Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Band of New Jersey

[BlackWolf]

I'd like everyone's opinon on this group.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/Taino/jatibonuco.html

This is my take.
The Tainos were the indigenous peoples of the Carribean.  They inhabited the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and parts of Cuba.  They were one of the first Tribes to encounter the European invaders after Christopher Colombus landed in 1492.  As far as I know, and from what I have researched this is what happened. 

By about the 1700's, Taino society was decimated by war, disease, and oppression at the hands of the Europeans
( Spaniards ).  Some say almost to the brink of extinction.
Many Tainos mixed with the Spaniard and later African population.  The Spaniards later brought in great numbers of African Slaves for labor.  The Spaniards also brought in Indian labor from the Yucatan peninsula, and other parts of South America.  What was left of the Tainos, they mixed with the dominant society over the next few centuries.  Later some people of African and European decent may have even claimed Taino ancestry to cover up their African heritage.

But there are of course people alive today of Puerto Rican and Cuban decent, etc, that would most likely have Taino ancestors from a few hundred years ago.  And of course certain aspects of Taino culture did mix with the Spaniard and African culture to make places like Puerto Rico and Cuba what they are today.  There are even places in Eastern Cuba, whose population probably does have Taino heritage. These particular people have every right to claim their heritage in my opinion. 

But in my opinion, this group here, is not a Tribal Band, and would probably be best described as a heritage group composed of  people of dubious Taino ancestry.  I also doubt that  they know much about traditional Taino Culture and ceremonies. They kind of remind me of some of these Fake Cherokee Tribes in the Southeast.  They seem to be a group of people who believe they have Taino ancestry ( some probably do, but a lot don’t ), and they just make up their own Tribe and pretend to know about things that they really don’t have a clue about. 

[educatedindian]

This site is a pretty good scholarly source for Taino history and culture.
http://www.kacike.org/List.html

Some scholars make pretty good arguments that Dominican culture is basically Taino, mixed with later African and Spanish and other tribes. This includes tribes from what later became the US southeast. I met someone, while traveling in Costa Rica, whose family was from Grenada, who had family stories of being Cherokee believe it or not. I suspect the stories likely had been garbled over time and they was just choosing the name of a well known tribe.

A Dominican I knew in grad school told me that most Dominicans regard these groups as people ashamed of being Dominican. Sometimes they're largely of white ancestry and want to avoid being blamed for what their ancestors. Sometimes they're largely of Black ancestry and want to avoid the stigma and prejudice still directed at Blacks in Dominican society.

When I traveled in eastern Cuba, I met two people who described themselves as Indians. There are small and relatively isolated Indian communities down there. Plus like DR, the local guajira (country) culture has a lot of elements of Taino culture.

I don't know enough about PR to say, but I suspect the situation is similar.

Unless this group and similar ones like it can show they are part of Indian communities in these islands going back a ways (which I really doubt), they're heritage groups.

[Diana]

I have been to Puerto Rico and went on a guided tour to the El Yunque national park. The tour guide seemed very knowledgeable and explained some of the history of Puerto Rico. He did mention the Taino Indians and how they were extinct, if I remember correctly he said that the Taino Indians had been extinct for several hundred years, but that a lot of present day Puerto Ricans still had some Taino blood which sounds plausible.


Lim lemtsh,

Diana     

[wolfhawaii]

In the 1700s there were many Indian people, including Cherokees, who were captured in warfare and sold as slaves to Carribean plantations. Surely there would be some descendents alive today. My first wife in the 1980s was New Yorican (Puerto Rican born in New York) and she claimed Taino roots. Her people were from Bayamon, PR.

[Rattlebone]

 I am not going to argue in favor or against these people and if they are real or not. Now maybe if somebody can show they are doing this just for some sort dubious scheme, then maybe I will.

 I will say though that I don't always buy what history books tell us in regards to a people being extinct. I started being that way when I read Vine Deloria Jr pointing out how there were a group of Apalachicola people still in existence, despite mainstream history books claiming they were extinct. That started me on a journey where I started researching other people that are supposedly extinct in history books.

 Often times the Carib for existence are spoken of as all but extinct in history books as well. Of course when they are spoken of in such a way, the fact that they still exist in places like Dominica is often not mentioned. When the Caribs of Dominica are mentioned, they are often done so in such a way as to make one think they are not true Caribs because of being mixed with African.

 I also don't often buy the whole "they don't have their original culture" shtick either since using such a argument would by default also make some American Mixed blood who was a victim of the boarding schools no longer Indian as well if they lost cultural knowledge because of them.

 A great deal of so called "Latin America" is made up of people of mostly NDN blood, but at the same time many of them don't live by what would have been the tribal culture of their ancestors. So the question there is, are they no longer this thing called an "Indian," but now just simply "Indigenous??" It seems in cases like that, people split hairs to where being Indian and Indigenous are more a different thing then just a word created by some lost Italian in 1492, and another word that has both political and Anthropological meaning to it.

 Still I too would struggle with calling the average Puerto Rican a Taino. Just like I do have issues with calling the average Mexican an Aztec when many assert themselves to be so. Especially when despite their claims of being Aztec and clearly having NDN blood, they are just a clueless about Aztecs or any other NDN people as most whites that claim to be "part Cherokee."

 In Puerto Rico there is a group of people in existence that claim to be some sort of actual Taino community as well. I do believe they have their own land and community. Still I don't know if they are legitimate either, or if their is a website in existence by them or that can prove they are legitimate.
 

[Rattlebone]

 Here is some things I found on the topic:

 
Indian Country Today

Taino Nation alive and strong

Originally printed at http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28194639.html

CARIDAD DE LOS INDIOS, Cuba - No one ever told Panchito Ramirez that his people were extinct. Though the history books tell us otherwise, here in the remote mountains of Cuba, the knowledgeable herbalist and healer lives with some 350 Taino descendants who make up his village and nearby rancheria.


When several Taino people from the United States and Puerto Rico visited Ramirez;s village recently with a delegation of researchers, writers, and scholars, it was a poignant reunion for all.


"When we climbed over that last ridge in the mountains and I heard the drums and the songs of the people welcoming us, I was overwhelmed with emotion. It was like coming home," said Daniel Wakonax Rivera, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native who has spent the last eight years compiling a dictionary of the Taino language.


For Ramirez, who is cacique or chief of his village, it was an affirmation that those who had been stolen into slavery had survived and sent their children back to rejoin their relatives.


"It is so good to see all of you," Ramirez said. "Now we know we are not the last of our kind. We no longer feel alone."


Much like their ancestors did before Columbus arrived, Taino people here continue to live simply in traditional bohios, or thatched roof huts, relying on Indigenous knowledge of hundreds of herbal medicines that grow throughout the lush mountains and valleys of the region. Since the advent of the revolution's reforms, the population has had access to doctors and a clinic, as well as schools. Pancho counts nieces and nephews in medical and technical careers, as well as agriculture.


They grow almost all of their food in the old-style of permaculture, using raised-bed gardens called "conucos" that are inter-cropped with a variety of vegetables and fruits that Ramirez calls his "grocery store." Traditional healing methods are part of everyday life and planting is timed by phases of the moon.


The songs, dances, ceremonies and language of the Taino are alive in these mountain people, taught to them by their parents and grandparents whose beliefs are centered around protecting the earth and what she gives to the people. Their ceremonies honor and pay tribute to the Creator and to Mother Earth, the sun, moon, stars, water, winds and the four directions. Sound familiar?


Although historians and literature often misinform us that the Taino and Arawak Indians were completely wiped out by genocide and disease, Ramirez and members of his mountain village are living proof that the myth of extinction is patently false.


There are perhaps thousands of Taino descendants living in seven or more small communities in Cuba, and in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Florida, New York, California, Hawaii and even Spain, where many of their ancestors were taken as slaves.


It is only in the last few decades that the culture has been revitalized and Taino people have created a resurgence of their traditions. Saddled with the myth of extinction and written out of the history books, Taino descendants have nonetheless struggled to recapture their language and traditions.


"Sometimes people laugh when I tell them I am Taino," said David Cintron, a University of Florida graduate student writing his thesis on the Taino revitalization movement. "'Are there any left?' they ask. Perhaps there are no more pure-bloods, but there plenty of Tainos. It's just that no one has been taught the true history of our people.


"It's surprising just how many Taino traditions, customs and practices have been continued. We simply take for granted that these are Puerto Rican or Cuban practices and never realize that they are really Taino," he added.


"Taino survival is evidence of persistent indigenous resistance to invasion, conquest, colonization and assimilation. It is evidence that assimilation cuts both ways - that our colonizers also learned much from us."


Rediscovering and celebrating the "Indigenous Legacies of the Caribbean" was the theme of the fifth annual conference that brought 42 researchers, writers and scholars on an eight-day tour of Cuba. The three-day conference was held in Baracoa Bay, the oldest colonial city in the Americas.


The delegation, organized by Indigenous World Tours, traveled through Santiago de Cuba, Caridad de los Indios, Guantanamo and many small communities en route to Baracoa Bay on Cuba's tropical Eastern shore where it is said Columbus first landed as he made his way up the Caribbean islands.


The ancient wooden cross from his ship still stands in the Cathedral Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion where it was moved years after Columbus left it standing in the harbor entrance in 1492, according to historian Alejandro Hartmann Matos.


Throughout the conference, historians, anthropologists, doctors, Indigenous herbalists and educators shared their knowledge and historical documentation of Taino cultural practices inherent in Cuba's music, organic farming practices and unique health care system which relies heavily on herbal medicines.


"Five hundred years ago the Spaniards invaded our lands, enslaving, torturing and decimating our people. Our ancestors fought for survival and we hid in the mountains where they could not find us," said Inarunikia Pastrana, a nurse and radio producer from New York City.


"Thanks to the tenacity of our ancestors, the resurgence and restoration of the Taino people is a reality. Our language is heard once more, our songs are sung once more. Against all odds, we have defeated extinction and continue to rescue our ancestral heritage and culture."


Before leaving Baracoa, Ramirez and the delegation also held ceremonies on a mountain overlooking Baracoa Bay to honor the memory of Menominee activist Ingrid Washinawatok and Native Hawaiian artist Lahe'ena'e Gay, who were kidnapped and killed within Columbia two years ago. Washinawatok's work with Indigenous peoples included the Taino of Cuba.


Ali El-Issa and John Livingstone remembered their wives as committed Native women who gave their lives in the struggle for peace, justice and sovereignty as Taino ceremonial songs were sung to mourn their deaths and celebrate their lives.


On the final day of the tour, a national industry sent representatives from the Minister of the Interior to invite Ramirez to inaugural ceremonies of Cuba's International Tobacco Festival slated for mid-February in Havana. Cuba recognizes that the Taino cultivated tobacco and gave it to the world as a gift, they said, and therefore felt it appropriate for cacique Ramirez to open the festival with tobacco ceremonies.


As the delegation prepared to leave Cuba, Reina Ramirez, who is apprentice to her father in healing ceremonies, sent a message to Native women in the North: "From the women here, in Caridad, to our sister-mothers in the North and other lands, we send greetings. Keep your traditions; we wish you healthy children."

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Indian Country Today

Print this article
Taino groups occupy ceremonial site

Originally printed at http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28164084.html

Groups demand respect for grave and ceremonial sites


UTUADO, Puerto Rico - Taino people in Puerto Rico have taken over a ceremonial center near the inland city of Utuado. Leaders representing several organizations accuse the island;s government of allowing the desecration of ancient burial grounds of the Taino and other Aboriginal people.


In a standoff with local officials, several women, among a group of seven occupying park grounds, have declared a hunger strike, while the Judicial Administration of Puerto Rico has put off a direct confrontation with the protesting group. The protesters were cited by a local tribunal to appear in court Friday, July 29, but declined to attend.


Legal representatives were sent instead, according to attorney Mauricio Hernandez, in El Nuevo Dia, a newspaper in Puerto Rico.


Court of First Instance Judge Concepcion Figueroa, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 28, threw out a trespassing charge and instructed authorities not to move to evict the group, as the issue is preferably treated as ''a civil matter.'' A new court date is set for Wednesday, Aug. 3, Hernandez told Indian Country Today. Figueroa admonished the local authorities to not ''criminalize the matter but to try to resolve it through civil means." The judge left standing probable cause related to taking physical action to establish dominion over contested property.


Meanwhile, police have cordoned off the area but have made no attempt to arrest the protesting group. A private security firm guarding the site has cut off water and bathroom facilities and has moved to cut off the people inside from outside supporters, according to Hernandez.


Occupation leaders Naniki Reyes Ocasio, of Orocovis, and Elba Anaca Lugo have requested a meeting with Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila. The governor has not responded to the request, and Reyes has declared the hunger strike will continue until the governor agrees to meet. The judge absolved charges against a Taino community elder who was no longer on the site.


The Caguana Ceremonial Center, long identified as a major archeological site, has been a focus of attention to people on the island involved in the Taino resurgence. The Taino groups are in part protesting recent construction and renovation projects at Caguana that have closed access for local people to the site where popular ceremonies are now increasingly held. However, Taino leaders point out the issue of grave robbing and disturbance is island-wide, particularly as housing and industrial development expand. They accuse the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of removing remains from a burial field in recent months.


Leaders representing various Taino organizations - the Caney Quinto Mundo, the Consejo General de Tainos Boricanos and the United Confederation of Taino People - have claimed responsibility for the protest at Caguana. The occupation is part of a larger campaign to bring attention to the grave desecration issue, according to Lugo. Taino leaders want to see the federal Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act enforced for Taino ancestral burial and ceremonial grounds in Puerto Rico.


Public response to the occupation has so far been positive, according to Roger Hernandez, Atihuibancex, a representative of the United Confederation of Taino People, one of the protest groups.


''The issue of protection for our ancient relatives is very important; we just pray for a peaceful resolution of the confrontation,'' said Daniel Rivera, Wakonax, a council member of the Taino Nation of the Antilles, which has bases in Puerto Rico and New York. Rivera, who recently testified at a United Nations forum, offered the ''good offices'' of the Taino Nation to help negotiate the occupation. ''Our people have many organizations and some are more forceful than others,'' he said. ''But, first thing, the Taino Nation demands judicial and police ''restraint' from Gov. Acevedo's office.''


Roberto Borrero, UCTP president and staff member of New York's American Museum of Natural History, has issued a letter calling for support of the occupation. ''This action was deemed necessary, as official requests for meetings with Puerto Rican government officials to discuss the situation of Taino People in Boriken have been continuously ignored,'' Borrero stated.

******************************************************************************

here are some other articles on Taino people I found


http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28219174.html

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28183454.html

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28148764.html

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28409039.html

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28155699.html

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28179839.html

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28164234.html


 

[BlackWolf]

Thanks for the links EducatedIndian and Rattlebone, I'm going to go over them.  I also found this website.

http://www.losttainotribe.com/

In the second video, a Professor Gabriel Viera talks about the “admixture test”  He makes some interesting points.

I was just thinking that considering the historical record existing in regards to the Indians that came from the Yucatan and South America who were imported to the Carribean as Slaves by the Spaniards.  I wonder why there aren't many people claiming the heritage from these tribes in the Carribean?  ( At least not that I know of ) Could it be that these Tribes were integrated into the Taino Culture? 

[Don Naconna]

Thanks for the link. Haslip and Viera co wrote Robbing the Native Past with and Warren Barbour which totally disproves the "Black Olmec" theories of Van Sertima. Some so called black Indians believe that the Taino, Arawak and Caribes were actually black Africans, because many were darker skinned than other mainland peoples.
The admixture study while proving that 61% of Puerto Ricans had aboriginal DNA has little meaning. The fact is that like most of Spanish speaking America are mestizos does NOT mean that they are Indian. If the same were true for black Americans with well over 70& having white blood, there would be no black people left! Besides whatever Indian blood most Puerto Ricans have would have been very long distant. The Spanish decimated the indigenous populations through disease, war and assimilation. Very few indigenous groups survived the early conquest as the Caribbean islands were valuable for sugar plantations and slave labour.

[Rattlebone]

. The fact is that like most of Spanish speaking America are mestizos does NOT mean that they are Indian. .

What would you call them though?

 The fact of the matter is that most so called "hispanics" are probably well over 1/2 Indian by blood. I live in California, and see proof of that every single day with my own eyes. This is very much opposed to 70% of blacks who might have white blood, but it is little and not very visible.

 The term Mestizo is also misleading, and most don't realize the social implications that word often times has. A full blooded Indian in some place like Mexico can leave their people and go to some place like Mexico City. Upon going there all they must do is change how they dress etc, and then are seen as a "Mestizo." Some so called Mestizo's are actually not mixed at all regardless if the word means tobe mixed Spaniard and Indian.

 Now one might say that these Mestizo's are no longer connected to any tribe or their Indigenous culture. However what is the difference between an most Indian by blood Mestizo from Mexico, and some mixed blood in the United States or Canada who is over 1/2 Indian by blood, but assimilated? The answer is obviously practically nothing aside from the American/Canadian person might have an actual tribal body and culture to go to. This is opposed to the Mestizo who comes from a population of mostly  Mestizo people in a society that has absorbed the indigenous population rather then eradicate.

 The words native, indigenous, and aboriginal all mean the same thing, and that is to be the original people of a land. Since the world has colonial  populations, and the US and Canada have status laws that dictate who is or is not NDN, those words have a political attachment to them that goes above their original meaning. However lack of a political organization we are so used to seeing in the United States and Canada that deems who is and is not NDN by blood legally does not negate the fact that the average so called Mestizo is usually over 1/2 NDN by blood, it not actually a full blood.

 If a person is Puerto Rico is 75% Taino by blood, but part of the mainstream Puerto Rican population I could see where somebody would say they are not Taino. However can you really say they are not Indian/Native American since by blood they are no different then an American/Canadian mixed blood? How is it possible to say a mixed blood from this hemisphere stops being who they are do to their culture being changed, but a person of another race is still seen as such regardless of what culture they practice?

 Is an African American really not an African American but simply just black because they do not practice some African indigenous culture? Is a Kenyan in Nairobi no longer African because they are not practicing the culture of their Masai ancestors?

 

[Rattlebone]

Thanks for the links EducatedIndian and Rattlebone, I'm going to go over them.  I also found this website.

http://www.losttainotribe.com/

In the second video, a Professor Gabriel Viera talks about the “admixture test”  He makes some interesting points.

I was just thinking that considering the historical record existing in regards to the Indians that came from the Yucatan and South America who were imported to the Carribean as Slaves by the Spaniards.  I wonder why there aren't many people claiming the heritage from these tribes in the Carribean?  ( At least not that I know of ) Could it be that these Tribes were integrated into the Taino Culture? 

 Good question.

 I don't know the answer to it though myself. I do know however that on the island of Bermuda there are descendants of the Pequot and other tribes from the east coast on the island of St. David, whom are today known as St. David's Indians. They do have a community of their own, and have newly made ties with the Pequot of the United States. I actually know person from there and we talk often.

 There is also a group of poeple called "Black Caribs" or more properly known as the Garifuna. They are a mixture of Carib Indian and African who originated in Jamaica. They either fled Jamaica fleeing the English or were relocated by them. They now reside in Central America, and I believe the largest body of them is in the nation of Belize.

[milehighsalute]

https://www.facebook.com/ciba.torres

this guy messaged me......says hes a cheif but he dont seem to be chiefing over anybody

i dont think his band is a legit "tribe" yet i do believe they all have taino blood.....in fact im willing to bet on it

but im also willing to bet they have little to no real taino culture also

he was trying to legitimize one of the fake yamassee tribes..............im pretty sure most agree both are fake

and yes i know the yamassee were a vibrant people......but what is left of them reside in seminole/creek communities as societies............not black people resurrecting an old tribe..whats left of the REAL yamassee are pissed

i admit that i know very little of Caribbean culture and carribbean natives so i will leave it at that