When The Data Is Us (with Krystal Tsosie)

data to make algorithms and other technologies. The hope is if the data set used is properly labeled and vetted, the better the tech eventually becomes, and we can make tools that are smarter and more importantly, more equitable. And the algorithm comes out the end, and there's a decision that's made you get the loan. You didn't get the loan. The algorithm recognizes your speech, doesn't recognize your speech, sees you, doesn't see you. People think, oh, just change the algorithm.

Oh no, you have to go all the way back to the beginning. Cash is right. We can't just change the algorithm. We have to go further back and examine how data is collected in the first place. So consider this episode Data Justice Part two. Right now, it's possible that data is the most valuable resource on the planet. We use it to drive advertising, medical research, product development.

Its applications are endless, and I'm not being hyperbolic. In terms of financial value, data currently beats out coal oil. It's a commodity. That race to collect and monetize data has transformed into a veritable gold rush, or I guess I should say data rush. Now. In its most basic form, data is information, but beyond that, it also helps define parts of who we are and the smallest part of us. There's a market for that too. Those tiny nuggets of

data are precious and extremely personal. They live inside of us. I'm talking about genetic data. Are geno that O G code. The business around genetic data is huge, and I don't mean just the twenty three and me tests you gave your family member last holiday season. I'm talking about a global industry worth billions of dollars. Bio data companies initially set out to make genetic testing approachable and affordable for the general public, and at first, these little tubes they

were intended to assess our risk for genetic diseases. But since then they've really grown in popularity by offering us a window into our past, our geographical ancestry. And when we spit in the tube and contribute to these data sets, Yo, it feels revelatory and super scientific. Like I found out I was exactly twenty five point three percent Nigerian WHOA.

I even hosted a podcast partnered with twenty three in Me called spit you might have heard it, and I got to talk to all kinds of people about how DNA can give us a new perspective on our relationships with each other and with our health. At the time, I was thrilled to share these new ideas about an emerging science. It was a shiny and new way of looking at ourselves and our ancestors. But my guest today

made me rethink everything. Who does data ultimately benefit? If the data is not benefiting the people, the individuals, the communities that provided that data, then who are we using it for? Who are we protecting and who are we uplifting at the cost of others? Justice. Crystal Socie is an Indigenous meticists and bioethicist at the Native Biodata Consortium. She used to work in precision medicine, developing targeted therapies

and treatments focused on cancer. But that experience led her to co found the nonprofit Consortium with other Indigenous scientists, and they built a network for Native researchers to collaborate and protect their data heritage to already underserved and underrepresented people's data could be part of what gives these communities determination and agency over their own personhood and knowledge. Hello, Hello, welcome to how does Citizen. Thank you so much for

the kind invite. You are so welcome. We're very excited to have you as a part of Crystal joined me from Phoenix, Arizona, which is the ancestral homeland of the authom Pepash and Hagm people's. I joined her from northeast Los Angeles, the homeland of the Tongua people's who are also known as the Keeach. I want to start with your ted talk called d n A is not our identity. I in here to Vanderbilt to pursue a PhD in genetics, and because of that, many people come up to me

with this question in mind, who am I? Really? What they're asking is who am I? In context? It is direct to consumer genetic test kit. Now you probably have been made the concept. You spend a hundred to two hundred dollars, You spent a whole lot of saliva, more than you ever thought you can ever produce in your entire life, and you mail it out thirty days later you get a result, and that result is a percent

estimation of ancestral background. First of all, nice work. And that question of who am I is actually mired in something else because according to ancestry d m A, the number one question is why isn't my Native American ancestry not showing up? Oh? Okay, I only have ten minutes, not ten years, to unpack the assertedness of that claim, or to tell you how dangerous it is to equate indigenousity in a false way. And I think a lot of us get the opposite message. You know, there's a

lot of DNA testing. It's become like a party favor in some ways to define yourself by the data in your genetics and run these tests, so people think the opposite. Actually, my DNA is my identity. That's what all the messaging says. So tell me why you say our DNA is not that our genetics are only half of the story. And in fact, when we talk about health inequities and communities of color, we really have to talk about the other

structural barriers that relate to health and disease. So, for instance, with the COVID pandemic, there was a lot of press about how these are rates for initially so much higher and tribal communities such as my own, but those are not due to biological differences. They were due to things like our water rights being usurped from us, that we didn't have water to wash our hands, which is a

key preventative measure for curbing viral transmission. Also, the fact that we have to drive ours one way just to get to a preventative health clinic. Technology is limiting our ability to detect these genetic differences across the genome. We don't have that much information yet, and to reduce all of these differences to just biology is just ignoring the beautiful diversity that's within all of our cultures worldwide. And that's just talking about the health component. I haven't even

gotten into the genetic ancestral components. We'll get into that. Because this idea that genetics that we interpret them in a reductive and deterministic way, i e. The genome tells us everything, that data set is us. You're rejecting that, and you're reject it in the health conversation. But you know, as a Native American in particular, why are you rejecting this idea of genetic determinism for ancestry. Well, let's think back just a few years ago. This is Elizabeth Warren.

What are the facts you can absolutely have a Native American ancestry in your pedigree. Oh my gosh, it feels like actually forever ago. But a few years ago when Elizabeth Warren announced that she had a DNA test that showed her supposed Native American ancestry. And Okay, let's unpack this a little bit further. Okay, let's go there, let's

get it. Let's go yes right now. Due to historical distrust and I'm not talking about centuries ago or decades ago, I'm talking about just in the past few years, Native Americans in the US have largely not contributed their genetic information to research or willingly to genetic ancestry tests. So because of that, there's not that much information that links specific genetic factors to a particularly US tribal nation. So

where do they get that information from. They get it from openly available bio markers from large scale diversity projects about twenty years ago. We're here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind. Today's announcement represents more than particularly the Human Genome Diversity Project and also National Geographic Magazine

did the Genographic Project. And these were two projects that were meant to sample worldwide populations, particularly indigenous peoples before we disappeared. And I'm doing the air quotes, so there's this huge rush to sort of sample as many indigenous peoples before we were wiped off the base of the planet due to colonial factors, no, not caring the fact that our ways of life were disappearing. Now, we wanted

their genomes before we were dead and gone. And this is like the same rhetoric that colonists have been trying to cause our extinction for centuries, and this is just like the genetic version of that. So what ended up happening is researchers went into remote communities in central Amazon area in Mexico in Central America, and they collected bio markers from indigenous peoples, and they promised that they were going to bring them medicines and deliver cures for conditions

that besieged them. They took their blood, and did they

uphold their promises. No. So when you think about tests like twenty three and ancestry, they're using these openly sourced bio markers from disinphra chries, disempowered, exploited indigenous groups that are south of the US border, and they're using these markers and also Asian biomarkers, which is a totally different part of the world to infer statistically statements about US ancestry, forgetting the fact that every single indigenous group has their

own distinct cultural and genetic histories. And those bio markers that supposedly realified a story by Lizeth Warren, those biomarkers don't really show anything except for the fact that she perhaps had a statistical relationship with one of maybe fifty people in the Mexico region of the globe. Has nothing to do with the answert she is trying to claim.

And it's also horrible because Native American rights are tied to blood quantum rules and blood quantum rules are usually derived by a person's lineage, like can they prove that they have a direct grandmother or a parent or more even distant ancestor who was a member of that community. But these are kinship structures derived from genealogy, not by blood. It's just a misno more that they're called blood quantum rules. But let's remember the reason why blood quantum rules started.

It was a means for deluding our rights and our claims to sovereign resources that are actually supposed to be given to us by treaty in exchange for our lands. And by using these unequated rules, were deluding our rights to those claims and then to reify it by these genetic ancestry tests. It's just horrible. So I want to pause and rewind for a few thoughts. The theft of blood is literally vampiric, right, and the idea of continuing to extract and exploit, which are fancy words for steel,

is a continuation of colonial behavior. So it sounds to me like what you're describing as a as a vampiric

genetic colonialism. It's interesting that you use that term vampiric because when these large scale diversity projects were announced, global Indigenous populations at least six hundred of them actually went to the United Nations and actually asked for the cessation of these studies, and particularly called the genographic project a vampire project because it was akin to vampire bats coming in the middle of the night, stealing their blood and

then leaving when the morning came. And that's what felt like, what do Indigenous people lose out on if they don't have their data in their own hands, if they don't have that data sovereignty. Well, first of all, if they are not in charge of their data and they don't have the same saying data decisions, then how are they going to call for accountability to ensure that they're able to benefit from the collection of their information. But then also we have to worry about whether or not d

NA claims to indigenousity will be undermined. So, for instance, there's a number of scholars that are tracking descendants of Mate populations and First Nations Canada people that claim to be members of tribal communities but really have no evidence, but are able to claim rights that should be only to Indigenous people's. And what that effectively does is that undermines the strength of communities because it's not like these

rights to resources are unlimited. It's very finite. There's like a flip side version of this with the one drop rule in US history about who's black, and that was used as a weapon to kind of exclude people from the resource of the majority population. Well, you're not white, therefore you go to the back of everything, every list.

And there's an irony in the modern times when we have so much language about inclusivity and equity and diversity, like the whole trifecta, that the resources of a colonial government will be used to determine membership in an indigenous community, and that at the very heart of sovereignty, probably more than water or land, is self definition, right, self determination.

And so if this outside authority, which you've got mad reason not to trust sto already now usurps your own membership rules based on questionable and certainly in complete science, that's real, messed up. That's that's where I landed. That's

all that built up to. That's just real. Know that the cruelest joke is that US indigenous groups have taken this system that was meant to delude us from our rights to resources, and now we have used that same system to define ourselves and even exclude others that should be a part of our community. That is just intrinsic colonialism reflected upon ourselves and the worst way possible. Wow Wow, We'll be right back. What does your denay and Navajo

identity mean to you beyond your DNA? So if I were to give my full introduction, Dini bazade I would say can the Cheney, initially the Nain and then Crystal Sissy Hitia. So what I have provided to you in the first two three sentences as a description of my four clans, so everyone that my mother, my father, and my grandparents are related to. And then I introduced myself.

So I have given you my entire lineage through the time since Navajo people have existed, everyone that I'm related to, And by listening to my introduction and introducing ourselves to each other, we get kinship ties like oh, this person is my same clan, we are brothers and sisters, or they are a related clan, this person is my cousin in a way, and so we don't have like the same nuclear family structures as we do in dominant cultures.

We have expanded kinship structures, and that's just beautiful because it means that our family is just more as an expanded unit. It also strikes me that the way we introduce ourselves in dominant culture in the West is first person, singular and disconnected from others. It's like, I'm very Toonday, whatever next. And so your introduction and self definition was in relation to those who may not even still be here. I want to I want to get a little more

context on you. Tell me about your home. What was it like growing up and where did you grow up? Okay, these are great questions, and I first want to tackle the assumption that all Indigenous peoples are based in their home communities, because we are not. We have been forcibly displaced economically and just geographically. And in this case, that is my family history. My mother comes from Chanta, Arizona, the northern region that's just pretty much closely Utah border.

And then my father comes from the Loop area, which is in central Arizona. And he actually worked in the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, which is the largest Indian health service clinic in the entire US, but it's based in Phoenix. But he wasn't a doctor. Neither of my parents went to college, so I'm a first generation student. Even though I was more economically well situated than other members of my family. I lived in the ghetto of West Phoenix, and anyway, I was like the only Native kid in

all my levels of school. It wasn't until I hit really high school and college that I started interacting with other Native American students, and the reception was cold. Like I was non rez I was non res Translate that for me, Oh, I was not born and raped. I was on a reservation. I didn't have to say little experience. I was not as hardcore as they were. I was an apple right on the outside, white on the inside. Oh you had apples, we had oreos. Black on the outside,

white on the inside. It's why is it always food? I went to one of the top ranked biomedical research universities in the world, and God, it was blatantly obvious that, despite my accomplishments, that I was recruited because I was brown, and particularly because I was Native American. They weren't interested in my training or interested in the fact that I wanted to contribute something to my own people. You've heard

the term quarter like crisis. Okay, it was about that age, and I was questioning a lot about my identity as an Indigenous person occupying a white dominated space of academia and science as a budding researcher, did I have the wherewithal to make it as a scientist. And then also just in terms of my own life land, if I were to start again from scratch as a graduate student, would I be successful or am I just delaying some

inevitable truth that maybe I wasn't good enough. That type of reckoning is hard to do when in you're young and mid twenties, and that's something that I feel like scholars of color have at some point in their careers.

But what spurred my change was the realization that if I were to complete my PhD in cancer by ology, and if I were to invent something that fundamentally changed cancer therapies, and whatever I invented went through all of the phases of clinical trialing and made it to market, there was like a heart wrenching feeling that it wouldn't benefit my own people, That it would benefit rich, effluent people first, long before it would benefit my own people.

As a brown person, and the sciences like I need to do better, and I actually ended up switching my field to bioethics and genetics and definitely feel the direct

impact of my research. Now, you so generously described me as a scientist and an activist in your introduction of me, and being called a scientists activists is actually some thing that, depending on who you're talking to, can either be a compliment or an insult, because supposedly people feel like science should be objective and that there is no room for conversations about racism and inequities in science, and to state

anything otherwise is apparently anti science. I can't tell you how many times I've been called as a scientist anti science by people who had no idea anything about science as a field. We have to really question when we over it economize science versus anti science, or even science as being equated with objectivity, because when we take it apart, when we're talking about humans, humans are messy. Science itself is messy. It is not objective. It is completely dependent

on biases. Decisions that are made at the federal level of what types of science are worthwhile for funding or in terms of what types of research is deemed worthwhile those are non objective decisions. Yeah, we all bring our perspective to that stuff and have the idea there's a neutral thing floating out in the demilitarized zones of all of our minds called science is a myth. So thank you for breaking that down. A lot of folks who

look at the tech world they see algorithmic bias. They see hiring algorithms which don't have the right data leading to the exclusion of women. They see policing algorithms sending people back to prison who really are ready to come back home. There's medical research value to having diversity of data. Yet you've raised a lot of red flags around this call for data diversity. Why should we be concerned and what's your experience as an indigenous person taught you? So?

Diversity and inclusion is not the same as equity. We have to make sure that those terms are disentangled and that we really pay close attention to what we mean by equity. But then the question is to what end and who actually benefits? And in the scenarios that I described, twenty plus years after data has been extracted from Indigenous peoples, the people who have largely benefited are not the community members that provided the blood. It's for profit companies like

ancestry and three and me. Ancestry since seventeen they posted every holiday quarter profits over a billion dollars, So this is reflected of people wanting to gift direct to consumer genetic ancestry tests as Christmas gifts, literally paying to give up your data to feed the algorithms that these companies are trying to develop. And then recently Ancestry was acquired by a venture capitalist firm for six billion dollars. Now twenty and three and Me also has interest in collecting

Bible markers for Native American people's. These companies and other genetic ancestry companies have expressed interest in creating Native American specific platforms so that they can more accurately assess what percentage membership you are by blood. If we think about what we know about genetic variants contribute to disease, the lois hanging fruit has already been picked. We already know the common variants contributing to things like gastric cancers and diabetes.

The next sort of innovation is going to be in rare variants or in variants that haven't been yet discovered in populations like our own and that's also like stay tuned to the term like discovery, right, because these terms are very intricately aligned with colonial language of discovery and of our people's Hello Columbus. Yeah, exactly. We have to really think about these direct parallels when we talk about

vanishing populations and we talk about discovering variation. So it's interesting a lot of these drives for collecting data from diverse groups is tied with these long term aims and some today down the road, precision and genomic medicine is going to improve health for all, but it's the pathway is not clear. I want to give a really old reference to a South Park episode? Can I do that? Yes? You just you opened up my heart? I love South Park.

Let's go okay, So keep in mind I haven't watched the South Park in years, but there's a classic episode with the underpants gnomes co lactant kind of pants. Just phose? When? So what's phase two? H what's phase two? Well? The thrill of profit? I don't get it. Yes, yes, phase one collect underpants, phase two question mark phase three profits. Yes, yeah, it's the same thing with precision genomics. It's like step one collect bio markers. From underrepresented people Step two question

marks Scept three. They're supposed to be some benefits to prove to the individuals both no clear pathway and in actuality, the real direct benefit is to drug companies because they have a vested commercial interest in profiting from They're the underpants gnomes of genetics. Oh my gosh, you gotta keep using that. That's amazing. Crystal's got more thoughts on democracy and self determination that real citizen talk after the break.

A lot of this stuff you were saying about ownership of data, and you know, without it you don't have accountability. For one, I'm like, is she talking about indigenous genomic data? Is she talking about my Facebook data? Right? The parallels are really really obvious. But we're not talking about Facebook, but we we still are in some ways that we're still talking about self determination and power exactly. But Facebook

data usually has the risks centered on the individual. So your search history usually uniquely identifies you your own personal preferences with genomic information. Though genomic data, that's biological information that links you and everyone you're related to. Let's think about third party ancestry test sites. So these are a third party databases in which people can take their results from twenty three and ancestry and then deposited into a

free database. And these databases are of interest for law enforcement agencies, and in fact, law enforcement agencies they used databases like this to identify the Golden State killer. The answer was and always was going to be in the d N A we knew we could and should solve it using the most innovative DNA technology available at this time. We found the needle in the haystack, and it was

right here in Sacramento. Now, think about our communities, communities a color like yours and mine, or like indigenous communities in particular. We have larger family sizes, smaller generation gaps one person's DNA. I have a hundred first cousins alone. I can't imagine how many third cousins I have. So I would be upset if you know some person I've never been met before decided to give up their information,

my information to a pharmaceutical company or another company. And I'd be further upset if that information was used by a federal agency to aid in racial genetic profiling. YO, I'm right there with you, and I think the idea that my scent is not mine alone to give because others are implicated in the consequences of that decision. Makes

a ton of sense, and it's so intimate. If the first step was acknowledge the economic value of the data, then there's presumed compensation do for use of this, and potentially even collective compensation because the connections are beyond the individual in this case, What do you think about the implication that people should be paid because of the economic value of their data. So, I know ephesis in general do not like these conversations of attaching commercial value to

We're making ethicis mad? Okay? Yeah, But I I want to add the flip side of this, because we know that commercial exploitation is tied with genomic data exploitation. Therefore, if we are able to attach a commercial value to indigenous DNA, which is a scarce commodity that's incredibly important, then we should be able to create a dollar value on the exploitation of our people's DNA. And that is

a call to justice. And we really should be talking about benefit sharing as a means of profit sharing and calling onto companies like drug companies that if you want to collect our information and profit from it, then you need to be sure that the people contributing that information also benefit and if you can't give us a portion of that profit, then we need to call into question your practices. Yo, can you tell me about where you're

working now and what's the Native Bio Data Consortium. The Native Bio Data Consertion is an Indigenous led research nonprofit that started off as a biological and data repository. What we wanted was to ensure that samples that were collected from mimmunity members actually benefited those community members. And we wanted to create a research institution in which the research

questions were driven by community members interests. And these type of research questions probably more proximately relate to differences in disease and conditions in their communities than a research question that is driven by an outside researcher. So they're the ones that understand that environmental changes have contributed to health.

They're the ones that understand that lifestyle and diet changes that have been imposed upon them are going to contribute to differences in health that perhaps the West turned starchy diets are different from the more agrarian lifestyles that they had for centuries beforehand. These are factors that are often missing when we just look at precision medicine in a genemic only framework, we're missing those cultural factors. If you're asking the wrong question, it doesn't matter how precise your

answer is. Yes. What else are you spearheading? With the consortium? We are also spearheading a lot of education initiatives. We just finished a summer program called Indigit Data. Indigit Data, I love that good job with the name, Thank you.

We were just so fortunate that we were able to secure funding to create this one week workshop in which we were able to bring together undergraduate and graduate Indigenous students and talk to them about data science and careers and data science, but then also data ethics and what it means to actually assert indigenous data sovereignties in their

own communities. And it was amazing. We had, like the first parts of the morning were devoted to guest lectures who are all Indigenous, who are all amazing scholars leading their own fields using data science and their own particularly

unique ways. And then in the afternoon we talked coding, like actually coded using environmental data that we collected and sequenced from tribal lands, and it was just so cool to get the students to sort of get their hands dirty in a sense with the data, and it really just opened their eyes to the larger questions that we discussed earlier, which is the fact that data is power. Data is power. Data is also linked to disempower mournment.

And if we want to change the narrative, then we need to change the next generation of data scientists that come from our communities. What's the overall goal of educating indigenous data scientists. De Colonization has to be done by historically colonized people, no one else. So it's really interesting when you have white academics who are looking to scholars of color to figure out how to de colonize their syllabi and oh my gosh, I have a brief story.

So I did a Twitter conference called de Colonized DNA and it was in lined with National DNA DA and it was really to bring voices of disenfranchised communities and representative scholars to talk about how janet mix could be reductionistic and you know, reinforce these power dynamics that really

need to be changed. And after that, a lot of white people and a lot of journalists who work for education journals reached out to me and they asked me, well, what can we learn from indigenous peoples and what recommendations would you give to white scholars for decolonizing their curricula. And I'm like, step down, give your place up, and allow a scholar of color, a colonized person, to take your place, because ultimately these narratives need to come from us,

not you. Unsurprisingly, none of those interviews made it depress. What we're about at large in this season is thinking about how we use technology that serves people, not the other way around, and that serves collective power, not just selfish and of visual power. And when it comes to technology, there's so much good intention around sort of pro civic, pro democratic, small D movements like open source and open

data and community sharing. And there's this lens that says like, democratizing access to technology makes it equal, makes that tool more available to all, which is good. What are your thoughts on that in terms of the future of technology and and how it affects our access to power? Oh my gosh, I have rebel against the phrase democratizing data or democratizing science. What type of democracy are we talking

about here? Are we talking about the American system of democracy, because the garbage fire that was the last election year should show that this is not a model by which we should follow. Any means of any past w equality. To preference the American system of democracy over other forms of democracy is a form of white colonial thinking. There were other forms of democracy that we need to consider, like indigenous systems of democracy that have long existed before

the American system of democracy. We also have to think that any system that advocates for benefiting most is going to disenfranchise small, underrepresenting communities like our own, like indigenous peoples, it's going to continue to disenfranchise minority groups and substantiate those power and balances. Democracy does not necessarily mean equality or equity, and these definitions of equity should be community driven and they're culturally specific. They should not be determined

by the dominant cultures. But let's also think carefully about equality and equity. We have a lot of d e I efforts, diversity inclusion and equity efforts across academia and across industries. And we get the diversity part and we get the inclusion part. Sure, you want our people's data, that's that's nothing new. The equity portion though is key, and equity is not equality. A seat at the table is not the same thing as a voice at the table. Yeah, you've done a lot, and I want to share that

burden and that opportunity. We set up this show to encourage people to do things, and on the topic of balancing power and on the topic of data more specifically. But lay out your thoughts on what we should be

doing as kindly as I can state this. If you are a member that has been historically empowered at this point in time, especially when it comes to topics related to racism and inequality, and I say this as kindly as I can, you need to sit down and shut up and listen to the scholars, the people of color, the communities and do what they recommend and follow their lead. Decision making authorities need to shift to those that have

been historically disenfranchised. That's how we get changed. If you want to advocate for change, you also need to provide room for dissenting voices, even if it's hard to hear mm hmm. Thank you, Crystal so see so much for your time, your teachings, your talent, and your portmanteaus. I really appreciate you. Thank you that word too. Crystal wants

people to listen. It's not enough just to raise awareness though, when we think back to the citizening principles, Crystal wants people to show up, but also to make space for those who haven't been able to show up, who haven't been able to citizen due to historical and systemic oppression. Now, as we're building out these new systems built on data and new technologies, we have to make sure we aren't repeating the old methods of extraction and exploitation and disenfranchisement.

Neither a majority white government nor a majority white business should be determining the tribal membership status of an Indigenous person. That don't make any damn sense. We have this opportunity to close gaps and undo harms caused by justice sort of thinking, and start taking justice into account when we use data. And after reflecting on both of these conversations with Crystal and with Kasha, I think the answer to

data justice actually goes both ways. Yeah, we need more diverse data sets, just like we need more diverse corporate boards, but not just that, you know, we also need to change the way corporations wield power, and we need a data ecosystem where people have agency over their data, specifically those people who have been cut out of or abused

by our current system. One of our pillars of How to Citizen is restoring power to the people, and one of the biggest gaps of tech is that it's used to disempower folks from literally showing up for themselves and for others. Because how we get misrepresented in data and the effects that that can have on our choices. Both Kasha and Crystal show us examples of people taking that

power back. When thinking about this show How to Citizen, I think we need to keep breathing new life into this citizen verb and apply the lessons of our guests and evolve as well. So citizen, what does that mean? I think it should also mean that we explicitly seek to distribute power and resources to those long excluded from systems of citizen it. Next week we dive into the Mystic and I learned about the link between chicken farms, blockchain logic, and tarot. I know that sounds like a

word salad, but trust me, it's a dope conversation. Picture of the chicken how many steps it took? Because they're like a phenomener like All the Chicken Got It sent thousand steps in Let's Eat Chickens and blockchain Come on now, m And now it's that time in the episode where we share some actions that you can take. First, up a thinking exercise, ask yourself, how much is my data privacy worth to me? And how do I feel about

non consensual surveillance based on my data? Now, adding the element of genetic information, how would you feel if any of your biological relatives donated genetic info tied to you that could be bought and sold. Next, I want you to get informed about exploitative data collection historically and right now we've linked to three articles in the show notes and on our site. And then finally, here are some

ways to publicly participate. You can help empower or indigenous scientists working with tribal communities to ensure that the benefits of biomedicine and public health go to indigenous people by making a donation to the Native Biodata Consortium check them out online, And help protect yourself and slow the market for selling all of our data by installing the Global Privacy Control. This is a feature of certain web browsers

that lets you signal to a site. You know, don't be trading all my information and it's backed by law. We've got linked to all this in the show notes and on our website at how to citizen dot com. Follow us on Instagram at how the Citizen and tag us in your post about data or exploitation or anything. We're not anything I don't want like posts about you trying to do a TikTok dance or something, So one or two of those might be fun make my life

more interesting. Thanks for listening, and keep citizen. How the Citizen with baritune Day is a duction of I Heart Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive producers are Me Barrett tune Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Usa. Our senior producer is Tamika Adams, our producer is Ali Kilts, and our assistant producer is Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cohen is our editor, Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew

Laie is our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original music for season three from Andrew Clawson. Additional production help from Arwin Knicks. This episode was produced and sound designed by Tamika Adams. Special thanks to Joel Smith from I Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at dust Light Production