Remember those surprising & confusing headlines about a genetic link between 3 Amazonian populations and Australasians? Well for our @channel 4 Amazon series we went to visit one of those Amazonian groups, the Surui... & were holding back tears. 1/ https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/science/tracing-routes-to-america-through-ancient-dna.amp.html

They were really upset. They say they were lied to; people came in, took their DNA under false pretences and never came back. It turns out that while their DNA is used in genetics labs all over the world, while 100s of academic papers have used their DNA, while we have read...2/

...headlines like the ones above... they, the Surui, knew nothing. Not a single academic had apparently ever reached out to tell them any of their DNA results. We, the outside world, knew more about their DNA than they did.

I know people disagree on what best practice...3/

like in the sciences and in genetics, but surely it can’t be this. This is an indigenous group whose Chief (Chief Almir pictured) teamed up with google earth to help protect his reserve, he used to have armed guards because of death threats, we were in awe of his leadership...4/

... generally and on conservation issues and his mother (pictured) she was robbed of her blood.

My first degree was in genetics, I know these are often (but not always) historic samples. But how does the scientific community correct? Shouldn’t these communities know the... 5/

...scientific communities findings at the very least??

Please do follow the work of indigenous Hawaiian genetics @KeoluFox who lives and breathes these issues. I wish we had had time to do a whole episode on this story. It was honestly devastating. 6/

This episode is tomorrow (Saturday) at the later time of 7:30pm on Channel 4. I’ll be tweeting a lot of stuff that never made it into the final edit. This was a complicated bit of the show & a lot more can be said on Twitter. The # is #junglemystery (I didn’t pick it ). End/

Typos
⁃what best practice *looks* like
⁃mother (pictured) *says* she was robbed.

PS I have to say I felt like crap during filming because this was my people and me doing the wrong. Years ago I would use population samples and not ask questions & not think to check if the results were being relayed. It’s normalised and it’s how it is. We see those...

wronging indigenous people as ‘other people’ but this was my community and the mirror. We need to try harder to solve this mess.