The Human Genographic Project

Category: Worst Déjà-vu

In 2005, the National Geographic Society and IBM announced they would collaborate on a project to collect, store and analyze 100,000 DNA samples, creating a global database of human populations. The stewards of the $40 million project hoped to steer clear of the controversies associated with the earlier, fraught (and ultimately terminated) Human Genetic Diversity Project by stressing that this latest incarnation has great historical value. They say the project will enhance understanding of the evolution and migration of human populations over hundreds of millennia. Indigenous peoples are actively resisting the project, however, arguing that a 'science-based' mapping of peoples poses a serious threat to their rights, which are based on the fact of their original inhabitation of the land. Debra Harry, executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism, explains that the project pits one knowledge system against another. Besides, she says, "We don't need this speculative information -- we already know where we come from."