Ghosts in the Machine: Possessive Selves, Inert Kinship, and the Potential Whiteness of “Genealogical” Indigeneity

Abstract

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.

1. Ghosts in the Machine: Possessive Selves, Inert Kinship, and the Potential Whiteness of “Genealogical” Indigeneity1

Beginning about a decade ago and for a period of about five years, a group of academic scholars, archivists, and nearly 50 student employees built the “Digital Archive Database” or “DAD”, for short. Together, we worked through the entangled complexities of bringing database technology, people, concepts, multidisciplinary scholarship, methodology, and empirical aptitudes into proximity with several major sets of historical documents including, among others, church sacramental records, censuses, and fur trade records and accounts. From its inception, part of the stated objectives of DAD included an explicitly public mandate that sought to produce a series of “historical-content databases…available to anyone pursuing policy, legal, genealogical, religious, or scholarly research-related projects”.2 As we have witnessed in the decade that followed, however, the database’s main use appears to be a finding aid for those engaging in genealogical explorations.

Prior to making the database fully public, a series of beta tests was undertaken with individuals located in central and western Canada, many of whom were born and raised in Indigenous communities. These users demonstrated genealogical databases’ potential utility for triangulating the oral histories of their families against “the historical record”, as they were for individuals attempting to “find themselves”. In retrospect, this should not have surprised us: part of the enduring “mediating power” of technology (i.e., Latour 2005, 1999, 1987) is that it offers different “affordances” (Davis 2020) based on time, place, and context. Genealogical databases are thus neither uniformly good nor bad—instead, like all forms of power, they are dangerous (cf. Foucault 1984, p. 343).3 Part of what I will argue here is that the looming presence of white possessiveness (Moreton-Robinson 2014, 2015) in Canada’s ostensibly reparative reconciliation era renders this particularly the case, a factor I will return to in the article’s third part.

The point of this article, however, is neither to evaluate the increasingly powerful role that databases (and databasing) appear to be playing in the constitution of modern subjectivities in toto, nor is it necessarily to critique their growing presence in the global rise of the phenomena of Pretendianism/self-indigenization, though it will refer to both. Instead—and perhaps more abstractly—I wish to explore the increased power of what I term here the possessive self as a central dynamic of identity-making, mark its relationship to white possessiveness (Moreton-Robinson 2014, 2015), offer an argument for why I think genealogical databases potentially play a magnifying role in encouraging such possessive tendencies, and then conclude with a discussion about how they may be utilized in ethical ways to Indigenous relationality. I undertake this admittedly ambitious argument in three parts.

Part one undertakes a conceptual discussion of identity, engaging with cultural studies scholar/sociologist Stuart Hall’s work in particular, to position identity both as socially constructed rather than innate, fixed, or pre-given, and as embedded in an agentic notion of self that directs that construction: Hall subscribes to a deeply relational (rather than possessory) ontology of identity, and he offers a sophisticated conceptual “mesh” for thinking about how to come to terms with its fluidity, the power dynamics involved in its formation, and the ethical implications of representation. Part two then undertakes a discussion of Moreton-Robinson’s (2014, 2015) notion of “white possessiveness”—foundational to the discipline of Indigenous studies—as an orienting lens for thinking about the broad commonalities that the Pretendianism/self-Indigenization literature share in common. I position these phenomena as variegated forms of white possessiveness that exploit the constructed character of identity while ignoring the deep connections to history, culture, community and, above all, relational accountability that otherwise accord all identities their ethical meaning, perhaps Indigenous identities in particular. Part three then explores the magnifying power of databases to encourage these kinds of possessiveness, and the conceptual contradictions around identity they lay bare, and I conclude by offering an example of how more nuanced, ethical engagement with these technologies might be practiced. We begin, however, with an exploration of Stuart Hall’s articulation of identity, the role that self/subjectivity plays in that articulation, and how his identity framework assists us in thinking about the role of the self in the dynamics of identity-making.

2. (Cultural) Identity-Making in the Modern Age—The Role of the “Self”

Métis Identity, Neck Bone Soup, and ‘Rababoo’:4 I have driven the six or so hours from my city of residence to Batoche, Saskatchewan, roughly an hour north of the bustling city of Saskatoon. I am “home” to attend Batoche Days, the annual Métis celebration held at the historic battleground between Métis troops and Canada’s army during the 1885 Battle of Batoche.5 As thousands converge on its lush, rolling hills, we begin to set up all manner of shelter, from nylon sheets tied to branches to luxury motorhomes to everything in between. We listen to fiddling, watch jigging, talent contests, and strength games, eat bannock with whatever venders pile on it, and generally catch up with extended family and friends. Early in the evening on the second day, I happen to meet the producer of a French camera crew filming a documentary about the legacy of centuries of French contact in other countries. He has traveled to Canada to interview the “Métis descendants of the original French Voyageurs who came to Canada from France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”. He looks somewhat disappointed though and, discovering that I am a professor, he whispers to me his exasperation about the fact that the younger Métis do not even speak French! He seems frustrated because there is not much that is obviously different about (his) ‘us’—at least, we certainly do not seem Indigenous in the same way ‘First Nations’ do. He cannot place us; many of us ‘look’ the part, and yet we seem to act more like cowboys than Indians.

Feeling somewhat defensive, I ask him what he expected to find. His answer sounds as though he has at least taken the time to immerse himself in Métis history. I point out to him that France has changed considerably since the French revolution in the late eighteenth century, so why should Métis not only be allowed but expected to have changed? He seems to get my point, yet my comments ring hollow; he still seems dissatisfied. His crew member approaches and whispers something in French; he quickly thanks me for my time, and they pile into their rental vehicle and drive off in a cloud of dust, no doubt in search of a powwow down the road. Feeling frustrated and oddly offended by our conversation, I traverse the hordes of exasperated mothers and dusty, sticky, noisy children to my family’s campsite on the Batoche grounds.

When I get there, one of my uncles is among the four or five relatives seated around a small, crackling campfire. My uncles embody much of what, for me, it means to be Métis. They are huge, dark, charismatic men with massive, gnarled, tattooed hands and forearms, dark, flashing eyes, jet black mustaches, and booming laughs. While I have never seen them violent, they exude an aura that says they would be, cheerfully, if the situation ever arose that called for it. My uncle Ralph, his trademark cigarette dangling precariously from his lips, is making neck-bone soup in a large, dented pot set in the coals of an open campfire. One by one, the potatoes he is peeling disappear into his huge, brown hands. They are expertly quartered, and tossed ‘plunk!’ into the pot. He sees me coming and says ‘hey hey my boy! Come pull up a chair next to uncle! The soup’s got a while yet!’ I grab a lawn chair and sit down beside the fire, taking good-natured ribbing about the weight I have put on since I became a professor. No one seems to be talking about anything in particular, just cracking jokes and listening to the sounds of the festival—the constant din of fiddles and guitars tuning up in the background, kids shrieking happily, the master of ceremonies’ voice booming in the background, waiting for our bowl of neck bones and bannock. I remember thinking at the time that I had never felt more Métis in my life. I remember thinking, it must be sad for people not to feel this sense of belonging.

The following evening, a Métis theatre company presents a play entitled Rababoo6 to a packed house of nearly a thousand. As I remember it, the play is about a Métis youth who goes off to war, and his promised bride-to-be, Geraldine, who waits for him to come home. It was narrated from the point of view of the bride-to-be in her later, married years—there is thus a ‘Young Geraldine’ and an ‘Old Geraldine’. The play is eloquent and poignant, juxtaposing the crushing poverty of that era—at one point Old Geraldine explains to the audience how to add ‘Métis parsley’ to one’s stew by chopping up blades of grass—with a dry and deadpan wit used to shrug off and rise above the possible indignity of such ingredients. The Old Geraldine steals the show. Standing by a stew pot, she reminisces through a wonderful ‘double speak’, speaking seamlessly to the audience in English, Cree, and Michif. The racier sexual parts of the play are presented in Cree and Michif and are understood only by older adults, while the play’s tamer parts are relayed in English. As those my age and younger sit beside our parents, aunties, uncles, kokums (grandmothers), and mushums (grandfathers), we begin to badger them to translate. They do so at first, but soon become annoyed by our constant interruptions (or at least, my kokum did). Although we all laugh at the clever English monologue and the plays on words, the older people literally howl during the Cree and Michif parts, tears streaming down their wrinkled, wet paper bag brown faces.

Immediately following the play, the crowds break up. We walk back to the cheerfulness of our campfires, chewing on moose-pepperoni and listening to Don Gibson, Webb Pierce, and Patsy Cline wannabees sing in front of the fire; very few head to sleep. For myself, the play was marvelous, and it was heartening to see so many in attendance. However, I could not help but be saddened by the fact that so much of the play was incomprehensible to me; so much richness of detail and elegance of wit were lost in my inability to understand Michif or Cree. Conversely, the next morning the old people were still chuckling to themselves and were, in the way of people for whom oral rather than written language is the preferred mode of engaging in witticisms (and the world), constructing endless double-entendres and plays on the various jokes from the previous night’s entertainment. As I sat by the fire the next morning waiting for breakfast, I could not help but think that there is nothing worse than being on the outside looking in.

*****

I wrote this vignette in 2004, roughly two decades ago, as an afterword to my doctoral dissertation, reflecting on events that took place at the 2002 Back to Batoche Days Festival. My original motivation for writing it was to “ground” my own sense of being Métis in time, place, and familial context, while being honest about my anxieties about my loss of aspects of our culture. This was especially important to me at the time, given the extent to which the previous three hundred-plus pages of my dissertation had been focused on investigating how the Canadian juridical and statistical fields produced extremely one-dimensional and disembodied depictions of Métis identity. It was, in other words, my attempt to ground my “sense of Métis self” relationally in ways historically and contemporarily meaningful to our family and our nation.7 My self-identification as a Métis person has always been embedded in multiple collective contexts, which, though they have changed enormously over the course of my life—particularly with respect to the more recent citizenship boundaries that our provincial nations have created/been forced to create—still anchor who I (think I) am.

By contrast, sociology—the discipline I was trained in—has long been concerned with analyzing the rise of the “individual” as a key part of the uneven growth of modernity over the past number of centuries (see, variously, Taylor 1989; Giddens 1991; Foucault 1975, 1978; Bauman 2000, 2004). Indeed, for most sociologists interested in studying the nature of identity in modernity, it would make little sense to analyze its complexities without giving serious consideration to the role that one’s individual sense of self would—and does—play in its contemporary dynamics of identity-making. As I will return to throughout the article, however, I am less interested in the increased centrality of the individual self than I am with a possessive self, whether we conceive of it individually or collectively. The entitlement that sits at its base has elsewhere been explored, for example, in white male individual and group contexts (cf. Connell 2005; Kimmel 2008), but here we frame it through a close engagement of Moreton-Robinson’s discussion of white possessiveness.

Sociology students in the mid- to late-1990s interested in “cultural” identity could not have credibly made a claim to serious engagement without addressing the demanding theoretical framework fashioned by cultural theorist Stuart Hall (who also trained as a sociologist). Between the early and middle part of the 1990s, Hall (1990, 1991, 1992, 1996, 1997) developed a cultural identity framework positioned in terms of the forms of self-making in and through the inequitable structures and social interactions characterizing the last five centuries of global imperial expansion.8 Hall was a wonderfully complicated thinker, a dense but clear writer, and a prolific publisher. For the purposes of this article, I am less interested in laying out the full complexity of his framework on identity-making, demanding as it is. Instead, I want to engage with the parts of his theorizing in anticipation of the article’s second part, which explores the relationship between self-identification and white possessiveness in the surging place of the possessive self in contemporary dynamics of Indigenous identity-making.

A number of key tensions present in Hall’s framework are useful for thinking about recent trends toward possessive claims to Indigeneity. I will highlight two: identity as produced in a tension between being and becoming; and his rhetorical move from identity to identification and with it, from having to doing (respectively). As we will see, Hall’s goal was not to unmoor identity from a stable, unchanging past (i.e., he was not attempting to break the news that there is no Santa Claus). Rather, he was entreating us to consider that imagined/imaginary past less in terms of a fixed, cemented mooring post to which we can discover and “add” new aspects of identity without leaving its ontological security, and more in terms of a durable “ship’s anchor” that, though stable, is nonetheless constantly being dragged by the insistent, dynamic force of everyday life and the identity-making processes that characterize it.

2.1. Identity as “Being” and “Becoming”

Within the conceptual space provided by Hall eschewing the seductive draw of a “fixed” sense of identity, Hall offered a useful—and now, in many critical race theory discussions, ubiquitous—“double lens” for looking conceptually beyond this fixity but without losing sight of it. Hall emphasized the dynamic, changing character of identity, even as it sought to seek out attachments to collective solidarities rooted in shared (narratives of) historical experience. His earliest musings (i.e., Hall 1990) offered a powerful lens for fixing the ontological complexity of cultural identity in our analytical mind’s eye, including two temporal planes: the first, an apparently timeless and stable “oneness” of shared histories and culture that underlied superficial differences (Hall 1990, p. 225), and the second, a ruptured and discontinuous identity undergoing constant transformation (1990, p. 225).

With respect to the first, identity is conventionally interpreted (read: outside of the academy) to hold a core essence or origin that connects us to a collective past. Identity, in this framing, is something that exists, rooted in a history and tradition that provides a sense of continuity: “our cultural identities reflect the common historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as ‘one people’, with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history” (Hall 1990, p. 223). Hall argues that advocating for such a “oneness” not only offers a powerful anchor of “imaginary reunification” for the fragmentary histories experienced by “enforced diasporas”. It also provides a dignified and coherent pathway for making sense—and suturing together—those fragments. His focus was primarily around the forms of diasporic Blackness that positioned Africa as their ontological birthplace, but this resonates in Indigenous contexts as well. A deep sense of being lies at the heart of this plane of identity, in direct opposition to the last five centuries of imperial forces that have attempted—and impositionally acted—to deny it.

Hall juxtaposes this first “emplaced” sense of identity with a second sense. His focus is on Black Caribbean identity, but again, it resonates with respect to the dynamics of Indigenous identity-making as well. In a number of striking passages, he writes that identity “…is [no] mere trick of the imagination. It has its histories–and histories have their real, material and symbolic effects. The past continues to speak to us. But it no longer addresses us as a simple, factual ‘past’…” (1990, p. 226). In juxtaposing a creative tension between the two lenses (between “being”, as articulated above, and “becoming”), Hall (1990, pp. 226–27) thus encouraged us to “think of…identities as ‘framed’ by two axes or vectors, simultaneously operative: the vector of similarity and continuity; and the vector of difference and rupture”. “Becoming” thus emphasizes the processual and dynamic nature of identity, always in tension with narratives and practices of “being”. As such, a focus on both vectors means that “…[I]dentities always have to be thought of in terms of the dialogic relationship between these two axes. The one gives us some grounding in, some continuity with, the past. The second reminds us that what we share is precisely the experience of a profound discontinuity…” (1990, p. 227).

Hall’s typically astute rhetorical strategy of articulating identity in the context of multiple tensions (with its conceptually Hegelian echoes) allows for sophisticated explorations of the form(ul)ation of cultural identities in the modern/western world. What he appears less concerned about—or at least, focused on—is the looming presence of whiteness (let alone white possessiveness) in individualized attempts to make the conceptual leap between those spaces.9 As we will discuss further below, however, these tensions assume particular (unbalanced) forms in an age where the presence of agentic, individualized, and apparently unmoored selves, free to make decisions and psychic investments about self-identification, have moved to the fore as a key dynamic of identity-making in the modern age.

2.2. From Identity to Self-Identification, From Having to Doing

Though I have employed the concept of identity here to describe Hall’s theorizing, Hall (1996) himself deliberately undertook a crucial rhetorical move away from this term to identification. This move signalled his intent to reduce a focus on the former as a noun, to the latter as a processual verb. If identities are not a-socially fixed but rather formed through continuous—and, in our imperial world, sometimes profoundly unequal—processes of identification inextricably embedded in the social context of time and place, and likewise, if we are each in a constant state of suspension in the taut tension between “being” and becoming”, this rhetorical move allowed Hall (and us) to understand identities not as things we “have” but instead as actions we “perform” or “do”.

This switch arguably allows for more nuanced understandings of how identities are constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed over time and across different contexts. Of particular interest to me is that it infuses a crucial note of agency into his discussion about how identities are formed and/but, crucially, never fully formed. Identities are not simply imposed upon us: we have a role to play in embodying them (though Hall was enough a student of Fanon to understand the constitutive power of internalizing external discourses in those embodiments). Perhaps more directly relevant to our argument below, however, the switch from identity to identification arguably emphasizes a contingent, relational aspect of self that is suspended between (to phrase it bluntly) who we say we are, and who others say we are. How is one’s identification shaped through interactions with others, rather than being simply the result of what we think we are, based on how and what we perceive ourselves to be? As I describe next, this latter state, whether in the context of an individual or group, is a key characteristic of what Aileen Moreton-Robinson has described as “white possessiveness”. I will explore these phenomena in further detail next.

3. The Possessive Self: White Possessiveness in the Production of Anti-Indigenous Identity

A west coast university campus, spring, mid-2010s: I have been invited by a graduate student association to sit on a panel with several other Indigenous scholars in anticipation of the publication of our books, all of which are due out from our respective academic presses during that calendar year. We have been encouraged to give presentations including, but not necessarily limited to, our book’s content. Following the presentations, we engage with the audience in an extended question and answer segment. As is typical, I receive several questions on why I appear to be advocating limiting who should get to call themselves Métis, and the potential dangers of such proscriptive boundaries. The panel itself eventually concludes and following this, each of the panelists individually engages with a lineup of questioners too shy or too unsure to ask their questions during the panel itself.

Among these individuals, a faculty member from a different university seems particularly upset about my stance on Métis identity. This was hardly a new occurrence for me, factually or emotionally. With an internal sigh, I steel myself to listen to her build her case. She has brought along what she describes as “her” genealogy and is taking issue with the “edge-piecing” I had laid out as what I regard as the geographical—and sociological—edges of the Métis nation. Apparently, these boundaries failed to include her genealogy’s geographical origins. Vigorously shaking a small sheaf of papers at me, she narrates a brief commentary about several ancestors who were, she relayed, “legitimately Red River Métis”. She explains their arrival as Hudson’s Bay Company employees sent, during the heyday of the mid-nineteenth century, to facilitate the region’s fur trade. They had “married into” (my phrasing, emphatically not hers) local First Nations families. Over nearly two centuries later, she points to the hundreds of “Métis descendants” (her phrasing—emphatically not mine) that ensued from these original unions and contained, to a greater or lesser degree of completion, in the now-crumpled document in her hand.

I gently reply that we were on First Nations territory now, regardless of any historical Métis presences. Having Métis ancestry thus did not necessarily make one Métis today, any more than white ancestry made one white today. Even as I begin to formulate the question, she shakes her head vehemently. She repeats that she is not white. I mildly ask her how she can know that, given that she had grown up in Canada outside of an Indigenous community and, possibly, an Indigenous family? She continues to shake her head. Finally, as I attempt to ask a further question,10 she emphatically slices the air between us with her document, cutting off my question. Her face flushed with barely contained vexation, she emphatically snaps “Look! I just don’t want to be white, okay?!”. And with that, she grabs her bag, stuffs her document inside, and stalks off. A brief, embarrassed silence follows her departure. We collectively take a breath, and I invite the next person in line.

*****

My own exasperation with the questioner in this vignette notwithstanding, I want to be clear that I am not opposed to the idea that self-identification—individual or collective—ought to occupy an important part of our conversations about identification/identity-making in the contemporary world. Indeed, as a collective marker for evaluating contemporary claims to Indigeneity, it has constituted an important moment in Indigenous nations’ symbolic struggles for justice. It is a central tenet, for example, for how the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples positions Indigeneity, now adopted by nearly every nation-state in the world. It has similarly constituted a key marker in several Canadian Supreme Court of Canada cases over the last two decades, used by non-juridical actors to ground Indigenous identity claims (see Andersen 2021). It is also viewed by many as preferable to external or “third party” rules and regulations, such as those of the Indian Act in Canada, whose sexist provisions legally severed the relationships of otherwise Indigenous women and their children from their Indigenous communities and nations. What could be fairer and more inclusive, perhaps especially in an Indigenous context, than positioning individual and collective self-identification as the centrepiece in the dynamics of this identity-making?

To return to Hall’s discussion that we began part one with, part of the power of his theorizing is that encourages a dynamic and evolving sense of identity, constantly negotiated between the powerful imaginary of a fixed past (i.e., ‘being’) and an always unfolding present and future (i.e., ‘becoming’). It likewise pushes back against “end-state” understanding of identities as individualized possessions, as something we are, and something we own. His framework thus allows us to attend empirically to the social conditions, co-constituted by globalization/modernity, that produce the currents that contemporary identity-making navigate.

But more even than that, Hall’s theorizing is attractive for the fundamental dignity it accords, especially to collectivities struggling against centuries of imperial imposition, through its insistence on the lived immediacy (cf. Hokowhitu 2009) or density (see Andersen 2009) of our collective solidarities’ fundamental humanity. Hall’s theories only make sense—indeed, can only make sense—when viewed in light of this ontological a priori. The tension between being and becoming in fact fuels the cultural engine that co-constitutively crafts all collective senses of self, including those of Indigenous peoples. It is perhaps worth pausing here for a moment to consider how big a thing it is to propose, as Hall has done, a theoretical framework that immediately destabilizes originary claims to identities, especially in a world that otherwise discursively and materially attempts to diminish or outright dismiss our humanity—often symbolically, but violently, too, when deemed necessary. In other words, this theorizing rests on a confidence in the presence of a deep relationality (cf. TallBear 2021; Wildcat and Voth 2023), of our people’s collective sense of being.

The tensions Hall theorizes within operate according to distinct ontological, epistemological, and axiological premises that, as I argue next, make them useful for thinking through the socio-political processes within which possessive identity dynamics are being privileged over other (relational, accountable) ones. In particular, a growing white possessiveness (Moreton-Robinson 2014, 2015) acts in ways that attempt to stabilize, fix, and reduce the rich and diverse range of meanings present in Indigenous practices of identification to those rooted in simplistic desires to obtain, secure, and possess. All of this has the effect of undermining the ongoing efforts of Indigenous communities and nations to assert identities in ways that respect Indigenous sovereignty—over identity, but over territory and governance structures as well—and sustain existing systems of relational accountability.

What do I mean by my use of the term white possessiveness? Extending Lipsitz’s (1998) discussion about the “possessive investment in whiteness”, Indigenous scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015) has explored and concretized the term in an explicitly racialized context. Tying the emergence of a “possessive individualism” to the transition from feudalism to modernity and the emergence of political and economic individualism (2015, p. 49), she details how Indigeneity came to be “known” and “owned” (at least, in colonizer thinking) by white colonizers and bureaucrats. With the growth of imperial ideologies and colonial practices, Indigenous peoples came to be “constituted in and deployed by racialized discourse as white social constructs and epistemological possessions” (Moreton-Robinson 2014, p. 475). Her argument resonates in novel ways with Said’s (1978) characterization of orientalism, which he famously situated as an invention of European intellectuals and colonial bureaucrats created for the purposes of settlement, governance, and categorization.

Moreton-Robinson (2015) positions the growth of white possessiveness in two critical senses: as an intra- and inter-subjective phenomenon (Moreton-Robinson 2015, p. 49). Regarding the former, we can think of the intimate relationship between liberalism and “homo economicus”, that is, men who had sufficiently evolved to enjoy the economic fruits of liberalism through a mature self-possession. Those who failed to display sufficient maturity left themselves open to the logics, programmes, and technologies of discipline that constituted a crucial element of liberalism (what Hindess (2001) has elsewhere referred to as its “unfreedom”). Regarding the latter, inter-subjective possessiveness, Moreton-Robinson (2015) writes that

[a]t the ontological level the structure of subjective possession occurs through the imposition of one’s will-to-be on the thing which is perceived to lack will, thus it is open to being possessed. This enables the formally free subject to make the thing it’s own.

(2015, p. 50)

In other words, white possessiveness regards Indigeneity as passive and inert and as such, open to be claimed, in ethics and in practice. At the level of territory, for example, the doctrine of terra nullius is grounded in precisely this worldview.

Of course, the ability, the opportunity, and the choice to claim Indigeneity are always differentially prefigured by the material and symbolic realities and legacies of colonialism. Not everyone has the same agency or feels the same desire to act on and constitute themselves anew. Kim TallBear (2021, p. 471) notes, for example, two distinct “types of property-claiming ‘Native American DNA’ test takers”, one of which is “non-identity seeking”. For this latter group—including, for example, professional genealogists—TallBear remarks that

the reward is the naming and confirmation of branches in their tree… Ultimately, they seem to use their own family tree as a window to comprehend world history, which is understandably fascinating. …This type of property claim does not necessarily involve an identity claim.

(2021, pp. 471–2, emphasis added)

The second type, TallBear explains, is arguably more possessive. They make what she terms a “double property claim” (still without attempting to relate to Indigenous peoples). These individuals “come to DNA testing with the specific goal of finding scientific proof to support a claim to Indigenous identity, often with great emotional investment” (2021, p. 472). In such an affective state, they “might combine genealogical documentation and DNA testing to provide greater support for say again a Mohawk in their family tree, which leads them to then not only claim an ancestral lineage (‘my ancestors, my lineage, my heritage’), but such a person might also race-shift to claim a Mohawk ‘identity’” (TallBear 2021, p. 472).

TallBear is (justifiably) among the most publicly recognized leaders of a rapidly expanding subfield of scholarship that critiques the growing and now global phenomena of self-Indigenization/Pretendianism. Much of this subfield’s critique, whether explicitly cast as such or not, operates according to analytical logics that Moreton-Robinson’s (2014, 2015) concept ably encapsulates. This subfield was conceptually anticipated in the early research of anthropologist Circe Sturm (2011), who explored the U.S. tendency of certain “white” groups in the U.S. to “self-Indigenize” as Cherokee, citing their unfulfilling experiences of whiteness as motivating experiences. She writes “[t]he vast majority of these racial converts describe their experience of contemporary whiteness as being plagued by guilt, loneliness, isolation and the gnawing sense of racial, spiritual, and cultural emptiness” (2013, p. 87).11 During this same time period, Pearson (2013) explored Appalachian settler self-Indigenization, explaining how they framed as anti-colonial their resistance to external resource extraction projects such as those of the coal industry.

More recently, Gaudry and Leroux (2017) have written specifically about the white settler manipulation of genealogy to fashion (read: fabricate) Métis identity in attempts to gain legal recognition; Gaudry (2018) has argued similarly about how a focus on genealogical manipulation allowed for the wholesale disregard of living Métis communities, part of what he novelly termed “communing with the dead” (a takedown of celebrated Canadian literati Joseph Boyden’s poeticization of his claims to various Indigenous nations’ identities); and Leroux (2019a) has published a since-widely cited book manuscript investigating how white French descendants leveraged tenuous genealogical connections to Indigenous ancestors (in terms of temporal distance or, in some cases, veracity) to anchor their claims to self-Indigenization. Leroux (2019a) regarded this as part of a set of broader settler-colonial narratives involved in the expansion of whiteness. This manuscript in particular is conceptually rigorous and analytically granular, painstakingly laying out the most extensive explanation of the self-Indigenization “field” as based in Canada, including its stakes, its characteristics, and its outcomes.

TallBear (2013, 2021, 2023) has critiqued the use of genetic science in supporting self-Indigenization. Where DNA has been misused to bolster such claims, she argues that it reinforces colonial structures rather than relational forms of belonging. Outside of Canada and the U.S., Junka-Aikio (2016, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023) has written extensively on the recent, external self-Indigenization attempts in the Sapmi (i.e., the Sami homeland) context of Sami identity in Nordic countries, explaining their threat to authentic and long standing representative Sami cultural and political organizations and detailing the influences of external pressures from the various Nordic states and resource extraction industries, and academic appropriation (also see Leroux 2019b). Most recently, Boyer and Smith (2024) have discussed how the effects of self-Indigenization risk undermining Métis self-government and nationhood, while focusing on the epistemic injustice that facilitates such claims.

My sampling of this rapidly expanding subfield demonstrates a set of scholars who explore the motivations and impacts of self-identification that I argue fit broadly within the ontological ambit of white possessiveness, in a broad array of geographical, political, and Indigenously (and colonially) national contexts. Boyer and Smith (2024), for example, criticize self-Indigenization for its potential power to undermine the political autonomy and cultural integrity of Métis communities and nations in Canada, effectively muddying the political waters of legitimate Métis identity. Junka-Aikio (2023) similarly criticizes self-Indigenization for threatening the authentic representation of Sami identity, arguing that it erases genuine Sami voices and experiences at the same time it allows outsiders to co-opt Sami identity for gain. TallBear (2013, 2021) criticizes genetic testing for its reduction of Indigenous belonging to mere biology and in doing so, ignoring the cultural and relational aspects of identity (more on this in the conclusion).

Similarly to Boyer and Smith (2024), Gaudry (2018), Leroux (2019a, 2019b), and Gaudry and Leroux (2017) deprecate self-Indigenization as a colonial tactic for its dilution of Métis identity and undermining of Indigenous sovereignty. It effectively opens the door to non-Indigenous individuals and groups to attempt to co-opt Indigenous rights and privileges without genuine connections to Indigenous communities or nations. Leroux (2019a) in particular documents how self-Indigenization reinforces whiteness and white privilege/supremacy under the guise of Indigenous identity claims, arguing that self-Indigenizing claims and practices in fact represent a new practice and manifestation of settler colonialism. And Pearson (2013) positions self-Indigenization in the Appalachian context as a form of cultural appropriation that distorts historical realities and in doing so, undermines the legitimate struggles of actual Indigenous communities and nations. It thus serves to legitimize white settlers’ claims to land and identity.

Of particular relevance to our argument here, much of this subfield of literature focuses on one component of identity-making in particular to ground their critiques. If, as Hall (1990) articulates, identity always sits in a space with a pole of “being” at one (conceptual) end and “becoming” at the other, a subset of these authors make use of history’s role (genetic and genealogical) in strategies to position (new) identity narratives (see Hall 1990, pp. 222–23). For example, Boyer and Smith (2024) stress the misuse of historical narratives and genealogical manipulation; TallBear (2021) focuses on the reduction of Indigeneity to the biological fetishism of genetic markers; in addition to the goal of pursuing legal recognition, Gaudry (2018) points to these individuals’ and groups’ focus on genealogical records; Gaudry and Leroux (2017) similarly focus on their selective use of distant—and otherwise disconnected from living cultures—ancestry; and Leroux (2019a) focuses on genealogical constructions in the re-interpretation and even outright invention of historical relationships as key elements of their self-Indigenization strategy.

In this subset of scholarship, genealogy has played a role in buttressing fraudulent claims. In the third and final section of this article, I want to spend some time talking about what role, specifically, databased genealogies play in these claims. I am certainly willing to agree that these individuals and groups would search for (and discover) whatever means were necessary to forward their claims. However, I also think it is worth thinking about the “affording power”12 (see Davis 2020) that is potentially available in the centralized databasing of genealogical records that magnify the possibilities available for claimants to translate their desires into practical application. How have databases, by organizing and making available historical records, created new possibilities for possessive selves to use genealogy as the sole or primary source of self-identification? Or to phrase it more bluntly, what is it easier to do now—in certain cases, exponentially easier—than it would have been two decades ago, and (outside the competencies of knowledgeable experts), nearly unthinkable two decades before that? We turn to this discussion now.

4. The Possessive Potentialities of Databased Identities—The Rise of a Feral Technology

Amelie Ford (Grandmother is Maggie Rose Hayes), 21 February 2019:

What is the best way to search for ancestry related to the trail of tears and family member who moved to Canada and joined the army where aboriginal ancestry is definitely but origins unclear… my grandmother[‘]s father who she never knew was Ojibwe with American indian roots but lived out his life Bear River, Nova Scotia and had ties to the [Mi’kmaq] and was a motorcycle mess[e]nger in wW2 two he had no definite birth records and my grama had 3 brothers all with first Nations status which she decided was best not to pursue one because of her age and two because she had a rough life and felt it would have been even harder had she identified as [First] Nations when she was young… I want to find out where my grampa was from and what his story was, was he American or Canadian why didn’t he have birth records…I don’t care much for funding or money and doubt it would win me any status or make me a part of any tribe but I feel it is important just to trace my liniage [sic] and connect the dots….please help. Also army records traced someone with the same name and approximate birth year to the Apache tribe circa 1914 but there is no way to be sure that he is the same man since Joseph was a very common name to be given to native children who were having there aboriginal heritage stripped from them at that time. Who am.i?13

*****

In 2014, Time Magazine published an opinion piece noting that, perhaps next to pornography, genealogy represented the Internet’s most popular use (Rodriguez 2014). The questionable facticity of this claim notwithstanding, genealogy has far outstripped its early roots in upholding white supremacy (e.g., Abu El-Haj 2012; Gordon-Reed 2008; Roberts 2011) to become a mass—and exceedingly commercialized—phenomenon. Ancestry.com and similar genealogy sites (i.e., 23andme, MyHeritage, FamilyHistory, etc.) generate more than a billion dollars annually. In their rise in popularity, genealogical sites have become increasingly central mediating devices through which stories about identity are being produced.

Such trends will likely persist as we continue to move, in Arthur’s (2015) suggestive phrasing, from storing memories in neurological networks to digital ones—that is, from our heads to computers, and of more specific relevance in this section, databases. Such processes, both temporal and technological, have precipitated important questions about the ethical role of genealogical databases in providing apparently objective information for use in identity claims. In this final section of the article, I want to position genealogical databases as potential producers of “inert” forms of kinship in two senses, both of which rely on a positioning of databases as a prime example of what actor network theory (ACT) doyen Bruno Latour (1999) has referred to as a “black box” (more on this below).

In the first sense, I will examine the democratization and (thus) magnification of claims to Indigeneity potentially afforded by the mass availability of genealogical databases. In the second, I will emphasize how this democratization has produced a corresponding lack of relational accountability in what database users (individual or collective) can make historical records “mean”. The first is an access issue and the second an interpretive one, but they share a similar epistemological lack of collective accountability regarding the use of historical records and associated knowledge in the possessive dynamics of contemporary Indigenous identity-making. Before doing so, however, it is probably worth it to spend a little bit of time explaining what people think databases are (i.e., primarily technical), what they actually are (i.e., deeply political), and how they work. This requires a brief discussion of actor network theory, juxtaposed against a set of more conventional database definitions offered by data companies.

Conceptually, databases are, in an important sense, a prime example of what Bruno Latour has described through the metaphor of a “black box” (1999), an important element of the broader oeuvre of the field of actor network theory (ANT). Bearing in mind the specific context within which ANT would contextualize his framing, Latour’s metaphor is meant to demonstrate

the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become.

(1999, p. 304)

ANT (as developed by Latour, Callon, Law, and others) is a scholarly field concerned primarily with demonstrating the complexity and deeply co-constituted nature of the otherwise usually inviolably differentiated worlds of the social, the technological, and the natural. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying a theoretically rich but conceptually decentralized field, a number of features in ANT are useful for thinking about the power of databases and data networks as increasingly important dynamics of identity-making. For example, in their attempts to capture the complexity and interconnectivity of social, material, and natural worlds, ANT scholars focus on the equal ability of human and non-human actors to influence outcomes. All actors are (potentially) equally agentic and all are conceptualized equally in terms of their potential to influence outcomes. Crucially, they are conceptualized in the theoretical, methodological, and empirical contexts of a dynamic and ongoing network constantly made and remade through the associations among actors. Likewise, all networks are potentially unstable, but longer standing or more powerful ones can assume the “black box” characteristics mentioned above (see generally Callon 1986; Latour 1987, 1999, 2005; Law 1992).

My views on databases sit between, on the one hand, ANT-thinking, and Bourdieuvian social field methodology on the other.14 Large data corporations offer more straightforward, if overly technologically deterministic, definitions. For example, Microsoft describes them as “a tool for collecting and organizing information. Databases can store information about people, products, orders, or anything else”.15 From IBM: a database is “a logical grouping of data. It contains a set of related table spaces and index spaces. Typically, a database contains all the data that is associated with one application or with a group of related applications. You could have a payroll database or an inventory database, for example.”16 Finally, Google defines the function of their specialized “cloud databases” in terms of their ability to “organize and store structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data just like traditional on-premises databases.”17

In light of ANT theory’s ontological positioning, understanding databases as technical accomplishments misses the dynamic, more or less unstable but always deeply political networks that produce them. That is, the dense sets of sites, social relations, and webs through which people, technology, and meanings interact. Similarly, understanding databases as fundamentally political means to understand them not in terms of what they reflect, but what they refract, particularly in terms of what and how information goes in and what and how data come out.18 In sum, databases are not (just) constitutive, but generative, which means they must be positioned not just as a form of power, but a forum of power (that is, they possess internal dynamics unreducible—though powerfully linked—to the structures of power outside their boundaries). In an Indigenous genealogical context, when this form of power is disconnected from Indigenous control, it risks evolving into a form of ‘feral technology’—a phenomenon that Indigenous nations have only recently begun to grapple with the awesome power of.

Databases increasingly form the core of much of the genealogical work that nearly all Indigenous nations must engage in to maintain their membership/citizenship lists, a point to which we will tangentially return in the conclusion. Additionally, however, a large body of scholarship scattered over multiple scholarly disciplines has written about the central and constitutive power of database technology to shape individual and collective identity. Perhaps the most familiar of these is in relation to censuses (e.g., Andersen 2014; Anderson 2006; Kertzer and Arel 2002; Skerry 2000), but more specifically, scholars have explored the relationship between specifically genealogical database technologies of various sorts and identity formation, with mixed opinions about their ethics or utility (see Bolnick 2008; Harmon 2007; Nelson 2016; Rapp et al. 2004; Schramm 2021; TallBear 2013). Bearing this in mind, let me proceed with the two contexts I raised above: democratization of access and the lack of accountability in interpretation.

4.1. Increased Availability of Access to Genealogical Records

Clearly, genealogical databases have transformed the accessibility of historical records for laypersons. The widespread availability of these databases—part of the larger, global “information glut” (Andrejevic 2013 also see Webster 2014) of the last four decades, as well as the increasing commercialization of various kinds of genealogical pursuits (i.e., Nash 2015; Nelson 2016; TallBear 2013)—has thus radically lowered the bar for motivated individuals or groups wishing to trace their ancestry through the different methods (increasingly) available to do so. Likewise, a marked growth in professional genealogists and increased public culture foci (including, for example, multiple popular television shows that trace celebrities’ genealogies) have conspired to produce a climate conducive to the inexpensive and efficient exploration of historical records for evidence of “their” ancestry. Although this may (in certain contexts) be regarded as a “good thing”, it also greatly magnifies the “possessive” potential to choose certain sets of records and branches of genealogy and ignore or marginalize others.

Thus, although I believe, with many, that genealogical archives and the databases that organize them potentially offer indispensable tools for more deeply situating us in time and place, we have yet to grapple with the risks of the capturing, containment, and production of highly selective peelings of history that offer up unethical or “inert” forms of kinship.19 Such kinship, on its own, involves little relationality, no necessary involvement, and thus, no responsibility to engage with the Indigenous communities or nations from which the historical information was collected and the collectives to whom such self-identifications are attached. This is, I argue, white possessiveness in practice, and while the increased ease of access to genealogical data has empowered legitimate genealogical curiosity, it has likewise facilitated the rise of possessive self-Indigenization and Pretendianism. In short, the affordances genealogical databases risk fuelling what Ashley Barnwell (2013) has elsewhere described as an authenticating route to affirm a desired identity that is at once “a technology of self-authentication, [and] a creative act of revisionist life writing” (Barnwell 2013, p. 263).

Finally, the significant growth of databases, both in their availability, ease of use, and the rise of genealogy as a profession; the accompanying increase in the sophistication of data infrastructures to organize and facilitate the recall of data, and with this, the creative synthesis and integration of formerly disparate record sets; and finally, other significant advances in databasing technology should give us pause when we hear claims from recently self-identifying individuals (or groups) about the apparent unavailability of historical records to support such claims. Speaking to the specific context of celebrated novelist Joseph Boyden’s claims that claiming Métis identity is rendered difficult/impossible by the lack of evidence in “written” records, for example, Macdougall (2021) argues that

If the public spectacle of Boyden’s unmasking shows us anything, it is that claiming Indigeneity is one thing but locating the evidence to support such a claim is quite another. And although many would have us believe that this is an impossible task, they are, quite simply, wrong. …The history of [the Métis] nation is far from shrouded in mystery. While there may yet be records to be identified, to argue that they do not exist is not only misleading, it is incorrect.

(Macdougall 2021, pp. 237, 238)

4.2. Unaccountable Interpretations

The democratization of genealogical record access has, additionally, produced interpretive challenges relating to determining the meaning(s) of documents contained in historical records. These might include terminology relating to surnames, “Christian” names, locations, even, in some cases, individual alphabetical letters, or the racialized tenor of historical-to-contemporary translation. Regarding the latter, for example, the official Blog for Library and Archives Canada reveals the challenges of this translative ambiguity by highlighting a tension between legal and legislative fields, and family and community practice.

…a researcher will find that early documents may use derogatory terms, such as “Indian”, “Half-breed”, and “Eskimo”, which have since been replaced by accurate terms. It is important therefore to recognize that languages have contexts and histories. As cultures change, so do the meanings of words and their usage for a given period, place and culture. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes three distinct groups of Indigenous peoples: Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples. These are separate groups, with each having unique and diverse heritage, language, cultural practices and spiritual beliefs.20

Evidencing the potential exploitation of this ambiguity, Leroux (2019b) details the manner in which adherents to the growing subfield of so-called “eastern Métis” studies

see a distinct rights-bearing Métis people every time an author (mostly British colonial authorities displaying strong prejudice towards French- Canadians and even worse sentiment towards Indigenous peoples) uses the terms “Métis” or “Bois-Brûlés” in a document written in the 1800s to refer to a mixed-race individual (Leroux 2019b, p. 107).

It is thus important to note that searches of historical records containing apparently Indigenous information or information of relevance to Indigenous peoples are often detached from the collective practices that govern historical Indigenous recognition structures, let alone that exist today. In effect, the possessive potential of databases allows users to construct narratives that serve their personal desires, rather than adhering to the relational/communal ethics of recognition otherwise central to Indigenous peoplehood.

As such, one might well make the argument that in providing “objective data”, genealogical databases create the conditions for possessive senses of authority and legitimacy to trump the complicated dynamics of collective identity claims. Certain claims, in certain contexts, are deeply rooted in feelings of defensiveness and perceived victimization (see especially Leroux 2019a, 2019b; Sturm 2011). Further, the very character of how databases store and organize data require them to abstract historical records from their cultural and relational contexts, as Macdougall (2014) explores in her nuanced discussion of Métis society in historical northwestern Saskatchewan. In doing so, they enable users to craft identity narratives that require little or no accountability to the collective who they are otherwise tacitly claiming connection to, whether they know it or not: Indigenous communities and/or nations. The ethical implications of this phenomenon are sobering, particularly with respect to their potential to undermine the collective recognition accountability structures that literally sustain Indigenous nations. To repeat the framing of identity laid out in NAISA’s 2015 Statement of Ethnic Fraud, “Belonging does not arise simply from individual feelings—it is not simply who you claim to be, but also who claims you.”21

In sum, if in some respects increased access to genealogical data empowers Indigenous communities, nations, and their citizens (a possibility we will explore in the conclusion), such access potentially also carries significant risks. Indeed, the very features that make these databases accessible—wide availability, ease of use, and the wide bandwidth of historical documents, and thus choices to identify as something other than a “self” disinterested in its whiteness—also make them powerful tools for the construction of possessive, unaccountable claims to Indigeneity. Moreover, the proliferation of self-Indigenization claims facilitated by these databases have likewise resulted in a paradoxical situation in which Indigenous nations have been forced into a position in which they have necessarily become increasingly invested in genealogical technologies (i.e., using genealogy or DNA (TallBear 2013) to verify Indigenous citizenship) while also feeling the need to draw harder boundaries around their collective identity boundaries in contexts where relational “greyness” may have been historically ethical. The power of white possessiveness has rendered historical forms of Indigenous accountability nearly impossible, sharpening “border” tensions between, on the one hand, Indigenous sovereignty with the associated need to protect Indigenous knowledge systems and information in the digital age, and ethical recognition practices, and on the other, settler desires to “play Indian” (cf. Deloria 2004).

5. Conclusions: Triangulating Ethical Relationality—From a Possessive to a Prepossessing Self

11 July 2024–Facebook Post (Lisette Desjarlais-Larose, Park Springs, Saskatchewan):

“Good morning. I constantly get amazed at how I continue to learn about our history and country by doing genealogy. I am working on the Brass family line this morning. I don’t post often anymore because I am told all I post is genealogy. Hmm, yes. I don’t have a life. I love history, so I read, research, and do it all over again. … Genealogy is my escape. … Have a great day everyone… William Brass was born about 1863 to 1865 at Swan Lake, Manitoba. He had four wives. The first was known as the Daughter of Sa-qa-miss. They were married about 1880 and she had died before 28 September 1892. Together they had about five children and I don’t know their names. Next William married Sarah Cook on 4 December 1892 at the Key’s Reserve. Sarah was born at Shoal River and was buried on 8 November 1895. I don’t have a record of any children being born to that union. Wife number three was Mary Ann Kematch. They Married on 5 October 1896 at the Key’s Reserve. Mary Ann was the daughter of Edward Kematch and she was born about 1874 at Shoal River, She was buried on 18 November 1902 at the Key’s Reserve. William and Mary Ann had six children: George William Brass (about 1888), Charlotte Brass, Ellen “Bertha” Brass, Margaret Brass (1896), John William Brass (1899) and Robert James Brass (1890). William’s final wife was Elizabeth Mossou and they married on 11 September 1904 at the Key’s Reserve. Elizabeth was born about 1860 at Fort Pelly. She died on 10 February 1944 at the Key and was buried there on February 11, 1944. William and Elizabeth had one son, Solomon Charles Brass (1904–1965).”22

*****

I have arguably painted a bleak picture in this article about the current landscape of “late onset”, possessive claims to Indigenous identity often based on genealogical evidence. Readers might be forgiven for thinking, via my argument, that individuals and groups who make such claims should inevitably be interpellated as “selfish searchers”, whose claims evidence an underlying entitlement that ignores, dismisses, or in certain cases even scorns the identity recognition practices of long-standing Indigenous peoples. As noted in the article’s second part, the self-indigenization/Pretendianism literature in particular has provided much ammunition to legitimize such a position. They have likewise explored the various factors that motivate such claims and have carefully detailed their effects. Despite their varied motivations, all such claims share a common detachment, to greater or lesser degrees, from existing Indigenous recognition practices. And the rise of databasing technology has, I argue, significantly expanded the possibility of such possessive claims.

However, the extended quote I began the conclusion with—written by one of my relatives, an Indigenous woman who in her own words loves history, is an avid genealogical practitioner and was born, raised, and is still living in a vibrant Indigenous community—potentially clouds the picture the article otherwise paints. Genealogical use in this instance does not—and as such, need not—require the “will to possess” that the self-indigenization/Pretendianism literature has documented in such meticulous detail.23 To provide one example of more relational uses of genealogical information (uses that would have been greatly aided with current technological advances in databasing technology), Métis historian Brenda Macdougall (2010, 2021) argues that

[b]y using genealogical reconstruction to analyze the historical interplay between families and non-Métis-created institutions, Métis socio-cultural practices relating to naming practices, popular social and religious events, and living arrangements, we can observe and examine [their society] as it existed.

(2010, p. 16)

And elsewhere, she writes—again, in a Métis context—that “[g]enealogies must be triangulated against additional ethnographic sources such as oral traditions (including family histories), trade journals and correspondence, missionary accounts, newspaper and magazine articles, personal diaries and wills, and travel logs”, arguing that “[t]hese types of textual sources contain details that demonstrate the range of material and social relationships between Métis people, families, and communities across time and space (Macdougall 2021, p. 238). Perhaps just as importantly as Macdougall’s (2010) triangulation of genealogy with other forms of historical documentation is the fact that not only did she form strong relationships with the Metis communities and their members she worked with, but she subsequently turned all the data over to the community (and as well, to the Métis Nation–Saskatchewan’s Registrar’s Office).

This article has explored the constitutive danger of possessiveness in the dynamics of contemporary Indigenous identity-making: dangerous, first, because it supports the liberal idea(l) that as individuals, we know who we are and therefore, we are always who we say we are (the “fixed” notion of identity Hall critiqued). And second, since we are always in the process of becoming, we can be(come) whomever or whatever we want. The colonial contexts that generate these dynamics thus support the premise that—at least for certain classes of people—the mere presence of this emotion should justify the desire to take and defend it: to possess it. This is the possessive self, and when accompanied with a profoundly inert perception of Indigeneity, is the ontological hallmark of white possessiveness, which the mass availability of genealogy databases has strengthened its power of.

In closing, I want to reiterate the case for the importance of archival sources and genealogical databases as tools for building and maintaining belonging in Indigenous communities and nations. In my own family, several aunties, for example, are renowned for their knowledge of family genealogy as contained in written documentation and through oral history as well. One of my cousins, Eli, was raised away from our extended family and community. Several years ago, he completed his Master’s thesis and in the acknowledgments of this powerful work, he wrote the following:

I am also grateful to my Aunt Lisette Desjarlais-Larose, whose work in genealogy provided an early guide to help me build my own family tree and historical investigations. Lisette was there working side by side with me in the archives in 2013, ’14, and ’15 and travelling to and recording interviews with Métis and Cree Elders all across Saskatchewan and Alberta. Lisette…is the true knowledge keeper of our Métis clan…

My cousin’s acknowledgement elegantly captures both the value of archival history to relational identification and the necessity of tying these into the broader chain of family, community, place, and stories through which we might conceptually—and ethically—consider our relationships to Indigeneity, and its relationship to us, even—or perhaps especially—when community members like my aunties push back on the necessities and the limitations of genealogical databases to do so.

Ultimately, genealogical databases alone will do little to improve the social conditions that foster, let alone enhance, relational belonging. Indeed, this article has hopefully demonstrated their distinctive and powerful potential to exacerbate the possessive entitlement that characterizes the growing phenomenon of self-Indigenization/Pretendianism, what Dakota scholar Kim TallBear (2021) has referred to as a move toward “identity” and away from “relationality”. When used ethically, genealogical databases can serve as powerful tools for “vectoring” relationality. However, as Indigenous peoples, we would be fools to think these technologies alone can ethically replace the complex and elegant kinship structures and processes that have shaped our socialities in the teeth of centuries of colonial efforts to diminish or erase them. The hard thing is, given their current influence in the contemporary world—coupled with the rapacity of white possessiveness to claim Indigeneity in the name of individual desire and entitlement—we would equally be fools not to respect and harness their power in ways that benefit our peoples.