ABSTRACT
This article links two seemingly unrelated topics, a study of settler-colonial genome research on Indigenous populations with a study of settler-colonial non/monogamy politics. Both bodies of practices are co-constituted with settler-colonial concepts of human relations of kinship, nation, bodies, and populations. Both are rooted in US (and Canadian) settler-colonial attempts to disrupt and replace Indigenous relations with settler forms of kin, sex, and nation. Both genomics and non/monogamy deploy settler concepts of property and properties. In genome research and politics, property claims are made over Indigenous bones, blood, and ancestral lineages to support claims to properties, e.g. inherited genetic markers and other biological characteristics that, in turn, may support claims to Indigenous cultural property(ies). In the case of non/monogamy, property claims are made or resisted over lovers and partners within a system that uses compulsory monogamy and state-sanctioned marriage to uphold (settler) property claims to land.
