Kim TallBear
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kimtallbear.bsky.social
Kim TallBear
@kimtallbear.bsky.social
3.4K followers 1.1K following 710 posts
Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate citizen & Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota, Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) Canada. MSP/LAX/YEG.
https://kimtallbear.substack.com; https://www.youtube.com/@ktallbear
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kimtallbear.bsky.social
This week's 100 words. My day of the week in my weekly writing circle is Saturday.
Text layered over a photo of the Mississippi River as viewed from the Lake Street-Marshall Ave bridge of downtown Minneapolis. The left bank from the camera's view is Minneapolis and the right bank is St. Paul. Text reads: Riverside (11.22.25) Two Saint Paul city blocks from the Mississippi, I write in low-sky sun, late autumn, late afternoon. The trees have dropped their colourful wraps. They pose bare, brown, and bony. Soon they’ll be svelte and sparkle in tight coats of winter frost. In my aunt’s basement I write, and laugh every time I tell someone here’s where I live now. We eat her good cooking in the evenings, last night was bison and roots, creamy potatoes, candles in a tableside window. The Canadians think it is safer up there. My ancestors also came home in a year of graver danger.
November 23, 2025 at 5:32 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
choose.umn.edu/portal/grad_...
"University of Minnesota - Twin Cities American Indian & Indigenous Studies Ph.D. Deadline: January 2, 2026. Questions? Email AMINGRAD@UMN.EDU"
November 17, 2025 at 10:41 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
I have a weekly writing-friend circle. Each of us takes a day of the week and we write in a loop. My menopause mind has trouble remembering on time. My day is Saturday. I remembered to write this morning.
Reframe 1 and 2 (11.16.25) The second hardest thing was returning to the settlers’ “America.” But these waters and lands, beings that breathe here, exceed millions of Europeans’ re-namings—their straight marks and crooked justifications. The return is to an ancient terrain, to skies our ancestors studied, drew lines from to the Earth. The first hardest thing was leaving a “marriage.” But an ecology of intimacies exceeds, defies centuries of settler mappings of a man’s flesh-blood territory as “husband,” and a woman’s as “wife.” The turn was to a way of living together, sometimes, our child in the centre. A place the settlers don’t name.
November 16, 2025 at 8:46 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Beautiful San Diego County. Here to support someone seeing their loved one on in their journey. This planet is beautiful, and so is the connection between life and so-called death.
October 16, 2025 at 5:05 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Visited my Uncle Ronnie’s grave. He was a unique person I’ll write about soon. To be clichéd, always a ray of sunshine for me. I need to come back with flowers for his and my grandparents/great grandparents graves. Also for your pleasure, an alien visitor in tribal housing.
Atop green mowed grass a headstone with two buffalo in profile facing an oval photograph in the center with my uncle in his regalia and his Dakota name, MATO ININA etched into the grey granite. A medicine wheel with the four colors hangs to the right of the stone. Exterior wall of a house with white siding. It has several windows partially in view at garden level and a half story up with a screen door in the centre of the frame. Inside the windows of the door is a full size green blow up standing alien doll. Dark green freshly mowed grass in the foreground.
August 24, 2025 at 1:59 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Liberal settler memory: TAKE BACK THE DAMN COUNTRY?

Thought experiment: Try to fight fascists without settler colonizer spin? Give it a try! Words matter.
"PROJECT 2028" flyer in beige blue and red with various policy goals, i.e. "Overturn citizens United," "Codify Women's Right to Choose," "Ban Stock Trading While in Congress," and other reasonable policy goals. But the slogan at the bottom of the flyer "TAKE BACK THE DAMN COUNTRY" is so very settler.
August 19, 2025 at 11:51 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
This is strange, as are the comments on the original post. I'm going to have students in my intro Native Studies class this fall write on and discuss this.

☝️ First off, that word Caucasian is scientifically incorrect.

Just say white.
Cartoon of stereotypical Native man with black hair in braids, wearing a suit, sitting at a fancy desk and chair signing an official looking document. Other black haired people in suits standing around him. Caption: "JANUARY 2029, PRESIDENT STANDING BEAR SIGNS AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO DEPORT ALL CAUCASIANS BACK TO EUROPE."
August 17, 2025 at 8:44 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Final #SINGSábme lecture given by Dr. Betsy Nelson (SMU anthropology and #SINGCanada). Co-authored by me but it's mostly her work: "Decolonizing Paleogenomics and Pathogens: Indigenous led Science and the Power of Storytelling."
August 15, 2025 at 12:55 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Finally, the necessary equipment cleared customs and was delivered to Luleå. #SINGSábme is purifying extracted DNA and preparing for sequencing.

Had a conversation re the program's future. Funding Indigenous Science (not limited to "traditional" knowledge) won't be easy in Europe.
Diverse Indigenous participants from Canada and Sápmi purifying DNA at a big table with powerpoint instructions on a screen in the background. SING Canada co-PI Warren Cardinal McTeague from UBC giving instructions to participants. Box of gloves, lab manual, and laptop on the table.
August 15, 2025 at 9:51 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Late night at #SINGSábme. We're planning tomorrow's adjusted schedule, and I'm trying to book new flights back to North America in expectation of the Air Canada flight attendants' strike.

Yes our rental in rural northern Sweden has Marilyn.

✊️ Go, flight attendants!
Three tired academics sitting at a wooden dining room table, all with Mac laptops and with a large Marilyn Monroe print on the wall behind us.
August 14, 2025 at 9:32 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Reindeer fresh off the 🔥 top grill. #SINGSábme
Pile of freshly cooked reindeer meat strips atop lettuce, sauteed vegetables, and a pocket bread with a lingonberry cream salad dressing.
August 14, 2025 at 11:07 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Post-fika, Gunilla Larsson, Sámi archaeologist, giving a lecture to #SINGSábme participants on Sámi history and deportation from central Sweden in 17th and 18th centuries.
August 14, 2025 at 9:36 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Reindeer by the road as we caravan to a cultural gathering place, Rikti Dokkas. #SINGSábme.

We had some lab equipment malfunction yesterday. But we're trying to go with the flow.
August 14, 2025 at 7:35 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Opening debrief for #SINGSábme lakeside at Sörbyn. Discussing the need to readjust during fieldwork. Having a plan is great, but it's only a guide. Just like in life.

We're still waiting on lab equipment to be delivered after clearing customs.
August 13, 2025 at 8:04 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Our dinner. So Swedish.
August 12, 2025 at 6:10 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Somewhere in Norrbotten County, Sweden, taking soil samples
#SINGSábme
Dramatic blue and partly cloudy sky over northern forest landscape. More dramatic tall cloud skies with trees in foreground A group of 7 people a short distance away in a green field with trees around, some standing, some kneeling.
August 12, 2025 at 3:08 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
The view outside our #SINGSábme classroom/lab in Sörbyn
A few small red painted cabins among tall trees alongside a blue lake with a clear blue sky. There are a few small white clouds.
August 11, 2025 at 11:15 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Elle Eriksson, Flakaberg group, Gällivare Forest Sámi village speaking at #SINGSábme on incorporating forest Sámi reindeer herding knowledges in forest management.

It's a beautiful sunny day in Sörbyn. We're taking quick regular breaks outside in the fresh air.
Elke Erickson a young woman with long straight brown hair in a black t-shirt and pants. She stands at a high table with laptop next to a PowerPoint screen with a photo of her family, Sámi reindeer herders with reindeer in a sunny, snowy, forested landscape.
August 11, 2025 at 9:10 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
We're about to start our opening session of #SINGSàbme in balmy Luleå. Moving out to Sörbyn tomorrow to take soil samples. I'll have more interesting pics the rest of this week.
Photo of opening workshop slide: SING Sábme: Summer internship for INdigenous people in Genomics Welcome Session
August 10, 2025 at 12:15 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
My plane from Stockholm to Luleå.
Plane named "Thor Viking"?
August 7, 2025 at 11:22 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Me and my kid waiting for the #SawDoctors to come on tonight in Boston. You can’t see it but she has her N17 t-shirt on. No pics of the band. They put on a joyous show as always. I was too busy singing along to pull out my phone.
Taller mom with silver bobbed hair in black top with arm around curly haired 22 year old. Taking a selfie of us. Crowd in the background.
July 25, 2025 at 3:43 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Speaking of the beautiful lands and waters of Mni Sota. Here was the view on my walk tonight across the Marshall/Lake Street Bridge. Mosquitoes were being annoying parasites, and it was hot and muggy, but that great strong river is ❤️.
Sunset view of the tree-lined "Mississippi" river with pink and purple skies over Minneapolis in the background.
July 15, 2025 at 3:25 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Dinner at #NAISA2025 OKC with some of my very favourite people. ❤️
June 28, 2025 at 5:34 AM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
#NAISA2025 Best first book prize! For "By Strength We Are Still Here." By @ualberta.bsky.social, associate prof in the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Native Studies, Crystal Fraser.
Image of book cover and book description.
June 27, 2025 at 6:52 PM
kimtallbear.bsky.social
Getting close to home. IYKYK.

It's a beautiful but very windy day in SoDak. Even more so if ICE Barbie isn't here.
June 20, 2025 at 11:13 PM