Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how biosocial understanding of health disparities in minority populations might be used to generate a new discourse of "undoing" the effects of colonization in future generations.

Paper long abstract:

Biosocial understanding of health disparities sheds light on the history of oppression experienced by racial and ethnic minorities, the high rate of type-2 diabetes in Native American populations being a case in point. Once their ill health is examined through the lenses of epigenetics, transgenerational trauma, and extended inheritance, its biological roots will be found in the history of colonization and social marginalization of the tribes over several generations. Meanwhile, the plasticity of epigenetic traits, which can be modified while being shaped in-utero or over the offspring's life history, might open up avenues for ameliorating the people's health in future generations. Incremental improvements in pre-natal care, pregnancy outcomes, birth-weight, infant immune system and metabolism, childhood diet and exercise, health management of pre-conception youth, and the well-being of persons of reproductive age may help intervene in the cycle of epigenetic deficits. While the maternal body tends to be heavily scrutinized under the biology/society dichotomy, the biosocial healthcare paradigm will give a greater role for men to play, namely taking strides to mitigate the impact of stress on their families and community that impairs health. I postulate that because the biosocial body can be temporalized into the past as well as the future, it represents a hope for reversing the multi-generational colonization of the body and may become a motivation for a community that shares a history of uprooting, violence, malnutrition, and poverty to work towards a long-term recovery of the health of its descendents.