Interrelationships among Native Peoples, Genetic Research, and the Landscape: Need for Further Research into Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues

To understand the impacts of development on native peoples requires an understanding of how their genetic make-up is implicated in their relationship with their landscapes. This is an area ripe for more research. The ASLME project on DNA Fingerprinting and Civil Liberties proposed improvements to the ethical and legal safeguards for the collection and storage of DNA-derived genetic information. Native peoples have proposed a similar examination of the ethical and legal issues related to the collection and storage of their genetic information obtained via family histories and genealogies.