Genealogy, Volume 4, Issue 4 (December 2020) – 24 articles

The struggle for work–life balance amongst women in academia who are both mothers and scholars continues to be apparent during a global pandemic highlighting the systemic fissures and social inequalities ingrained in our society, including systems of higher learning. Women of color professors on the tenure track are vulnerable to the intersecting ways capitalism, sexism, and racism exacerbate the challenges faced by motherscholars, making it imperative to explore these nuances. While motherscholars may share advice about navigating family leave policies or strategizing scholarship goals, no one could have prepared us for our motherscholar roles during a pandemic. We were, in some ways, unprepared for giving birth with a heightened level of social isolation and feelings of loneliness, while racial unrest and loud exigencies to protect the lives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) persist. Through three testimonios, we explore how ancestral/indigenous knowledge provides us with ways to persist, transform, and heal during these moments. We share letters written to each of our babies to encapsulate our praxis with ancestral knowledge on mothering. We reflect on matriarchal elders, constricted movement in our daily routines, and ongoing worries and hopes. We theorize this knowledge to offer solidarity with a motherscholar epistemology. Full article

Gaelic laments played an integral role in the deathways of the Highland Scots of Nova Scotia. These often passionate outpourings of grief served as lasting obituaries for the dead and epitomized the richness and vigour of the Gaelic language. As sincere emotional responses, they gave a poetic and performative dimension to the deaths of clergy and other noted community members, as well as beloved relatives and victims of sudden, unexpected deaths, such as drowning and even murder. A casual scan of Gaelic printed sources from newspapers and anthologies will immediately impress the reader with the prolific number of extant elegies. It is therefore necessary to confine the scope of this article to the earliest examples in Nova Scotia, focusing primarily on the creations of the better known, established poets. Several works by less familiar bards have also been included in this study. Full article

Despite disproportionately high rates of intimate partner violence among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women and associations between adolescent dating violence and partner violence in adulthood, little to no research has focused on dating and relationships among AI/AN adolescents. Using exploratory thematic analysis with focus group data (N = 16), we explore this topic among a sample of young AI/AN women (ages 15–17). Results suggest that dating may enhance or inhibit connections to culture or tribal identity. Moreover, responsibility for sustaining cultural knowledge, practices, and lineage may influence choices of reproductive partners for Native women living within colonial structures of governance. The greatest threat in relationships were similar to those from settler colonialism—loss of culture and consequently, self. Promoting healthy relationships among this population should include cultural safety, identity, and involvement, as well as a focus on broader systems, including enrollment policies, that may influence these relationships. Supportive networks and mentorship related to identity and cultural involvement should be available for young AI/AN women. In response to this Special Issue’s call for work that offers creative approaches to conveying knowledge and disruptions to what are considered acceptable narrative approaches we offer illustrations as well as text. Full article

This study examines a historical trauma theory-informed framework to remember Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and/or māhū (LGBTQM) experiences of colonization in Hawai`i. Kānaka Maoli people and LGBTQM Kānaka Maoli face health issues disproportionately when compared with racial and ethnic minorities in Hawai’i, and to the United States as a whole. Applying learnings from historical trauma theorists, health risks are examined as social and community-level responses to colonial oppressions. Through the crossover implementation of the Historical Loss Scale (HLS), this study makes connections between historical losses survived by Kānaka Maoli and mental health. Specifically, this manuscript presents unique ways that Kānaka Maoli describe and define historical losses, and place-based themes that emerged. These themes were: the militarization of land; the adoption of christianity by Kānaka Maoli ali`i; the overthrow of the sovereign Hawaiian monarch; and the importance of māhū and LGBTQ perspectives. Each of these themes will be presented in detail. Written by a queer, mestiza Pinay-American scholar, her mentor, a lesbian Kanaka Maoli scholar/activist, with contributions from Community Advisory Board members, there will also be discussion about ethics of research with and for Kānaka Maoli. Full article

This paper offers a conceptual framework and a set of tools that use rhizomes as a metaphor for healing in the context of oppressive violence. Existing conceptualizations of trauma, trauma recovery, and healing offer important tools for framing and addressing the impacts of oppression on individuals and groups. These exist in a fractured practice ground where practitioners are socialized into divisions such as “micro” vs. “macro” practice and “self-care” vs. “the work.” The Healing is Rhizomatic conceptual framework identifies five nodes (body, felt sense, relationships, place, story) and three dimensions of healing-oriented engagement (recognition, readying the ground, (re)generation) that exist across these approaches. Adaptable to multiple levels of analysis, the conceptual framework focuses on fracture, blockage, and connection as core experiences. These experiences occur in, through, and between the nodes and dimensions. This paper explores use of the conceptual framework and tools for applying it as a mechanism for assessment and reflection about internalized and operational definitions and approaches to healing. Thereby, the framework and tools offer a view of a common practice ground for practitioners engaged in healing work in the context of oppressive violence and is intended to support deeper awareness, collaboration, and coordination of approaches. Full article

During the Second World War, the United Kingdom became an epicenter of transnational, especially transatlantic, marriages, but not all these marriages proved successful. As one disappointed English war bride on her way back home expressed herself, she was “Too shocked to bring her baby up on the black tracks of a West Virginia mining town as against her own home in English countryside of rose-covered fences.” This essay examines the government program developed to provide financial aid and legal advice to British women estranged from or abandoned by their American husbands from the passage of the 1944 Matrimonial Causes (War Marriages) Act to its winding down in 1950. The analysis draws upon a wide range of documents to survey the formulation and implementation of the government response and to consider some illustrative cases dealt with by British consular officials in the United States. These examples illuminate the gap between human behavior envisioned by policy-makers and the more varied behavior encountered by those who carried out the duties charged to them. The cases thus represent the nexus between state intervention and the individual experience of larger-scale social dynamics set off by war and the global movement of populations. Full article

Irish-Pākehā (a European New Zealander of Irish descent) is a settler identity that embodies ancestral relations with forebears and homelands as well as a relationship with Māori, the Indigenous Peoples of Aotearoa-New Zealand. Being of Irish descent carries multiple meanings that can nourish a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, and significant relationships. How have my Irish ancestral relations and places of belonging cultivated in me those relational qualities and ethical–political commitments that inspirit the Indigenous–settler engagements that are part of my personal and professional life? Here I explore the complexities of becoming and being Irish-Pākehā in response to that question. Travelling across generations and two countries, I utilise a series of guiding questions to help construct an Irish-Pākehā diasporic identity through a narrative of belonging. Following Nash, I explore geographies of relatedness, doing kinship, and the effects of identity-making through kinship as a way to understand who I am/am becoming and why being Irish-Pākehā matters in my work with Indigenous Māori. Full article

Indigenous story is about place and our orientation to the place(s) we live through and in. This essay is about Diné (Navajo) identity and its entanglements with the authority of words and the politics of voice within the academy. It is about how voice or narrative are political acts that ground Indigenous peoples in land and territory. In Diné communities, there are ongoing discussions regarding the politics of authority and representation in the erasure of Indigenous voices in academic spaces. Such academic erasure has ripple effects into the ongoing contestation of land and belonging. These ripple effects fuel identity politics among Diné people on the community level. I argue that Diné people themselves are erased and the everyday narrations of our realities and experiences through these normalized academic processes. In addressing those academic processes, I draw attention to another framework for identity politics that encourages and supports not only our voices as Diné people but upholds our intellectual sovereignty and claims to land. I engage narrative to bring forward an understanding that our relationships to words and story extend beyond our tongues. Full article

U.S. imperialism in the Philippines has led to the multiple generations of diasporic conditions of colonial amnesia and systematic forgetting of history. Its impact on the Filipinx community has left unrecorded memories and voices of immigrants silenced, and considered lost to history. This study examines the relationship between U.S. colonialism and imperialism in the Philippines and the experiences of Filipinx immigration to the U.S. through a critical Indigenous feminist lens of visual imagery and storytelling. Given that many of the experiences within the Filipinx diaspora in relation to the American Empire have been systematically forgotten and erased, this study utilizes family photographs in framing the challenges and reinscribes harmful hegemonic U.S. colonial and imperial narratives. With a combination of semi-structured interviews and photo analysis as a form of visual storytelling, the family photographs within the Filipinx diaspora may reframe, challenge, and resist hegemonic U.S. colonial and imperial narratives by holding memories of migration, loss, family belonging, and community across spatial and generational boundaries that attempt to erase by the U.S. nation-state. Results shed light on resistance and survivance through bayanihan (community care) spirit. Full article

Black self-determination, like the movement for civil rights, has long been a struggle on both the national and international stage. From the Black consciousness campaign of South Africa to the Black Power crusades of the United States and Caribbean, and the recent global affirmations of Black Lives Matter, Black nationalist ideology and desires for equity and independence seem ever more significant. While marginal characteristics of Black nationalism clearly persist in the calls for justice and equality, only one voice of twentieth-century Black nationalism remains committed to the full dimensions of the Black nationalist agenda. This essay documents the one leader and movement that has remained committed to a Black nationalist platform as a response to persistent white supremacy. The author reflects on the valuable contributions of twentieth-century Black nationalism and what form, if any, Black nationalism will take when this last Black nationalist movement leader is gone. Full article

This article examined and compared the US-born and Swedish-born college students’ preferences towards monoracial or multiracial advertisement. We showed four fashion advertisements, tracked their eye movements with a stationary eye-tracker, and asked questions through survey and debriefing to understand how students see and perceive advertisements with and without racial diversity. We found that both Swedish and American students exhibited higher preference in monoracial advertisements. We also found that Swedish and American students’ preferences towards advertisements were quite similar, but there were some variations in the reported level of attractiveness of the advertisements, reaction times, and dwell time between the Swedish and American students. Even though we did not find any statistically significant results from the eye-tracking data due to the limited sample size, the results point to interesting trends and tendencies that need to be addressed in further studies. Full article

20th-century French author, Marguerite Yourcenar, prefaces the first volume of her autobiographical/genealogical trilogy, Dear Departed with a 13th-century Zen koan: What is your original face before your parents were born? In the context of the meticulously researched family history of her maternal line, Yourcenar examines the foundations and major resources of individual and collective self-writing in light of Buddhist discourses on the nature of self, while offering an incisive critique of and alternative to the function of genealogical inquiry. Full article

Unpeeling what is usually concealed by professional language, this essay explores the interactive relationship between my research, on the one hand, and my personal and family history, on the other. These connections are not simply uni-directional, but dynamic and interactive, evolving over time. Although some of my research questions may have paralleled my personal challenges, the Holocaust survivors I have researched also deeply affected my emotional life and personal trajectory at different times. I briefly discuss my genealogical inheritance coupled with an in-depth focus on my scholarship. Full article

Wétiko is a Cree term whose literal translation is cannibalism, an act of violent aggression. This term encapsulates the divisive forces that have infected the Americas for over 500 years, resulting in generational cultural trauma, and dehumanization of all who are subjected to its modern manifestations. It is analogous to an oppressive pandemic whose symptoms include racism, xenophobia, self-hatred, and despair. Despite the persistent forces of Wétiko that marginalize descendants of American Indigenous people, Xicanx are emerging in educational leadership roles and in professional positions that require the highest educational degree, the doctorate. The perseverance of these forerunners, which is fueled by a desire to promote equity, testifies to their will to overcome historically grounded subjugating forces. These forces include identity labels in which the Indigenous culture has been erased and extinguished, but is now reclaimed within the identity of the term Xicanx. Xicanx Torchbearer voices provide insight to the challenges they face as they enter, occupy, and engage within spaces in which they were previously excluded. Evident in the narratives of these Xicanx professionals who now hold highly regarded credentials is the resurgence of Indigenous orientations that counter the violence and aggression of Wétiko. Full article

Amongst the Akan people of Ghana, the word “Sankofa” can be broken down into three syllables— “san” (return), “ko” (go), and “fa” (take)—that can be translated into “go back and take it,” or more philosophically, go back to learn. It is often represented by the Andinkra symbol of a bird with its feet facing forward and its head tucked behind; an apt metaphor for the practice of genealogical research. In Black communities in the United States, it is often evoked in attempts to reflect upon and engage with an African past. Full article

This article examines the beginning of transnational adoption in Denmark and Norway to illuminate the role of private actors and associations in Scandinavian welfare systems. Utilizing case studies of two prominent private adoption actors, Tytte Botfeldt and Torbjørn Jelstad, the article analyzes how these Nordic welfare states responded to the emergence of transnational adoption in comparison with both each other, neighboring Sweden, and the United States. This study shows that private actors and associations strongly influenced the nascent international adoption systems in these countries, by effectively promoting transnational adoption as a progressive and humanitarian form of global parenthood; while simultaneously emphasizing the responsibility of the welfare state to accommodate and alleviate childless couples’ human rights and need for children. A need that was strong enough that couples were willing to transcend legal, national, and racial borders. Ultimately, Danish and Norwegian authorities not only had to show leniency towards flagrant violations of adoption and child placement rules, but also change these so that families could fulfill their great need for children by legally adopting them from abroad. Full article

“Seeing Sanctuary” explores the practice and labeling of immigrant sanctuaries in the Trump era of migration enforcement and family separation. The essay utilizes the case of a class visit to a migrant sanctuary in Amherst, Massachusetts, and explores the challenges, rewards, and sense of futility from this flawed but necessary form of accompaniment. In March of 2018, my “History of Deportation” class visited Lucio Pérez, a Guatemalan migrant and nineteen-year resident of Massachusetts, who resides in sanctuary at the First Congregational Church. At this writing, in August 2020, thirty-five months since he entered the church, Pérez is still in sanctuary. Facing deportation in October 2017, Pérez sought refuge, five months prior to our class visit. The essay, drawing from the public narrative of Pérez, distinguishes the open defiance of Pérez’s sanctuary from the broader “sanctuary city” efforts at non-compliance with federal enforcement schemes. Full article

Although the United States has long been criticized for its treatment of migrants, the family separations that resulted from the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy drew particularly intense approbation and much media coverage in June 2018. One way to understand the conflict over this policy is to view it as a stigma contest where the status of a number of identities (migrant, immigration advocate, captor, policy apologist) are subject to a liminal stigma. Recent scholarship has documented how internet commenters disparage certain identities as they defend others. Through a qualitative content analysis of 172 opinion articles published in U.S. newspapers between 2009 and 2020, this article examines the ways that ideational stigmatization of immigrant detainees, captors, and nativists has and has not varied by time and arena of the public sphere. We find that many of the condemnations and denials found online are also prominent in editorials and op-eds. (e.g., detention as cruel, detainees as noncriminals, captors as racist, detainees as nonvictims,). The commentary section of U.S. newspapers, however, tended to defend the detainees and condemn their captors and nativist citizens. These findings provide a fuller record of how immigration detention and family separation were constructed during the Trump administration and a deeper understanding for the fervor of U.S. nativists. Full article

Apart from descriptions of ideas of race, Australian historiography has not perceived acts of violence to Aboriginal people in their wider social and political context. Analysis of perpetrators has derived from family histories but this, so far, has been limited to studies of emotion. One family’s and one area’s experience of frontier violence shows that it was thought about in terms of ‘volunteering’ and democratic participation. The new technology of the telegraph brought violence and its description closer and ‘brave’ and ‘gallant’ men sought to involve themselves in war. They also recognized political divisions among Aboriginal people and negotiated a complex realm of ‘friendly blacks’. Full article

From a social equality representation perspective, advertising should ideally mirror the multicultural composition at the national market, because mass-mediated identity representations may act as cultural resources for those with marginalised identities. To investigate the observance to such an ideal in a context where the ethnic and racial composition of the population saw a rapid change, this article examines 676 Swedish TV commercials in over the period 2008–2017, and analyses the representation of non-White persons of colour (POC). Through this quantitative and qualitative examination, we find that POC are indeed visible in the commercials, but predominantly in the background or playing minor roles. With the, at times, unproportionally high representation of racial and ethnic diversity in Swedish advertising, we find significant tokenism, or in other words, the structurally ineffectual approach common in market-based multiculturalism. Full article

We introduce a culture-centered indigenous program called the Family Listening Program (FLP), which was developed through a long-standing community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership involving tribal research teams (TRTs) from three American Indian communities (Apache, Navajo, and Pueblo) with the University of New Mexico’s Center for Participatory Research (UNM-CPR). This paper provides background information on the TRT/UNM-CPR multi-generational FLP intervention funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and how it is poised to take the next steps of dissemination and implementation (D&I). In preparing for the next steps, the TRT/UNM-CPR team piloted two FLP dissemination activities, first at the state-level and then nationally; this paper describes these activities. Based on the learnings from the pilot dissemination, the TRT/UNM-CPR team developed an innovative D&I model by integrating a community-based participatory research culture-centered science (CBPR-CCS) approach with the Interactive Systems Framework (ISF) to examine the uptake, cultural acceptance, and sustainability of the FLP as an evidence-based indigenous family program. Full article

This essay is the introduction to the special issue of Genealogy, “For God and Country: Essays on Nationalism and Religion.” It poses the question of what relationship, if any, nationalism has to religion, and then briefly reviews the history and current state of the scholarship on the topic. This essay then introduces the seven essays making up the special edition. It concludes by observing that, overall, the collection suggests that while religion and nationalism are more closely related than previously held, they nevertheless remain two distinct phenomena. Full article

The perfunctory noting of name, dates, family relationships and a location on gravestones initially suggests that such details are unprofitable sources for evidence of male identity. However the sheer commonplaceness of stating a placename, particularly when it is noticeably associated with men rather than women, and when not all cultures do the same, indicates that it may reveal something of how men thought of themselves and how they felt. Canadian and Australian studies have suggested that recording placenames on a headstone was a marker of Scottish ethnicity, like an image of a thistle. However, in the nineteenth-century Scottish Highlands ethnicity was not a key component of identity. Indications of place, at least in the ‘home’ country, must therefore signify a different element of identity. This article examines headstone inscriptions of men from across the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands of Scotland who died in the nineteenth century. The resulting evidence indicates that place was a significant element of male identity, indicating personal or ancestral connection with a particular location; a regional affiliation; professional success; social status; national and international mobility; an imperial or patriotic mindset; or even geographical dislocation. In short, place was highly significant to nineteenth-century Highland men, and was a key element of their personal identity. Full article