Dimaline unabashedly incorporates the terminology of genetics into her novel, but I argue that she does so in order ultimately to underscore that genetics is ill-equipped to understand Indigenous ways of articulating kinship and belonging. Dimaline targets two initiatives that reductively define indigeneity as residing in so-called Native American DNA: (1) direct-to-consumer genetic testing, through which an increasing number of people lay dubious claim to Indigenous ancestry, and (2) population genetics projects that seek urgently to sample Indigenous genetic diversity before Indigenous Peoples become too admixed and therefore extinct. This article reads Métis writer Cherie Dimaline's novel The Marrow Thieves as one among a growing number of Indigenous countergenetic fictions.
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