this information at a granularity that enables detailed analysis is constrained for the South Asian population, regardless of origin or identification. People are typically presented with the choice of selecting “Indian” ethnicity as a tick box, or providing ethnicities under “Other” as write-in descriptors, which in turn are coded to a limited set of categories within the classification being used. This practice potentially conceals a diversity of ethnicities, which can only partially be hinted at by responses to questions relating to religions, languages and birthplaces, especially for second or third-generation descendants of migrants. Ethnic classification at the highest level, moreover, includes East African Indians as Asian, rather than African, reflecting diasporic heritage as a shorthand for ancestry and overlooking the relevance of layers of identity associated with the double diaspora. Drawing on Peter J. Aspinall’s work on collective terminology in ethnic data collection and categorizing the “Asian” ethnic group in the UK, this paper looks at the overlaps and disconnects between heritage, ethnicity and national belonging in classifying less clearcut identities. We explore the strengths and limitations of New Zealand’s self-identification approach to ethnic identity, and query what exactly is being asked of groups on the margins: when self-identification does not match external perception, are we looking for geographic, cultural, or genetic origins? A focus on the East African Asian population in Aotearoa highlights the complexity of identity for diasporic groups with distant ancestral links with India, as lived experience of cultural connection extends far beyond the bounds of ethnicity, language and even ancestry. Full article

In recent years, scholars have increasingly recognised the ways that colonialism, and related racism, embedded intergenerational trauma within families and communities. The role of domestic violence within families is widely accepted as important, but often treated separately. This article uses a case study from Western Australia, the life and death of Annie Grigo Dost, to explore the dynamics of both issues. Importantly, it also critiques the presentation of complex colonial family histories within a range of digital platforms, especially Ancestry.com. Such platforms obscure complex family dynamics, enforcing normative (often Westernised and highly gendered) digital frameworks for data, and consequently for stories about the past. This article offers an important critique of the ways that Ancestry.com in particular seems to actively sanitise family history, and the ways that they may be doing a disservice to their customers, who may want to acknowledge a more complex, critical family history. Full article

In 1978, the United States enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) “to protect the best interest of Indian Children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families by the establishment of minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children and placement of such children in homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture.” The ICWA was codified to address centuries of genocidal government policies, boarding schools, and coercive adoptions that ruptured many Native families. Now one of the strongest pieces of legislation to protect Native communities, the ICWA was designed to ensure that Native foster children are placed with Native families. Implementing the ICWA has not been smooth, however, as many non-Native foster parents and state governments have challenged the ICWA. While the ICWA has survived these legal challenges, including the recent 2023 Haaland v. Brackeen Supreme Court case, the rise of non-Natives claiming Native heritage, also known as self-indigenizers or “pretendians,” represents a new threat to the ICWA. This Article presents a legal history and analysis of the ICWA to unpack the policy implications of pretendians in the U.S. legal context. This Article demonstrates how the rise of pretendians threatens to undermine the very purpose of the ICWA and thereby threaten the sovereignty of Native peoples. By legally sanctioning the adoption of Native children into non-Native pretendian homes, the ICWA can facilitate a new era of settlers raising Native children, rather than preventing this phenomenon as intended. In response, this Article offers concrete policy recommendations to bolster the ICWA against this threat. Full article

The Ang Pagtanom og Binhi Project is a University–Community partnership and community-based participatory research project exploring the health benefits of food sovereignty practices in the Philippines. In late 2021, in the midst of data collection, Super Typhoon Odette made landfall in the Philippines causing massive environmental and structural devastation. In the aftermath of the storm, community partners in the Philippines and members of the research team in the United States shared photos, texts, and updates. These messages included descriptions of structural and environmental damage caused by the storm and stories of mutual aid efforts and actions taken by individuals and small organizations, each highlighting connections between food sovereignty efforts in the Philippines and the impacts of climate change. Due to the richness of the stories, the interconnectedness between these conversations and the research topic, and the alignment within the theoretical foundations of the project, the researchers understood that these communications should be included as data. With feedback from the Community Advisory Board, the Research and Design Team amended project protocols, research questions, and consent forms to incorporate this emergent data. This manuscript describes the process that the team undertook and some of the lessons learned by taking this approach. Full article

The aim of this article is to provide an ethnographic investigation on how community consciousness is forged through daily rituals of encounter and sociability among the Calós of Buenos Aires. The research method used was ethnography based on participant observation. The daily encounters and the intensive frequency of repetition are posed as ritual actions that create agoras in public and semi-public spaces of the neighbourhood. The logic of socialisation expresses the very life of the Calós and their capacity to transform spaces into places. Social rituals and the use of time and tempo are tentatively addressed, as well as the relevance of gift exchange and reciprocity. Full article

In this article, we examine how Black mothers devised strategies of resistance to prepare and protect their children during the Jim Crow era. Grounded in Black feminist standpoint theory, we rely on Black women’s own perspectives to understand how interlocking systems of oppression shaped their mothering experiences and practices. We use Dedoose cloud-based software to conduct a content analysis of 210 oral histories from two oral history repositories. Our grounded theory approach to data analysis entailed a multistage coding process, revealing that Black mothers strategized to provide their children choices in the present that would give them more freedom and opportunities in the future. We refer to this mothering practice as the cultivation of “freedom choices”. Freedom choices seek to minimize the hindrances and restraints that shape the choices available to Black children and to expand their available options. Black mothers fostered freedom choices by relying on both informal and formal education. They used informal education to teach their children restraint, resistance, and when to deploy which, and how to negotiate space. Black mothers facilitated their children’s educational pursuits in the face of structural barriers by (1) leveraging their own sweat equity, (2) tapping into their mutual aid networks, (3) challenging landowners, and (4) insisting on prioritizing their children’s education even when their partners did not. Full article

This study articulates how naming and family trees can become epic texts upon which intended or unintended meanings, identities and narratives can be decoded, including mutations in families, as basic units of society. Many studies in African anthroponym have articulated names and naming from differing perspectives, but have tended to ignore the diachronic and synchronic significance of looking at family trees which are woven in time and space through naming. Within the framework of Darwinian Theory of Evolution, we used in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of respondents from the Bette people of the Obudu local government area, to enable us to build family trees which were subtextually analyzed for meaning and mutations through six generations. Our findings enabled us to develop deeper insights into how a longitudinal articulation of naming and family trees can enhance our understanding of the synchronic realities, increased cultural aliteracy, dislocation of homesteads due to occupational shifts, changing ideas of kinship, patriarchal attitudes towards women and challenge of new technologies like DNA testing and new media within the Bette traditional kinship tradition. Significantly, naming and family trees, beyond dynastic delineations for identity, inclusivity and otherness, can become signifiers of a people’s epic progression and mutation, and, as it were, a tapestry of significant narratives of micro and macro family history. Full article

The U.S. health care system presents American Indian/Alaska Native populations with inequitable challenges that result in some of the worst health outcomes in the country. The literature indicates that increasing the proportion of American Indian/Alaska Native health professionals can improve these health disparities. This study aimed to explore the severe under-representation of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Nebraska’s health professions workforce by examining barriers and facilitators in this population’s pursuit of health professions careers. We conducted demographic questionnaires and three talking circles with students in reservation and urban settings to better understand their lived experiences of pursuing health professions careers. We analyzed these qualitative data through content analysis and identified eight emergent themes—four barriers and four facilitators. These findings can inform the development of strategies to improve Indigenous education, research, and pathways that promote increased American Indian/Alaska Native representation in health care. Full article

This article explores the recent rise in the use of self-identification as a key element of legitimacy in contemporary claims to Indigeneity. Emphasizing self-identification as a central dynamic of all identity-making in contemporary nation-states, the article argues nonetheless that this element of identity is insufficient for making ethical claims to Indigeneity. Emphasizing instead the importance of ongoing Indigenous relationality (i.e., kinship), it argues that genealogical databases potentially exacerbate the potential to engage in non-relational forms of belonging that undermine Indigenous communities’ and nations’ autonomy in defining the boundaries and contours of their citizenship. I undertake this argument in three broad parts. Part one undertakes a selective discussion of sociologist Stuart Hall’s conceptualization of identity, highlighting what I regard as two relevant elements key to his identity-making framework. Part two then undertakes a brief discussion of Geonpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s discussion of white possessiveness as a useful lens for framing the growing self-Indigenization/Pretendianism literature as variegated examples of analyzing its practice; and finally, part three explores the potential of genealogical databases to encourage possessive/non-relational forms of identity-making, what I term here “inert kinship”. The article then concludes with a brief discussion regarding how genealogical databases might be used ethically with respect to claiming Indigenous belonging, and why this is key to the upholding of Indigenous sovereignty. Full article

This article explores the pervasive influence of conspiracy theories, specifically the New World Order (NWO) and Golden Billion theories, within the context of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. These theories form key narrative frameworks in Russian state media and global conspiracy communities, shaping perceptions of geopolitical events. This study dissects four pivotal episodes within the Russia–Ukraine conflict to illustrate how conspiracy theories shape public perception and policy direction, further entrenching ideological divides. In the first episode of the 2022 full-scale invasion, narratives of the Golden Billion were utilised to justify the attack, presenting Russia as a bastion against the Western elite’s plans to dominate the global economy and resources. The second episode examines the attack on Mariupol in 2022, framed by Russian propaganda as a necessary act to thwart the supposed expansion of NATO and the EU, underpinned by the NWO agenda aiming to dilute Russian influence in Eastern Europe. The third episode analyses the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage in 2022, interpreted by some conspiracy theorists as an act by the NWO to destabilise Europe’s energy security, thus consolidating control over energy routes and resources. The fourth episode delves into the 2024 Moscow terrorist attacks, which were seen by some as either a false flag operation conducted by Western powers or as a legitimate repercussion of Western encroachment orchestrated to weaken Russia’s resolve and international standing. Each episode is contextualised within a broader conspiratorial framework, highlighting the dualistic nature of the NWO and Golden Billion theories that paint the conflict not merely as territorial disputes but as a clash between fundamentally opposing worldviews and global orders. This narrative analysis not only underscores the role of conspiracy theories in shaping geopolitical discourse but also demonstrates their utility in mobilising domestic support, framing international criticism, and justifying military actions. Our findings suggest that these conspiratorial narratives provide a resilient, albeit misleading, lens through which supporters of the Kremlin’s policies can rationalise the war, attributing complex sociopolitical dynamics to the malevolent machinations of a global elite. This study contributes to understanding how modern conflicts are interpreted through ancient conspiratorial lenses, impacting national and international policy and public opinion. Full article

The growing divide between the capitalist mode of development promoted by the state and the participative development model suggested by the people has brought ecology, environment, and existence to the core of all contemporary debates. The Adivasi (indigenes) who constitute 8.6 percent of the entire population of India are engaged in a constant battle to save their ecology and landscape. Represented as communities whose existence is intertwined with ‘Jal, Jungle, Jameen’ (water, forest, and land), Adivasis are the most prominent communities facing dispossession and displacement from their roots to further the ideology of development in which they have no stake. The notion of Adivasis as ‘savage’, ‘primitive’, and ‘backward’ communities that are incompetent of ‘developing’ themselves, resulting in their ‘backwardness’ gets carried over from the colonial to the contemporary period. Exposed to the processes of mining and industrialisation, Adivasis and their ecological resources have been exploited since the colonial period to suit the development model of the state. The Adivasi notion of selfhood was overlooked in the process of making the areas inhabited by them zones of ‘exclusive governmentality’. The paper argues and analyses this transformation process of Adivasis into ecological warriors; a process in which they used their shared, remembered and lived past to assert their customary rights. Basing the study on three environmental movements of state of Jharkhand in Central India, namely the Koel-Karo movement of the 1980s, the Netarhat movement of the 1990s, and the Pathalgadi movement of 2017–18, the study underlines that the Adivasi of Jharkhand anchored on their customary rights as a weapon, to protect their ecology and landscape against various state-sponsored development schemes. Drawing on the methodology of field investigation, interaction with the NGOs, government reports and media reports, the article argues that these community struggles are rays of hope for a global ecological future. Full article

Unlike in North America, where several “race-shifters”, “Pretendians”, or “self-indigenizers” have been exposed over the last decade, Indigenous identity appropriation has not been publicly exposed or even widely discussed in Aotearoa New Zealand. This study is the first to identify and to describe the methods and motivations of four Pākehā (White) self-indigenizers who are currently working, or were trained, in Aotearoa New Zealand, outlining also the harms they have caused. In addition, this study examines another type of Indigenous identity appropriation taking place in Aotearoa New Zealand, involving a small group of central North Island Māori, whose primary spokesperson is Monica Matāmua. The group claim to be descended from white-skinned Hotu, who they purport had migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 200s B.C., making them the alleged true Indigenous people instead of Māori. Each type of Indigenous identity appropriation provides a range of benefits to those who thereby claim Indigenous status, and this is in part due to the valorization of certain aspects of Indigeneity that occurred from ca. the 1960s to the 1980s. Indigenous identity appropriation has further been encouraged by the backlash against so-called “Māori privilege” that has gathered momentum since ca. the 1980s. Full article

The Liverpool Jewish community was the earliest to be formed in the north of England (c1745) and for much of the 19th century, it was the largest UK Jewish community outside London. However, examination of this important minority community from a social, demographic, and genealogical perspective has been severely hampered by the lack of a unified source of information about Jewish individuals and families resident in the area during the 18th and 19th centuries. This paper describes how a searchable database of all Jewish persons with a documented connection with the Liverpool area, from the earliest times to 1881, has been produced as a resource for historical, demographic, sociological, and genealogical research. It explains how Jewish individuals were identified by a novel use of distinctive names, occupations, and birthplaces in the secular census and vital records and, in combination with extant records held within the Jewish community, have been used to produce a database of several thousand persons, linked into family groups. It concludes that the principal aim of the project has been achieved, and the approach could act as a template for other religion/ethnicity-based groups. Full article

Five Pilipina American (PA) social work MotherScholars, from a doctoral student to an interim dean, used kuwentuhan (Pilipinx methodology) to amplify their survivance and thrivance despite attempted exclusion, reduction, and distortion as Pilipinos by coloniality/modernity. Grounded in decolonial feminism (the view that oppressions such as sexism and racism co-constitute coloniality and that unsettling oppressions disrupts hegemony) and Pinayism (an integrated framework revaluing the labor, intellect, and nurturance of mothering through a cultural lens), the authors work coalitionally across their PA diversity to re-center ginhawa (aliveness or sense of ease and wellness). Together, they embarked on an iterative self-study process of data generation and analysis that included presenting, recording, and transcribing two panel presentations at a premier social work conference, writing reflections and hay(na)ku poems about their experiences and processes, reading and rereading the data, and meeting and discussing the data, their process, and past and current events pertinent to the content. The stories highlight how the authors are living and enlivening decoloniality, and that, in so doing, they continue a lineage of those who have resisted coloniality/modernity and promoted thrivance. Collectively, these kuwentos (stories), reflections, hay(na)ku, and their weaving together, are memory, resistance, counter-storytelling, and healing. Full article

Ghanaian immigrants are largely ignored in U.S.-based scholarship. Within this qualitative study, I explored the experiences of 1.5-generation Ghanaian American millennials with the purpose of understanding how they create, negotiate, and re-create identities. Using a phenomenological approach, I examined the experiences of eight individuals to specifically understand the creation and negotiation of national, ethnic, and racial identities in public and private spaces. I argue that the 1.5-generation is uniquely socially positioned and forced to code-switch and adapt based on age, race, and nationality, all while still learning to adjust to living in the U.S. The findings suggest that many individuals of this generation had unrealistic expectations of what life in the United States was like, which made the initial transition difficult. Participants also discussed a common theme of bullying at school and a distinct difference between their home life and public life. Racialization was the most challenging aspect of life participants faced as it related to their adjustment to mainstream U.S. society and revealed complex layers that are involved in identity development and negotiation. I close with suggestions for future research and implications for practice for scholars, policymakers, and community members. Full article

This article examines the type of family lore that leads white Canadians and Americans to claim Indigenous identities. Using a case-study approach, I demonstrate how 2000 descendants of a French-Canadian couple, born in the early 1800s near Montréal, joined one of the largest land claims in Canadian history as “Algonquins”. The tools of critical settler family history provide the necessary theoretical scaffolding to unpack how genealogical and geographical proximity to Indigenous people in the past are the bases for the family lore that propelled these individuals to become card-carrying, voting members of the land claim. Despite continued opposition to their inclusion by the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, the only federally recognized Algonquin community involved in the land claim, these fake Algonquins remained potential land claim beneficiaries for over two decades, until an independent tribunal finally removed them in 2023. Family lore resolves the crisis in the family: no longer the colonizers responsible for Indigenous displacement and dispossession, white pretendians become the victims of settler colonial violence. Full article

This article explores the relationship between genealogy and the environment as a pathway towards decolonising indigenous minds. In Māori worldviews, everything is categorised, organised, and understood through whakapapa, or genealogy. Whakapapa resides within the land and water, safeguarding ancestral stories as they weave through time, space, and place. The environment serves as a powerful tool for maintaining, reclaiming, and reinforcing indigeneity. Strengthening the connections between whakapapa and the environment offers significant avenues for decolonising Indigenous minds, by recalibrating and releasing colonised ways of being to embody mauritau (mindfulness) through whenua kura (placefulness). Unlike Cartesian dualism, which separates the body and mind, the Māori conception of the mind is multifaceted and embodied. The mind is thought to be situated in the solar plexus, emotions in the gut, and connection to spirit in the head, all of which are deeply rooted in whakapapa and the enduring ties to ancestors and place. Whakapapa’s connections to the land, water, animals, and spiritual entities are imbued with narratives that aid in recollection and provide profound cultural context to place. These narratives offer pathways for communion with the land and water, enabling sensitivity to environmental cues, such as changing seasons, solstices, moon phases, star cycles, and natural rhythms within our inner landscapes of body, heart, and mind, fostering a sense of placefulness. Full article

In this essay, I recover queer Indigenous P’urhépecha histories in Michoacán, México, by claiming queer P’urhépecha research methods. To do so, I introduce the Indigenous methodology of talking-while-walking, which refers to how I learned to connect with P’urhépecha knowledge and traditions through the voice of my P’urhépecha grandfather. Since the colonial system eradicated queer histories from my land, I seek historical narratives about queer people in Michoacán from any source available to me, including oral histories, archives, information in the media, and interviews. I argue that queer P’urhépecha histories are unstable and non-linear, and that P’urhépecha bodies have been hunted and their histories distorted, provoking fear and false speculations about queerness among the collective. I also examine the attachment of P’urhépecha people to gender binary traditions and heteronormativity and how the narratives behind these practices relate to colonial violence and the persecution of queer P’urhépechas. Thus, I demonstrate how P’urhépecha queerness has been marginalized and simultaneously displaced from the archival records while I claim queer P’urhépecha histories and build queer P’urhépecha archives. Finally, I propose a sensitive and personal approach to queer histories guided by the voices of my queer P’urhépecha interlocutors and the histories that my P’urhépecha abuelo passed to me. Full article

Cultural identity and participation play a critical role in understanding culture and its influence on different cultural groups. The Carpatho-Rusyns originate in the Carpathian Rus, which is in the Carpathian Mountains. The Carpatho-Rusyns are a stateless group, and many historically immigrated to other countries. This mixed-method study examines cultural participation and identity among Carpatho-Rusyn descendants (n = 51). Data collection comprised both open-ended and closed-ended survey questions. A link to the survey was shared in Facebook groups that relate to Carpatho-Rusyn culture, genealogy, and history. Closed-ended survey items were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while open-ended items were thematically coded. The findings indicate that most participants do not align with particular Carpatho-Rusyn groups, yet many still uphold cultural traditions, especially related to food and holidays. Qualitative insights emphasize the significance of cultural pride and distinction. Ultimately, this study highlights unique facets of Carpatho-Rusyn heritage and its lasting importance for descendants living in various countries, especially the United States. Finally, this paper concludes with practical implications that center on the importance of developing educational programs, community engagement strategies, and cultural awareness initiatives to preserve and promote the culture. Full article