Stirring up the gene pool

L-R: Linita Manu'atu, Paul Reynolds and Mere Kepa want nothing to do with the DNA-sampling project. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Where are you from? Who are your people? To Maori, these are the first questions to ask a new acquaintance, much more interesting than banal inquiries about jobs or real estate.

Maori culture is infused with stories of movement and migration, exploration and settlement, and underpinning it is the greatest adventure story of all, how Aotearoa was discovered and settled by Kupe, an intrepid navigator from the Pacific homeland of Hawaiiki.

But now scientists want to step around the mythology and tell a different story, using the DNA of Maori and other indigenous people to work out how prehistoric humans spread around the world from the "true" home of Homo sapiens, Africa.

Many Maori do not want to hear that story.

National Geographic, in collaboration with computer giant IBM and a wealthy American family of philanthropists, is sponsoring the Genographic Project, a huge endeavour in which scientists all over the world will take DNA samples from 100,000 indigenous volunteers and explain how their ancient ancestors moved out of Africa up to 60,000 years ago and spread around the world.

The scientists want to show how all humans are related to one another, and promise the research will be a celebration of how humans conquered distance and danger to populate the earth.

Already, more than 50,000 intrigued people have paid up to US$126 ($184) for a self-sampling DNA kit and sent a saliva swab to National Geographic, which provides in return a confidential analysis of each participant's genetic history.

As soon as the scheme was announced in April, indigenous groups began objecting, and none more loudly than Maori.

We already know where we came from, thanks very much, they said, and what's in it for indigenous people? What is the point of challenging generations of oral history and spiritual belief? Why should we give you our blood and the genetic codes which make us unique, and how do we know you won't sell the information to pharmaceutical companies?

And most importantly of all, how can this "scientific proof" that we all came from Africa be used against us by the politicians - and the racists?

Science and faith have been in conflict since humans began questioning how things worked, and there is no greater guarantee of scientific immortality than being declared a heretic by the church.

Just ask Charles Darwin, whose name is still cursed by some Christians nearly 150 years after he published the theory that humans' real ancestors were probably much more hairy than Adam and Eve.

But in today's world of ethical research guidelines, scientists must anticipate and placate their critics before they even unpack the test-tubes. The problem now facing the Genographic Project is whether the sceptics can ever be persuaded.

The greatest objection to this project, appropriately, is born of history. "Indigenous people aren't stupid," says Paul Reynolds, a postdoctoral fellow at the Auckland University-based National Centre of Research Excellence for Maori Development, Nga Pae o te Maramatanga.

"We've been here before. We've had centuries of exploitation by non-indigenous people. This is highly political. It's race-based research, and therefore it can be manipulated and used for political benefit.

"This could link straight into what Don Brash wants to hear, that everybody comes from the same place, that we are all common and have common ancestors."

Indigenous people already have their own answers, says Tongan educator Dr Linita Manu'atu, a senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology.

"Stop dominating us. If they flip over to this side of the world, [they will see] we have our own ways of understanding the world. We can do our research in our own ways, and contribute that knowledge to the world," Manu'atu says.

"For Tongans, we were created in Tonga. We have gods, our own gods, which we created the same as the people of Israel. We have our own stories, but we are being told they're not good enough."

Australian Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell agrees. "We didn't come from anywhere. We know that our Dreamtime stories tell us we were always here, in Australia. Can this be twisted to say we came from Africa and therefore we have fewer rights to our country than white people?

"And what if they find out that there were different people here before we came, and we destroyed them in order to get the land? Does that mean that the invasion in 1788 wasn't so bad?" GENETIC research has a bad name. Throughout the 1990s, an ambitious plan known as the Human Genome Diversity Project stumbled around the scientific world before collapsing into a heap of cultural controversy and confused intentions.

The idea was to take blood from indigenous people to document the wide range of human gene variations, with a view to preventing and curing genetic illnesses.

In New Zealand, it was even more spectacularly unsuccessful than elsewhere. In 1995, Maori representatives at a Health Research Council conference in Wellington called for the project's "immediate halt", saying genetic information belonged to hapu, whanau and iwi collectively, not to individuals.

Kiwi hostility was so great that the project organisers declared they would not even try to take samples from Maori.

The HGDP was little mourned when it eventually failed to get US federal funding, but the experience left a legacy of ill will which the Genographic project must try to overcome.

Victoria University geneticist Geoff Chambers has published research which shows a genetic link between Maori and indigenous Taiwanese, suggesting ancient Pacific people came here via Asia.

Chambers says he has not encountered a single Maori objection since he began visiting Wellington blood banks 15 years ago, asking Maori donors for 10 millilitres of their blood for research into a possible genetic link with alcoholism.

Chambers ensured volunteers retained ownership of their DNA at all times and gave written consent for a limited, specific use of samples.

"It's not my job to tell Maori or Pacific people where they came from. We have been careful to say our information is a scientific account but that there are other accounts from traditional knowledge, and the two do not interface at all.

"We never set out to say we are going to use 'superior' science to solve a problem."

Chambers believes the Genographic Project is "really good science, but it is built on a platform that didn't fly previously. Has nothing been learned from history? The HGDP was tragic because it was well-intentioned, but people hated it. This is the same story."

Marae worker and caregiver Mere Kepa, also a researcher at Auckland University, doesn't buy Genographic's stated hope of improving global understanding of indigenous concerns.

"Just because you know you're related to each other, is that going to stop the Queensland police belting the shit out of Aborigines?" Kepa asks. "This is scientific imperialism. As an academic I'm not opposed to learning, but I'm tired and exhausted of learning from Western scientists that I'm sad, bad and mad and so are all my whanau and hapu and iwi."

Activist Le'a Kanehe, legal analyst with the US-based Indigenous People's Council on Biocolonialism, is concerned that Genographic did not consult indigenous groups when drafting their research guidelines. Genographic responds that all project scientists are constantly consulting indigenous people while in the field.

The man behind the Genographic Project, National Geographic scientist Dr Spencer Wells, hopes some fears might be eased by the society's impeccable reputation for promoting and documenting the lives of indigenous people through its magazine and documentaries. INDEED, all proceeds from the sale of the self-testing kits will be ploughed into a Legacy Fund to be spent on cultural preservation projects nominated by indigenous communities.

Every human carries a virtual history book inside their veins, says Wells, who asserts his work has no relation to the HGDP.

"One of the messages that came out of that fiasco is that we are no longer living in the colonial era, where scientists from the rich world can sit down with a map and decide 'we need to go out and sample these groups because we think it's interesting'," Wells says.

"It is a question of creating trust between ourselves as scientists, who have the ability to read the history books that we all carry around, and the people."

He says Genographic's ethical standards have been approved by the University of Pennsylvania's review authorities, and it is ultimately a volunteer exercise.

"It would be a shame not to have groups like the Maori," Wells says. "Everybody asks these questions. You ask these questions of your parents, or your priest, or your local tribal leader. Every human group has a story about where they came from and how they're related to each other, and to other groups.

"If you decide that you don't want that to be threatened by a scientific version which may be different from your story, then there's nothing we can really do about that. What we're trying to do is enrich people's sense of their own identity."

The project's Australia/Pacific chief scientist, Robert John Mitchell, of LaTrobe University in Melbourne, is concerned by the criticism and says indigenous support is essential.

He hopes to allay any fears about blood-testing by taking saliva samples, and wants to persuade the other scientists working on the project internationally to do the same.

"I could not imagine going to a Maori community without Maori people accompanying me, saying 'feel free to fire questions at this guy'. I'd be prepared to write up a local report [on iwi or hapu genealogy] if they wanted it.

"The indigenous people would own their own samples. If they wanted them destroyed, or returned, or housed in a certain centre, that would be done," says Mitchell. Mitchell is consulting Aboriginal archaeologists, such as Steve Kinnane at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, who is examining the project's ethical standards.

Mitchell can see no likelihood of his findings casting doubt on the Maori tradition of migration from the Pacific to New Zealand, and says the findings will spark further interest in the story of indigenous people.

"I would be able to draw a map showing that this area was settled an incredibly long time ago by Aborigines as the first inhabitants. I believe the historic adventures the results will show will reinforce the magic of settlement, of what these people did.

"The genetic trail will mean linguists can get stronger leads as to how words might have evolved, archaeologists might have a better idea of where to look. And I mean indigenous archaeologists, we're not just talking about more [opportunities] for the white people."

Maori Aucklander Mike Stevens, an anthropologist and iwi consultant who is on the board of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, is happy to volunteer for the project and says many Maori do not accept all oral traditions as literal truth anyway.

"There is solid evidence, for example, of a Cook Islands connection with Maori, like the Cooks' stories of canoes being built and sent out," says Stevens.

"There is dispute about whether they came as one fleet or not, and that would be an issue which is questionable. But I think it is something that can advance our knowledge. It needn't destroy our faith."

More knowledge is always empowering, says Manuka Henare, associate dean of Maori and Pacific Development at Auckland University's business school.

"It is about a better understanding of ourselves and our past," says Henare, who deals with fears about genetics in his work as a board member of the Environmental Risk Management Authority.

"This is a good idea that has been badly promoted, but the more we know in the area of genetic knowledge, the more we can help to clarify the issue of origins that is a constant preoccupation of Maori.

"It's the first question Maori ask of each other - where do you come from? Genetics offers another way of finding the answer to that question

"If you give people the knowledge and understanding, you will find Maori people are as open-minded about these things as any others."