20 Facts About Kim TallBear

Kim TallBear was born on 1968 and is a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate professor at the University of Alberta, specializing in racial politics in science.

Kim TallBear was born in 1968 at a public hospital in Pipestone, Minnesota.

Kim TallBear grew up moving back and forth between the Sisseton and Flandreau reservations in South Dakota.

Kim TallBear is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota, as well as a descendant from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma through her maternal grandfather.

Kim TallBear has some Cree and Metis ancestry from Canada.

Kim TallBear has two sisters and one brother, whose father is Floyd Westerman, a Dakota Sioux musician, actor and political activist.

Kim TallBear's household growing up was a politically active environment and Kim TallBear says her mother in particular helped to shape her understanding of research and academic thought as being a part of a colonial project.

Kim TallBear pursued post-secondary education at the University of Massachusetts in Boston obtaining an undergraduate degree in community planning.

Kim TallBear then completed her master's degree in environmental planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kim TallBear later worked for a non-governmental, Indigenous environmental research organization in Denver.

In 2010, Kim TallBear was elected to be a member of the Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and served in the position until 2013.

Kim TallBear has taught in the Native Studies department of the University of Alberta since 2014, and has been a full professor since 2020.

In defending the ethics of Indigenous jurisdiction over their own identities, Kim TallBear argues Indigenous Peoples know their history better than settlers.

In light of this, Kim TallBear has drawn attention to the problems of the settler scientific community attempting to direct the boundaries of Indigenous identities.

Kim TallBear has criticized researchers who do not invest considerable time in building relationships with the Indigenous populations with which they wish to study.

In Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, Kim TallBear argues that genetic testing is a scientifically unreliable method.

Kim TallBear pursued this topic of study through a blog written under an alter ego, "The Critical Polyamorist".

Kim TallBear was part of a panel discussing decolonizing institutions such as relationships, at the National Women's Studies Association meeting in 2016.

For Kim TallBear, moving beyond the current environmental problems of the neoliberal nation state requires expanding understandings and practices of kinship.

Kim TallBear argues Indigenous conceptions of kin provide opportunities for this transition.