Centromere stability reveals how ancient genomic functions resist evolutionary decay—implications for synthetic biology and disease

Indigenous frameworks, like the Māori *whakapapa* or Navajo *Diné Bahane’*, treat chromosomal stability as an extension of ancestral lineage and ecological reciprocity. For example, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) *Ganondagan* creation story describes chromosomes as woven threads of collective memory, where centromeres act as knots preserving cultural and genetic heritage. Western science’s isolation of centromere function ignores these traditions’ holistic view of heredity, where mutations are not errors but adaptive responses to shared environmental narratives—such as climate shifts or colonial disruptions.