Talk:Taíno/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

From Wikipedia:Speedy deletions

• Taíno - cut & paste move. Need to delete in order to move Taino there. —John | Talk 21:32, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
  • Why no discussion on the Talk page about the move? How many people agree that it should be moved? I ask this because it was originally moved the other way in Dec 2002. (Also, I am restoring the redirect on Taíno instead of the cut-and-paste. Wait until the merge/move. Don't try to maintain two articles.) - Tεxτurε 21:38, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
    • The correct word is Taíno, with an acute on the 'i'. Have you noticed the convenience used in the Führer article? Taíno should be the main article, with Taino being a redirect to it. —John | Talk 23:11, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
      • That is a valid point. Since it has already been moved once in the opposite direction I think it best if you start a topic on the talk page regarding your suggested move. - Tεxτurε 23:54, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
        • Please leave this on the talk page for a week first. If there are no objections, then it can be moved, but currently most pages link to Taino, not Taíno, and there are far more Google hits for Taino than Taíno. Angela. 00:00, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Article's introduction; cultural heritage

I am about to make a pretty severe edit of the introduction to this story. The simple truth of the matter, which no serious academic questions, is that the Taínos culture ceased to exist in the 16th century.

The problem is that there are a couple of small groups who insist that they are full-blooded "Taínos", mostly based in New Jersey, intent on gaining recognition as a tribal nation. This is simply ridiculous, given the historical record. Claims about DNA tests are irrelevant for two reasons: (a) there was a significant number of South and Central American Amerindians who immigrated to Puerto Rico throughout its time as a Spanish colony; (b) whatever the DNA of anybody in Puerto Rico, Taíno culture has been dead for 400-450 years.

The current introduction also has a glaring flaw of logic where it "proves" that supposedly 62% of the population of Puerto Rico has a significant amount of Taíno descent. -- 171.64.42.82 04:13, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Hello, if you haven't registered your username so far please take a moment to do so. You can do so by visiting the register your loginname page. It takes only a few seconds. =)

While I may agree with you that the Taino culture can be considered as dead, others do not. That is why Dr. Juan Carlos Martínez Cruzado from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez is currently investigating this on his research projects.

—John | Talk 05:26, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Martínez Cruzado very clearly flubs Puerto Rican history by saying that the "Indians" in the 1777 and 1787 censuses were Taínos-- hell, he's citing Salvador Brau, a 19th century historian. It is well known that there was Amerindian immigration to the island from South America (a fact that can be picked up easily if your source is more recent than 1894!).

mtDNA is weird: it is transmitted almost exclusively through the maternal line. It is stereotypical of colonial situations that the colonists are predominantly male, and that they take native wives and/or concubines. One definitely expects a founder effect for mtDNA.

And anyway, the whole project is infused with a subtle racism that I don't know whether you can grasp. -- 171.64.42.82 09:55, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I made an edit to your edits. First, the center of contemporary Taíno self-identification is New Jersey, not Puerto Rico. Second, I looked through the article about Taíno heritage in the Dominican Republic; the article's conclusion that "the roots of traditional Dominican culture are truly Taíno" is plain ridiculous. Just because the Dominicans have a folk ideology that attributes admirable qualities to the Taínos doesn't mean that their culture is Taíno. Very, very little of what the author mentions is any actual cultural transmission; and a lot of it is disguised racism (it's good to be "indio", bad to be "black").

Every place where you say the plural "scholars", you mean something like "two loonies with a weird agenda." Also, you reinserted the nonsense math averaging the averages of two samples, one of them admittedly nonrepresentative.

In short, I suspect this article is being hijacked for a political agenda, by prominently citing two utterly nonrepresentative sources of scholarship on this topic. -- 171.64.42.82 10:27, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Beware hijacking

I just reviewed the history of this entry, and I must warn editors that it runs a terrible risk of being hijacked for political causes.

Taíno culture ceased to exist over 400 years ago. However, in recent decades, a small group of Puerto Ricans in the USA, based in New Jersey, have been agitating to be recognized as the true item by the US Government and gullible academics.

As such, this group of people endeavors to place their Taíno survival propaganda all over the web. The history of this entry shows this very clearly.

The people doing this are intellectually dishonest. The one truly interesting bit of information that they cite is mtDNA studies of the Puerto Rican population. They regularly fudge the math on these; for example, this article had the following statment: "In research, sample sets collected from people who claimed to have a maternal ancestor with Native American physiognomic traits showed a higher likelihood of possessing Native American mtDNAs (70%) than did unbiased sample sets (53%). Averaging between these two figures would suggest that 62% of the entire Puerto Rican population descend, at least in part, from the Taíno..." This is really, really bad math, averaging from two different, non-representative samples.

Another thing that jumps out is the fact that one of the references inserted by JohnCrawford's recent edit was from the e-"journal" Kacike. The name of this journal is cognate to the word "cacique", which is the word recorded by the Spaniards for Taíno chiefs. A quick examination of the journal's index reveals that a grand total of 12 people have published in it, and 7 of these are either in the Editorial Board or Editorial Staff ("peer review" my a**). It can't have had more than 3 or 4 issues. Also, browsing through the articles, they are clearly about pushing an agenda, and a number of them show very questionable scholarship; for example this article by P.J. Ferbel (who, incidentally, is Assistant Editor) reads like something an undergrad would write.

The biggest problem is that before long, the combination of fake New Jersey "We want affirmative action and casinos" "Taíno tribe", and the Dominican "I'm not Black like the Haitians, I'm Indian like the Taínos" racists, will again conspire to pass fantasy and questionable scholarship as fact, and set their aims at this entry again. -- 171.64.42.82 11:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Relax dude. Then register up. —John | Talk 05:23, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Zemi

I removed the proposal to merge Zemi in the main Taíno article after expanding the Zemi article enough that it can stand on its own. -Uyvsdi (talk) 19:49, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Semi-protected edit request on 17 May 2019

Godoffrye12 (talk) 03:48, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Edit requests on how to use this template. There is nothing in your request to act on. - Donald Albury 14:06, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2019 and 13 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eed49.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

DNA Samples

The DNA samples that show that 63% of the subjects tested possess Native American ancestry is not reliable proof of Native American ancestry for the Puerto Rican population as a whole. Puerto Rico has a population of 4 million people. Nor does there seem to be a wide variety of geographical locations represented. I would like to know how many other studies of this kind were done, and by what other Universities, organizations or Scholars. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LightingBug (talk • contribs) 04:26, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

It is not up to Europeans to say who is Native or not or your companies. Modern day Boricuas from Puerto-Rico are the Tainos and they were never extinct but you keep devaluating the oral history of the indigenous people as you want your European presence to be remembered. It is not true. The Tainos are still here. How can they disappear if most Boricuas still carry their blood today? Wikipedia needs to be decolonized as well. This is a Eurocentric basis and it is not up to you white people from the North to decide who is alive, Native or not. Focus on your own ancestors. You did enough damage to us.

The problem with this scenario, and the reason I have edited the section on Taino in modern times, is that this was according to a mitochondrial DNA test, which does not indicate amount of ancestry, but rather that one has a distant female ancestor of that type, which can be generations upon generations ago. So, 62% of boricuas (Puerto Ricans) can have a far less than 1% Amerindian heritage. Gee, white American Southerners typically have a smattering of Native (in some areas) or black ancestry (in other areas of the South), but it is so miniscule as to not qualify describing them them (in an encyclopedia) as anything other than lily white. Most Puerto Ricans are of varying proportions of white and black descent. There are, however, a few boricuas from certain locales who truly are of noticeable mixed Native and white descent and we need more exposition here, more history told. I'm dying for someone who has done anthropological studies on the island but they seem to be few and far between.

Next, there is a contributor who keeps saying "the tribe" requires DNA tests. The definition of a Native American tribe is very well defined in the USA and unincorporated territories, and even in our neighboring countries such as Mexico and Canada. Persons or groups claiming to be a "tribe" on Wikipedia must define who they are and how they self-govern or at the very least how they affiliate in the case of legitimate unrecognized groups with true tribal continuity (see Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and Apalachee for a better example. Although I am sure (but not certain) there are persons in Central/North Florida who may feel they are of Timucua descent, there is no such TRIBAL entity. Tribe implies continuity and governance, not just affinity with one's purported ancestors. Please cite to your "tribe's" homepage and membership criteria. --Noopinonada (talk) 04:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

What you are saying is totally false. YOUR science defined mitochondrial DNAs for the Natives but it is not true. How can mdoern day Boricuas only carry 1 per cent of Tainos blood when they LOOK NATIVE TAINOS? Our new generation will DEBUNK colonial science and Eurocentrism. You raped them but they are still here and will never disappear.— Preceding unsigned comment added by JaneMoreau (talk • contribs) 05:14, 12 April 2021 (UTC) (Note:Comment moved from middle of earlier comment. - Donald Albury 12:13, 12 April 2021 (UTC))

You're saying that having a Taino matriline isn't having Taino ancestry as long as the patriline is European? That's both sexist, and racist. And, it isn't correct. Mitochondrial DNA represents matrilineal ancestry, the mother's side. It doesn't go bye-bye just because the father's European. My matriline has married European a few times in a row, but I'm still reported by geneticists as a full quarter Polish from my Polish matriline. I'm still strongly Polans tribe no matter how many European MALES you throw into my MATRIline. Just because most people sexistly follow only the patriline in ancestry doesn't mean only male ancestors give DNA, or heritage. It's a sexist, and inaccurate practice. And, you're exaggerating how far back Europeans have been mixing with the Taino. It isn't thousands of years. Europeans in the Americas is new history. When you're not a geneticist, you are not supposed to be acting like a leading authority on genetics to people on wikipedia. --184.101.91.185 (talk) 08:22, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Modern Taíno Tribes

It's outrageous that the people who say WE are extinct are mad and do not possess the proper command of English or spelling. Furthermore, these so called "facts" are taken from books from the conquerors (Spanish and American). I, on the other hand, am a native Cuban, part Taino. If anyone of you naysayers have ever traveled to Cuba (which I doubt) or any of the former nations of the Caribbean where my ancestors inhabited, I think you would change your minds. I have relatives in Cuba that I travel every other year to see.

I have visited with my family and we have gone to where other clans live mainly in (Las montañas de Oriente) they live moch like on reservations like in the US and are referred to as las batas blancas so        

when you do research on the subject at least get the so call facts straight in plain words you don't know what the hell you talking about. yes there are no full bloods but you can say that about ALL of the Americas, yes we are mestizos in Cuba,but most of humanity is in it ?? so i will direct you to theses sites http://www.indigenouspeople.net/taino.htm > http://americantaino.blogspot.com/2007/03/tano-people-of-cuba.html > http://www.onaway.org/indig/taino2.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luis2112 (talk • contribs) 03:05, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

To whom it may concern, I would like to offically contest and protest this untrue public statement about the Taino people by someone whom had edited and added this statement on the Wikipedia section on the Modern Taino Tribe, as the statement found below is an absoultly untrue and without any real crediable documented proof. I here demand that it be removed or it shall be contest in a federal court as a public slanderous untrue statement and your company will have to show and provide the legal proof of burden.

"Some Taíno groups are known to 'adopt' other native traditions (mainly North American Plains Indian)." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Japerez (talk • contribs) 01:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

The three organizations mentioned above are not Indian Tribes nor has it been proven that they are legitimite authorities on Taíno culture. There are unfortunately today, no legitimite authorities on authentic Taíno culture. Even historians and scholars can only learn so much from historical records. The Government of the Jatibonicu Taino PeopleTaíno Nation of the Antilles (1993), the United Confederation of Taíno People, and the Jatibonicu Taino People are heritage groups composed of people of dubious Taíno ancestry. There may however be remnants of Taíno culture in Puerto Rico that blended with African and Spanish traditions. If anyone knows of authentic Taíno traditions that still exist, I would like to here them.

I would also like to add that the Spaniards, in additino to bringing in African slaves to Puerto Rico and other parts of the Carribean, also brought in Indian labor from the Yucatan peninsula, and from other areas of Latin America such as Venezuala to replace the Taíno labor, whome were almost brought to the brink of extinction because of abuse, and disease. So the DNA test cannot specify Taino ancestry, only Indian ancestry.

Academics say the modern-day Taino are descended from a 19th-century movement island intellectuals launched to stir nationalism against Spain and are maintained by mainland Puerto Ricans to downplay their African heritage. There is most likely however, a minority of people in Puerto Rico and in the Carribean who do have Taíno ancestry from many generations ago but it is something that would be almost impossible to prove or disprove today because the vast majority of Taino traditions and cultural knowledge has been lost to time and the traditions that did survive tended to mix with Spainiard/European and African traditions. LightingBug (talk) 02:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't see your post; you nail it on the head to a certain degree. However, I am certain that there are mestizos of varying proportions in certain enclaves in the Caribbean, especially the very Eastern tip of Cuba and the Southern Dominican Republic, as well as a small portion of mountain-dominated central PR. National Geographic conducted an interesting study a few years ago on Eastern Cuba and the Taino descent. You may have to google it to read further. --Noopinonada (talk) 04:46, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Lightningbug's comment above pretty much sums up the issue as it is. The heritage groups listed above are pretty much what one would define in Indian country as "wannabes." There may in fact be a few persons who have Taino ancestry, and that's pretty much it. It is not verifiable or provable that it is even Taino (and not some other group the Spanish imported to PR), and even if it were, there is has been no true tribal entity. There is no government or tribe that is Taino. As far as I have gleaned, some of the heritage groups listed in the article are just that, heritage associations, who may have incorporated in the states where they are located, just like a business or restaurant can do. Incorporation does not create tribal status or tribal government status.

These heritage groups are the same as the gazillion native heritage groups in the USA: they are not a tribe, only recently came together to pay hommage to supposed ancestry, and are not Indian by any stretch. What is the excuse with recently resurging wannabe groups? Usually "hiding out" and "in the mountains" and such. I'd like to hear these groups' theory.76.237.187.199 (talk) 00:03, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Its really sad to read that prejudice and racism against the descendants of the Taino people of today is still alive as it was some 500 years ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.204.14.226 (talk) 15:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you are confusing the reporting of historical fact in an encyclopedia with your own self-defined concept of "racism" and "prejudice." I, for one, am a brown-skinned person. The Taino as a tribe (no tribal continuity, no governance, and certainly no culture or language more than a typical Caribbean might have) have not existed for many hundreds of years. Just because you are interested in the cultural history of Puerto Rico, and you think you may be of some proportion Taino ancestry does NOT make you Taino. To give you a lucid example of the ludicrous assertion you make, I will quote from Wikipedia's article on African-Americans: "With the help of geneticists, the historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. put African-American ancestry in these terms: "58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one great-grandparent)." The last time checked, 60% of African Americans don't run around telling people they are white simply because they may have some white ancestry. If you want to user a few Taino words like "batey" and "areito," (like all boricuas, Cubans, and Domincans use) or even look up some more words from a Taino dictionary or Bartolome de las Casas writings and play, "let's pretend we are Native American," then by all means you do that in your heritage group, social club, or family picnics. But do not use Wikipedia as your soapbox and try to distort historical fact. This is an encyclopedia and it is not open to personal opinions.68.255.100.73 (talk) 00:06, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

slaugter of the tianos by who chrisopher columbus —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.139.22.2 (talk) 16:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

All Tainos are extinct, this is a fact, it is not racistic to say the truth. “The Jatibonicù Taino Tribal Band of New Jersey" are in no way descendants from the historic Tainos, simpley because they are not related. Writing false information in wikipedia wont give them tribal nation status with the US government, ok ? Simply because legislators base their decisions on facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.99.214.74 (talk) 17:36, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Tainos as a tribe are extinct. However, Taino descendants exist.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mabrikananixi (talk • contribs) 00:49, 31 May 2019 (UTC) 

The taino are not extinct. They still speak Taino, and have chiefs. And, having Taino ancestry makes Taino NOT extinct. You people arguing that they're extinct are completely illogical. You need to see a psychiatrist. http://www.taino-tribe.org/tedict.html --184.101.91.185 (talk) 08:25, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Please present the independent published reliable sources that support your claims. Note that secondary scholary sources take precedence over other sources. - Donald Albury 15:21, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Tainos are and WERE NEVER exctinct they exist and are the majority of the modern day BORICUAS ! They never left but European historians and scientists want you to think otherwise! Taino influence is in the vocabulary everything, music, words, customs and the people are STILL Boricuas !— Preceding unsigned comment added by JaneMoreau (talk • contribs) 05:19, 12 April 2021 (UTC) (Note:Comment moved from top to bottom of section. - Donald Albury 12:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC))

Latest edits on Taino modern identity

I'm quite astonished that so much fact about current Caribbean culture has been proposed by some contributors, specifically Uyvsdi, as "proof" of Taino existence in modern times. It is stunning to see that use of Native American customs now makes one Native American in the Caribbean basin. As far as I know, eating cornbread, grits, chestnuts, hominy and wild leeks (ramps) never made a white hillbilly Cherokee, but I guess that is now not the case. Taino cultural customs and vocabulary are VERY widespread throughout the Caribbean, as are Southeastern tribal culture (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, you name it) spead throughout the South, and other tribal customs, names, and Indian food use spread throughout the whole of the USA. Being a fraction Indian does not make you Indian. Being a fraction Taino does not and will not make me Indian. Of course, I am sure, as most Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and dark Cubans are, that my very curled hair is in fact Taino, as is my skin color. I seem to remember many pcitures of Native Americans with afros and such. Let's stop the game and shoot for accuracy in an encyclopedia.--76.237.201.11 (talk) 01:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Accuracy in an encyclopedia is derived from citing scholarly secondary sources and listing multiple points of view, which are present in the article. Find scholarly sources - personal opinion is insufficient. -Uyvsdi (talk) 02:01, 7 October 2009 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Unfortunately, you are confusing claims of Taino ancestry with evidence of Amerindian mitochondrial DNA in Caribbean populations. One can claim to be Taino all they want, but this is not cited nor proved in the article as it is today. Amerindian mitochondrial DNA is certainly present in the Caribbean, and this is impossible to deny. What we are shooting for here is a cite to back up claims that it is Taino, as well as cites to back up claims that Taino culture, not the typical Caribbean amalgamation, has somehow surived in various locales in the Caribbean region. The former is not provable, especially considering the enormous importation of Natives from the srrounding regions to make up for the unrepentant slaughter, death by disease and abuse of Tainos, including Neo-tainos such as Ciboneys and Lucayans. Please cite to something showing that this is in fact Taino ancestry we are describing, or at least make the language more neutral...such as allowing descent from Taino to be described as a "claim." I will wholeheartedly concur with you if you can offer some cites to prove that said claims of being Taino, and not just of some other Native American descent, is correct.--69.209.206.253 (talk) 00:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I provided quotes and references from scholarly journals. I encourage you to do the same. -Uyvsdi (talk) 06:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Why dont you post your “The Jatibonicù Taino Tribal Band of New Jersey” mebership card instead, because your "quotes and references from scholarly journals" are just bogus, fake informations, only written to change public opinion, and give you and give the “The Jatibonicù Taino Tribal Band of New Jersey” tribal nation status. Everybody can write something like that, but it will not be based on facts, please refrain from posting lies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.99.214.74 (talk) 17:40, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Being more than 70% Taino does make you native american, According to federal law determination is made by individual tribes with the most common being 1/8 or more. I don't use US Native American customs because I know nothing of it. All I have is oral tradition passed down by my grandparents. it's funny how people identify me a Puertorican, as hispanic, We are mostly Native 60%+/-, Black 20%+/-, French and Spanish 20%+/- in that order. I can only speak for myself I still have artifacts given to me by my great-great grandmother that I have seen in encyclopedias myself. It can be argued that being 20%+/- European does not make you european does it? Just because you lost your identity through assimilation does not negate your heritage. We may be different from our ancestors but we are still Boricuas. Also the claim by the OP of importation of other natives to the islands is silly since Tainos were very racist and would not mix with other tribes. The only reason they mixed with europeans was because of rape. Htij143 (talk) 14:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)htij143

I have posted some sources about continued Taino cultural practices in the Eastern parts of Cuba and a Smithsonian article about a cultural exhibition that recognizes the surviving legacy of the Taino in the Caribbean and the diaspora abroad. I believe this should be enough evidence for cultural continuity and authentic cultural revitalization of the Taino culture and peoples. Mtgarcia369 (talk) 13:50, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Boriquen / Boricua / Taino

I took History some time ago, but as far as I recall, the Taino are a cultural stage and belong to the same group of people as the Pre-Tainos and Igneri did. They are all Central American Indians closely related or belonging to, the Arawaks. Also, they were not Christians so the translation given here of Boriken as something "blah blah Land of the Lord blah" is completely inaccurate and as a Puertorrican it is the FIRST time I have ever heard them term translated. I also eliminated the sentence mentioning that they called themeselves "Boricuas". I believe the term Boricua is a modern term, perhaps even originating in New York as a corruption of Borinqueño", as I can't recall any mention of the word in popular art or culture in the mainland of Puerto Rico, and it is (to this date) commonly used in more colloquial terms, while Borinqueño or Borincano are used a bit more formally...

In any event, I doubt that the Tainos would call themselves anything. The concept of property and individuality was brought on by Europeans. I have serious doubts about the idea that they would answer "Oh yes we are Boricua.". The concept of "tribes", "culture" and "group of people" where probably very alien to them. It is more likely that the Spaniards came up with the word and coined the term based on the fact that the natives called the place Boriquen.

I invite anyone with the knowledge to come in and add to the article, but please use proper citations. --Reefpicker (talk) 18:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Yateras Indians

For those who claim that there are no Taino left, how do you explain the Yateras Indians of eastern Cuba? You can read all about them in the anthology "Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean" by Maximillian Forte, in the chapter “Panchito, Mountain Cacique: Cuban Taino Survivals" by Jose Barreiro. There are historical records of the Yateras Indians fighting for the Spanish in the colonial revolts of the 19th Century. They consider themselves Taino descendants and have been regarded as Indians by their neighbors.

Also, why do skeptics hold Taino claims to such unreasonably high standards? It seems as if you want modern Tainos to be exactly the same as their Pre-Columbian ancestors, whereas many officially-recognized Native Americans in the United States have mixed ancestry, no longer speak their indigenous languages, and live Westernized lifestyles. A great example of this is the Mashantucket Pequot. --96.245.119.190 (talk) 01:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

[redacted] The Taino have dies out, this is tragic, but it is nearly comical how certaing political persons and "tribes" try to change history just to get what they want. Maybe we should start an "Tribe of Atlantis" or something like that.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.99.214.74 (talk) 17:48, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

That's an ad hominem argument that does not refute any of the actual evidence presented in Forte's book. "History is written by the winners" and does not always reflect reality. The fact of the matter is that DNA evidence has conclusively demonstrated that Taino heritage has survived in the Caribbean, just as it has proven that the Anglo-Saxons merely assimilated the indigenous Britons rather than outright replacing them in England. The story of the Yateras Indians is not all that different from the growing number of recognized Native American tribes that emerged from tri-racial isolates in the eastern United States. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.103.150.125 (talk) 00:05, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Allowing information about organizations

I do not believe it is misappropriate for a fraternity to use Taino imagery. As they embrace several aspects of Taino culture and celebrate the culture in various ways. As the section is titled “Taíno heritage in modern times” it is important to note and describe organization that celebrate or feel some type of connection to that culture. Specifically, when an organization embraces a Taino native as it’s symbol of cultural pride. The addition does not make any outlandish claims but instead just notes that this organization has embraced the Taino people as there symbol. Monarca7 (talk) 07:06, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The appropriation Taíno imagery may or may not be offensive but it's not notable (unless published in secondary sources; for instance if it was involved in a court case). -Uyvsdi (talk) 07:19, 28 December 2010 (UTC)Uyvsdi

I did not delete your discussion but moved it to the bottom. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:19, 28 December 2010 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Move

The recent move of this article was not discussed at all, despite the article being actively edited by a large number of editors. A (correctly performed) move to Taíno people is fine with me personally, but the disambiguation info needs to go to Taíno (disambiguation) and Taíno should redirect to Taíno people, since it is hands down the primary article for "Taíno." -Uyvsdi (talk) 16:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi

That's fine. I'm overriding the dab page though to preserve its page history.

But really? There are only seven articles which link to "Taíno", while over 500 link to "Taíno people", so what's wrong with keeping "Taíno" as the dab page? Isn't that what we normally do in such situations? — kwami (talk) 19:43, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Look at actual page view statistics as well. "Taíno" got 12,745 hits in the last 30 days, and the majority of those people are looking for an article, not a disambiguation page. Taíno language received 1926 page views in the last 30 days; Taínos_(film) received 488; Taino_(VA) received 181; the other links don't even use "Taíno" in their article title. Taíno people received 20,529 page views. Taíno people is clearly and demonstrably the primary topic for Taíno, so it should redirect to that page. -Uyvsdi (talk) 21:18, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Possible problem with sentence

I just reverted the unexplained deletion of the sentence, "Despite this massive decline in population, it is safe to say that there simply wasn't enough of a Spanish military presence to be attributed to the large reduction of native manpower," from the section on Population decline. That sentence appears to have two citations just for itself. I do not have ready access to the sources, so I cannot verify that the cited sources support the statement. However, the statement seems to me to be awkwardly worded and not encyclopedic in tone. Any suggestions? -- Donald Albury 23:09, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Missing reference

Please give complete refernce to "Chrisp 2006, p. 34." --Finn Bjørklid (talk) 22:11, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Recent IP edit (rape vs interbreeding, etc.)

There's an IP changing this article who has obviously read What Became of the Taíno?, watched a tv program on it, or something similar. Unfortunately they aren't using sources and are leaving the article a bit of a mess. I don't know if anyone feels up to fixing this, but I don't have time at the moment or really the background. Doug Weller (talk) 11:21, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

More recent IP edits

An editor has replaced the word "raped" with the euphemism "interbred", giving the following changing explanations:

• (Changed "raped" to "interbred with", since the former choice of word seems to be concerned more with advancing a decolonization narrative than accurately describing the reality of the situation)
• (Extrapolating from the source you're referencing that "the Spanish did bad things to the Taino" equates to "the interbreeding of Spaniards and Taino was characterized mostly / entirely by rape" is intellectually dishonest)
• (I'm asserting that the picture which results from how it's used in this context is a caricature. Rape was a component of the interbreeding process, not its sole constituent, as is suggested by the current edit.)

I reviewed the cited sources (3 in the lead after the occurrence of the word "rape", a couple more in the 'Women' section of the article), and while I didn't find a single instance of the word "interbred", I did find many instances of "rape" / "outraged" / "Raped" / "trampled on the chastity". Now, I'm sure the "reality of the situation" changed over time, as sources attest. According to records, the first 39 Spanish raped. They were soon killed. Later expeditions arrived, more women were raped, and many were "taken" - and the sources do not mean in the "Do you take this woman to be your wife" manner - forcibly taken. Some Taino women did indeed enter into marriage with the Spanish, and some with Africans, but we must keep in mind that within the first decade after arrival, the Taino society of millions dwindled down to scattered tribes of mere hundreds. We can certainly describe the details of the "interbreeding" that occurred between the Spanish & Taino & Africans, but we can't sanitize out rape, abductions, and exploitations when they feature so prominently in the reliable sources. And perhaps of further concern is that such sanitization of history to legitimize such brutality has been happening over time, as noted repeatedly in our Accilien source, perhaps exemplified by the Guitar paper submission.

If one aspect of the inter-relationships between groups of people should be expanded, we don't start by removing another reliably sourced aspect. I'd be happy to work with the IP editor on this content. Xenophrenic (talk) 21:31, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Upon reviewing your detailed explanation above, I recognize that my editing efforts here were misguided.

What I originally perceived myself to be doing was correcting an exaggeration: my animating impulse was the perception that the article as written was saying something like "the development of the mixed-ethnicity population of the Caribbean was characterized almost entirely by sexual violence committed by the Spanish against the Taíno / other indigenous groups", which struck me as a misrepresentation. After reviewing your above response, though, I recognize that:

• That was not quite what the paragraph as written was trying to argue.
• The narrower point that WAS being made was, as you outlined, supported by the provided sources (which I confess I did not thoroughly review before).
• Though I perceived myself to be acting in the interest of objectivity, the effect that was in reality achieved was, as you said, sanitization.

I thank you for taking the time to deconstruct my misguided effort here, and apologize for my unscholarly and amateurish blundering. --65.51.185.130 (talk) 13:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Scope of 'Lucayan'

The lede has the following, "In the Greater Antilles, the northern Lesser Antilles, and The Bahamas, they were known as the Lucayans." There is a citation to 'Alegría, Ricardo E. "Taínos" in Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia vol. 1, p. 345. New York: Simon and Schuster 1992.' I don't have access to Alegria, but, even if the Alegria source extends the term "Lucayan" to all of the Antilles, the preponderance of sources restrict the term to the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. - Donald Albury 15:21, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Mythology section

How will the Mythology section differ from the existing Spirituality section? If the Mythology section is not started within a day or two I will delete it. We should not leave empty sections in articles. If the Mythology section duplicates or largely overlaps the Spiritualogy section, they will be merged. - Donald Albury 16:50, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

• Agree that mythology and sprituality should be somehow merged/combined. Also, a verbatim recitation of several myths seems out of place in an encyclopedic article. Finally, most of the stories seem to have copyright issues. Glendoremus (talk) 21:04, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't thought of it. I've hidden those versions and added copyvio templates to both user pages. - Donald Albury 21:46, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Introductory Material

"Cuba, the smallest island of the Antilles ...." This can't be correct. Probably "largest" is meant but I don't know. OldAndTired (talk) 21:37, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Taino people

Any one know how the Taino people got from south American to any Island's in the Caribbean.

Taino descendants today section

I think this section has a tone that is quite un-encyclopedic. I am also uncomfortable with the point of view. I did not remove the section because I can see the possiblity of some useful being made of it, but I think it needs work. I will work on improving it, but do want to hear other opinions. - Donald Albury 20:08, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing attention to this. I'll add that two sources are cited in the section repeatedly: One is a dead link, and the other is completely unrelated to the Tainos.--MattMauler (talk) 20:18, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for noting that. I hadn't looked at the sources. - Donald Albury 21:48, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

I took a closer look at those citations, and deleted one repeatedly reused in other parts of the article as well as in this section, because it linked to a web page that did not even mention Taino. I also removed the dead link from the other citation, as it has not been archived. The citation seems to conflate a newspaper article about an interview with David McLellan and a book about Karl Marx written by McLellan, but McLellan has written several books about Marx. - Donald Albury 01:56, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

I've been reading and checking sources in a very long-winded dispute (but not contributing to it) on the talk page of another article most of the day, and didn't have the heart to start a conversation here. I've boldly edited the section to try to make it more encyclopedic in tone, as I felt that it contained information worth keeping. Carlstak (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Dominican girls

Shouldn't it be told that the two Dominican girls are actually mulattoes, and not Indians? Ok, it's told that it's carnival, but it's still misleading. --Lecen (talk) 00:37, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Copyright issue

See this diff for the copyrighted content that was added on Oct. 21, 2013.--The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 07:38, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the diff, Eloquent Peasant. I've amended the text to make it less closely paraphrased. Carlstak (talk) 01:44, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Reliable Source or Not? Fiction or Non-Fiction? Or both?

I read "Taino: A Novel" by Jose Barriero which is likely the same as "Taino: The Indian Chronicles." I highlighted many passages in the book that is significant to history. However, what makes it real and genuine versus what makes it a fictictious pseudo novel? Jose Barriero himself calls it the true story and he also explains how he found this information from a local village friar in Cuba as you read into the book and listen to some of his interviews. The reason why this is important is because introducing the source Taino: A Novel on wikipedia may get the book denied as good source material based on the life on Dieguillo "Guaiken" Colon. Not to mention I had a dispute with a wikipedia editor/user who means well and has contributed to the Taino page of this website. In my opinion, I believe its very real in terms of what Dieguillo thinks and witnessed during 15th and 16th century. Another problem is that the book by Jose Barriero may have re-imagined the accounts of Dieguillo, even though this is the journal of Dieguillo written in 1st person narrative. What is your opinion?

Just think Jim Carry recently mixed fiction with Non-Fiction in his semi-autobiographical "Memoirs and Misinformation" and another example is the The Bible. These are examples of what we believe to be real and fake and its all about how we judge, trust, and use our intuition on the material. To better confirm how real "Taino: A Novel" is, I believe we must find sources of Christopher Columbus and Bartolome de Las Casas; introduced as logs, abstracts and expecially journals. This won't guarantee that these historical figures have written about Guaiken a.k.a Dieguillo Colon in particular, but if there is any evidence from their writings of the Taino Indian then it helps to verify the authenticity of source materials written by Jose Barriero.

Please feel Free to check out the draft on my user page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Californianscholar (talk • contribs) 21:47, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Barreiro

Barrierro, Jose (1993). Taino: A Novel. Fulcrum Publishing 4690 Table Mountain Dr., Ste. 100 Golden, CO 80403: Arte Publico Press. ISBN 9781555917678.

(Californianscholar (talk) 20:24, 8 August 2020 (UTC))

The novel is historical fiction. Perhaps the author does a good job of portraying the era but it's not factual and would not be appropriate as a source for Wikipedia. I've seen a couple of book reviews and people seem to like it. Perhaps you can find enough background material to write a Wiki article about the novel. Glendoremus (talk) 21:09, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

True the novel is a historical fiction. However the paperback version of the book also says its based on a true story. So this is loosely based on the Taino indian. I just saw what other source material are possibly good accurate non-fiction accounts that mentions Dieguillo, as mentioned by Jose Barriero. I will verify as I do more avid reading. These include "View from the Shore: Toward an Indian Voice in 1992" by Jose Barriero, "History of the Indies" by Bartolome de Las Casas, "Historia general y natural de las Indias" by Gonzalez Fernandez de Oviedo, "The life of the Admiral Chrisopher Columbus by his Son Ferdinand," "Letter of the Second Voyage" by Michele de Cuneo, "Decadas del Nuevo Mundo" by Pedro Martir de Angleria, "European Discovery of America by Samuel Morrison, etc. (Californianscholar (talk) 22:22, 8 August 2020 (UTC))

If Jose Barriero has written scholarly articles/books as a historian about the historical personage "Dieguillo", those would probably be acceptable as WP:RS. But, the historical fiction novel, no. It does not matter if he sprinkled it with historical facts gleaned from other actual sources. "he found this information from a local village friar in Cuba" sounds like a Frame story, a common literary device for hanging a novels structure on.

And, we didn't have a "dispute". Here User talk:Californianscholar#August 2020, I pointed out to you that novels were not acceptable as WP:RS, as well as provided you links to a few other core policies like WP:VERIFY and WP:CITE. As well as advised you that if you didn't want to accept my word for it, it could be brought here for other editor input or the RS noticeboard. While nothing is 100% out of the realm of possibility, I do not foresee any Wikipedia editor disagreeing with the answer provided above by Glendoremus or by myself over this matter. The novel by Mr Barriero may be very well written, convincing, and chock full of historical information, but in the end it is still a fictionalized retelling and therefore fails WP:RS. Heiro 23:25, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Glendoremus and Heironymous Rowe are correct—a historical fiction novel is not a reliable source. Their points are well founded. Carlstak (talk) 00:34, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Smallpox epidemic

Hi, this claim in the article 'A smallpox epidemic in Hispaniola in 1518–1519 killed almost 90% of the surviving Taíno' is not true. It cites an old article from 1972 and a book on the global sugar industry. Historians who deal specifically with the topic like Massimo Livi Bacci stress that the changes associated with the European arrival, including forced labor etc, caused the massive depopulation and epidemics were merely an auxiliary factor, especially since the first major epidemic did not occur for 20 years after arrival yet the population was already dropping massively beforehand. Papers that are more specific about the topic in question are much better sources for a specific claim like this one. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/38903 181.118.13.77 (talk) 16:51, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Is Raceandhistory.com a group blog?

I have marked a citation to RacandHistory.com as possibly self-published. At the top of the site's home page it states, "A community of volunteers committed to social development." While articles have authors listed, I see no signs of any kind of editorial process. This looks like a group blog, which would make it a non-reliable source per Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published sources. Convince me otherwise, or I will remove the citation. - Donald Albury 19:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Found on the same site, this and this is WP:FRINGE material related to pseudohistorical Afrocentrism. If they publish stuff like this without comment or editorial control, then this site is not an WP:RSN and shouldn't be used to cite anything on Wikipedia. Heiro 20:14, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I remember a way of looking for urls across the site, but don't recall how to use it. There seems to be a cluster of similar sites, including trinicenter.com, africaspeaks.com, amonhotep.com, howcomyoucom.com, rootsie.com, and probably others we should look at. We probably need to take the wider discussion elsewhere, but start with raceandhistory.com at the RS noticeboard. - Donald Albury 23:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protect request

I think this page should be requested for semi protection. Too many neo-Tainos vandalising it. Ddum5347 (talk) 17:24, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

In my personal opinion, the rate of problem edits on this article does not really justify semi-protection at this time. I know that there are other admins who also watch this page, and since they have not acted to semi-protect, I suspect they are of much the same opinion. If the pace of problem edits picks up, I may change my mind, but in the meantime I think there are enough eyes on the page to deal with such edits in a timely manner. - Donald Albury 19:05, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

We'll see how this continues. Ddum5347 (talk) 19:17, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

It's time. This vandalism continues non-stop.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

@C.J. Griffin: Have you made a request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection? As I have actively edited this page, I do not feel I should protect the page myself. - Donald Albury 22:30, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Can I ask why this page was protected? Why were the corrections reverted repeatedly, and now locked? Jnjn0616 (talk) 22:28, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I, too, would like know why the page is being “protected.” Also, what’s the issue with Taíno descendants changing the page? It isn’t vandalism and it’s a correction that needs to be made since it’s clear to see many of you aren’t well versed in Taíno history and people. Realblasiann (talk) 05:39, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Social Studies13:49, 30 October 2020 (UTC)72.27.118.182 (talk)

File:Txt

Tainos

The Taíno were an Arawak people who were the indigenous people of the Caribbean and Florida.At the time of European contact in the late 15th century,they were the principal inhabitants of most of Cuba,Jamaica,Hispaniola(the Dominican Republic and Haiti),and Puerto Rico. --72.27.118.182 (talk) 13:49, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

The issue of the Taíno paged being locked after corrections were made by Taíno people.

I’d like to know why some of you non-Taíno people felt it was right to lock the page after people were correcting false information. The Taíno ARE and not were a people. They never went extinct. There are most literally full blooded Taíno in the mountains of the Greater Antilles and across the entirety of the Caribbean. Even if there weren’t, there are descendants of full blooded Taínos who have significant percentages of Taíno ancestry. Realblasiann (talk) 23:53, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Please provide citations to the reliable sources that support your claims. - Donald Albury 00:24, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Ancient DNA Reconstructs the Genetic Legacies of Precontact Puerto Rico Communities Maria A Nieves-Colón, William J Pestle, Austin W Reynolds, Bastien Llamas, Constanza de la Fuente, Kathleen Fowler, Katherine M Skerry, Edwin Crespo-Torres, Carlos D Bustamante, Anne C Stone Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 37, Issue 3, March 2020, Pages 611–626, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz267 Published: 09 November 2019 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/37/3/611/5618728 Jnjn0616 (talk) 05:23, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Those sources do NOT say that any currently living people are Tainos. The presence in current populations of DNA derived from the indigenous inhabitants of the Antilles does NOT mean that the current populations are Tainos. They are, in varying degrees, descended from the Taino people. Identification with a people involves a lot more than DNA. - Donald Albury 15:52, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

The article DOES cite multiple sources that trace MtDNA of Caribbean people to indigenous people originating from regions where many Taíno ancestors inhabited. This is something ALREADY cited and stated in the Taíno wiki. You’re right - Taíno identification is more than DNA. Having Taíno language, customs & spirituality passed on from generation to their descendants is more than enough to simply change “were” to “are”. I don’t expect you to understand the intricacies of identity & culture, as I can imagine you are not from the very land & people we are talking about. Taíno identity IS shaped by colonization, endogamy, and the many events impacting the region. To say that descendants of Taíno don’t exist borders on erasure. We exist as a blend of ethnicities & cultures, whether that’s my Andalucian, Senegalian or Taíno ancestors. The tone & thesis of your response reeks of a neo-school of the antiquated one-drop rule. Jnjn0616 (talk) 23:21, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Your fulminations are pointless, and will accomplish nothing until you and these mysterious *others* suddenly appearing produce some reliable sources, per Wikipedia policy, that support the changes you want. Show us the scientific evidence that the Taíno people still exist as a distinct culture. Carlstak (talk) 00:17, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Here is a nat-geo article that summarises not only that living people in the Caribbean have genetic ties to their Taíno ancestors but also that they still identify as Taíno. It also talks about how the government committed a "paper genocide" against them, hence why it's important us as Wikipedians not replicate that. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/meet-survivors-taino-tribe-paper-genocide I apologise to the Taíno people who have had their edits reverted and experiences invalidated, please do not let that discourage you from improving this article and others about your people and culture. --Contrawwftw (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

You may apologize all you like, but be clear that no editor apologizes on behalf on WP, speaking in the voice of WP. These edits have been rightfully reverted because they did not respect WP policy, which all have to follow, whether they like it or not. The Nat Geo article you linked to with a bare url just stuck in a sentence prominently displays a photo of Jorge Estevez, who is quoted here as saying, "Higuayagua prides itself on using Divine Academic Inspiration"! That says a lot about his particular group's approach to the subject. Ham-fisted attempts by groups to force a POV are what should be apologized for. Carlstak (talk) 21:29, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

1) You left out the context of that quote.

""Higuayagua prides itself on using Divine Academic Inspiration," Cacike explained. This means research is done on every aspect of our culture, instead of relying upon Spanish narratives as doctrine. These narratives are used as clues, to help supplement and inform in-person interviews with our closet Arawak relatives. As such, there is a significant amount of evidence that tells us our ancestors wore head dresses."

I don't see anything wrong with that methodology. From what I know it's quite common among groups whose culture has been lost, erased or banned post-colonisation. Additionally, Estevez has worked in museums such as the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and is the leader of a Taíno organisation, I think that's enough to be an authority on his own people.

2) I never said I was apologising on behalf of anyone but myself.

3) (a more general point) I think defending the use of past tense is futile when there's people with genetic and cultural links to pre-colonial Taíno people as well as people who identify as Taíno. A lot of Indigenous groups around the world have written about the harm that can be done by referring to them only in the past tense and talking about them as if they no longer exist. It harms reconciliation and decolonisation efforts. Contrawwftw (talk) 22:28, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

"In-person interviews with our closest Arawak relatives" is not a reliable way to establish the continued existence of a Taino people. You need to cite reliable sources that say that the Taino people continue to exist as a community with a continuous history of maintaining their culture. People calling themselves "Taino" without evidence from reliable sources that they have inherited Taino culture in an unbroken line does not meet the requirements of Wikipedia policy. - Donald Albury 23:09, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

The Nat-geo source I originally provided covers some of the history that you’re asking for. I was just providing context for the “Divine Academic Inspiration” quote that @Carlstak brought up. Contrawwftw (talk) 23:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I didn't bother with the rest of paragraph, although I considered using it, because "Higuayagua prides itself on using Divine Academic Inspiration" aptly sums up the mystical approach of claiming that "a significant amount of evidence that tells us" is derived from "in-person interviews with our closet Arawak relatives", informed by "Spanish narratives". This sounds like a very casual methodology.

That Nat Geo article is "as told to" Nina Strochlic by Jorge Baracutei Estevez, and refers only to "Later DNA studies started to show that people in the Caribbean did indeed have Native American mitochondrial DNA: 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans, 23 to 30 percent of Dominicans and 33 percent of Cubans." It doesn't cite the studies.

The Unionhiwayawa.com site refers to one paper that is a preprint, not certified by peer review, and thus would not be acceptable as a reliable source for genetic data concerning Taino DNA. The group also links a paper published in Science, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the abstract of which says,

The Caribbean was one of the last regions of the Americas to be settled by humans, but where they came from and how and when they reached the islands remain unclear. We generated genome-wide data for 93 ancient Caribbean islanders dating between 3200 and 400 calibrated years before the present and found evidence of at least three separate dispersals into the region, including two early dispersals into the Western Caribbean, one of which seems connected to radiation events in North America. This was followed by a later expansion from South America. We also detected genetic differences between the early settlers and the newcomers from South America, with almost no evidence of admixture. Our results add to our understanding of the initial peopling of the Caribbean and the movements of Archaic Age peoples in the Americas.

and seems to conflict with some of the claims made by the Higuayagua group. I can't access the paper, so I haven't read it. Carlstak (talk) 00:23, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

New sources have been added for a while but no one seems to have looked at them. 152.13.249.80 (talk) 04:27, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Reliable sources need to be added to the article to show this people/culture still exists today. Do we have such sources? For example, we say that the Sioux ARE Native Americans because they are officially recognized to exist today. Are Taino people equally officially recognized?

The various articles (NatGeo, etc.) brought to this discussion are useful but not enough because we need to avoid WP:SYNTH, and these article don't quite absolve us from doing synthesis and/or original research, both prohibited WP practices. We need sources that actually state the Tainos' existence as a matter of fact, not just articles that review a re-birth of Taino cultural pride.

A dead giveaway that Tainos still exist as a culture today is if we could see several (2-3) reliable sources pointing out where they live as a group, as their own culture. Do they live, for example, in their own indigenous reservations? Another dead giveaway would be sources pointing out how they dress regularly (not promotionally), and on a day-to-day basis (not just for promoting the Taino culture their culture at rallies, forums, or before TV cameras and/or journalists at TV studios, etc.) We need sources showing this alleged current-day people's manner and places of worship, and how their religious beliefs, today, are unique and different from all other religions. Also, do they cook differently from mainstream Caribbean cultures at large, such as the current-day Puerto Rican, Dominican, etc., cultures? Do today's alleged Tainos have their own and unique cuisine that is well-documented in reliable sources? Do they speak, on a regular and day-to day basis, their own unique language as their primary language which they, also, pass on to their children? Do they teach their children their Taino culture? Do they live their culture, not as a promotion of pride in the Taino heritage, but as a day-to-day habit that their own children then absorb as a natural by-product of being raised by these alleged Taino peoples of today and thereby grow to be Tainos themselves, and to identify with that culture and only that culture?

We need reliable sources documenting this sort of things before we can update the article to reflect they are a people today. I am afraid what we have seen so far are some members of today's ordinary Caribbean cultures seeking to promote their long-lost roots. If this is the case, that would be a very noble act in itself, but not one that proves their is a Taino people in existence today. That is, we should not confuse having Taino blood, or being of Taino heritage, or being partly descendant of Tainos, with actually being a member of a Taino people today that have live CONTINUOUSLY in this manner since before the Spanish conquistadores took possession of their lands and until this day. Mercy11 (talk) 01:38, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Mercy11 has clearly and convincingly explained why we refer to the Taino people in the past tense. They do not exist as a people with a continuously existing culture, and have not done so for hundreds of years. Carlstak (talk) 03:22, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I have posted some sources about continued Taino cultural practices in the Eastern parts of Cuba and a Smithsonian article about a cultural exhibition that recognizes the surviving legacy of the Taino in the Caribbean and the diaspora abroad. I believe this should be enough evidence for cultural continuity and authentic cultural revitalization of the Taino culture and peoples. Mtgarcia369 (talk) 16:45, 22 December 2021 (UTC) Mtgarcia369

Another type of acceptable source would be mainstream academics documenting a recent related cultural reappropriation or movement with a relevant narrative (in which case the article could mention it and would need to describe it as such). Unless WP:RS have a special treatment of colonial narratives, that is also unlikely to be very useful, since for WP it's not Spanish vs Taino that counts, just mainstream scholarship... —PaleoNeonate – 05:15, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

There has been this movement for some time...outline ....here..Kyra Landzelius (2004). Native on the Net: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples in the Virtual Age. Routledge. pp. 143–. ISBN 978-1-134-50180-9.. Moxy- 02:12, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Taíno erasure

The use of the past tense to describe the Taino people who are not extinct and still inhabit their land. The fact the page has been locked is embarrassing especially after the concerns voiced by many Taino people. 2001:B07:6461:5B94:E8A9:ECF2:C02E:9BB4 (talk) 08:58, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Why is it when actual Taíno people and other Indigenous people give clear and exact evidence it's labeled as "not enough". How can you say you know more than *actual* Native Americans, scholars, museums, and organizations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.215.221.89 (talk) 19:22, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources for policies applying to what information can be included in Wikipedia. - Donald Albury 15:24, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I've read what I need as true information, and all my evidence fits this. Articles from Museums, Scholars, Organizations, etc. Even record of Taíno students being given scholarships only for Native Americans. What more could you need?

Can I please get an answer back on my claims? Because it seems you all only have things to say when you can easily dismiss our evidence, but when we have actual evidence like Native scholarships from Harvard being given to Taíno students, y'all are silent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:7080:906:20C7:5919:3F25:8991:F10D (talk) 01:50, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

A Taíno tribe has just been officially recognized in The Virgin Islands, proving we still exist. Some big edits need to be made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:7080:906:20C7:8DEF:1F14:3C13:7238 (talk) 06:01, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I made this edit based on the official recognition by the USVI government. Please continue providing such links to articles, books, etc., which may provide the WP community the right amount and quality of information to re-assess the issue of past vs. present tenses. You should keep in mind, however, that secondary sources will be the most convincing sources, especially books published by respected publishing houses or articles that have been peer-reviewed. Newspapers (e.g., The St. Thomas Source) are considered primary sources and major decisions are rarely made based only on newspaper articles. Mercy11 (talk) 01:58, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Sources

A flourishing Culture, BBC

Indigenous Cuba, American Indian Magazine

Taino Peoples, Smithsonian Magazine

Change "were" to "Are"

18 December 2021

In the sentence "The Taíno were an indigenous people of the Caribbean.", change the word "were" to "are". Mtgarcia369 (talk) 18:55, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:18, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. I see the sources, which should help, but this needs to be discussed. There is active discussion in the section above. Please reach consensus on this. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:16, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

It states ‘Taíno were’ when it should in fact state ‘Taíno are’, as they are not extinct. 72.140.40.245 (talk) 20:21, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:19, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

4 April 2022

There are several million Taíno alive today in the east coast of the United States. Beings that are alive are not extinct or past tense; please change the first line from were to are thank you. 69.127.242.53 (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. - Donald Albury 15:17, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

4 May 2022

Change were to are. A Taíno tribe in the US Virgin Islands has been officially recognized.

https://stthomassource.com/content/2022/04/06/usvi-taino-chief-seeks-members/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:7080:906:20C7:8DEF:1F14:3C13:7238 (talk) 14:14, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

2603:7080:906:20C7:8DEF:1F14:3C13:7238 (talk) 07:26, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:51, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Just from looking through this talk page I've noticed there are several sources which are aparently not enough to change were to are, despite evidence of cultural continuity. 152.13.249.80 (talk) 18:53, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

The quality of sources matters. Please read Wikipedia:Reliable sources for information on what kinds of sources are acceptable for citations in Wikipedia. - Donald Albury 19:11, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Why has this not been done despite several sources being posted? The article itself refers to a revival; not changing were to are is contradicting the article. Bovianchovy (talk) 02:10, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

"Native Amerindians" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Native Amerindians and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 May 8#Native Amerindians until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 15:48, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Sources + source notes

This still seems a bit unbalanced.

Starting with these 3, orphaned in a comment from a few sections up:

• A flourishing Culture, BBC, Christopher Parker. Taino in Cuba.

  contrary to popular claims, Taíno bloodlines, identity and customs were never completely extinguished. Spanish authorities refused to acknowledge the existence of Taíno people. Yet 19th-Century records are full of references to caseríos in the mountains. In the 1940s, Cuba’s preeminent geographer and anthropologist Antonio Nuñez Jiménez – who would later hold top positions in the Castro government – had documented dozens of caseríos scattered throughout the Sierra del Cristal and Macizo Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountains. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, however, the communist government vehemently promoted the notion of the Taíno’s extinction.

• Indigenous Cuba, American Indian Magazine

  "After years of modest traveling through Cuba rekindling the Native family bonds, the old campesino Cacique Panchito... formally broke through the historical extinction barrier in 2014, when his community was acknowledged at a formal national-international conference on Indigenous cultures of the Americas."

• Taino Peoples, Smithsonian Magazine}}

– SJ + 21:17, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

The Taino debate in 2022

The page for Taino people has seen a significant amount of conflict that has been unresolved, and doesn't appear to have had any formal discussions, for over a decade. This is primarily around if Wikipedia should recognise the several groups who claim to be Taino in modern times. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Taino have not existed as a people for hundreds of years; while the opposing view is that the Taino have either continued quietly or have reinvigorated a sleeping culture. Both have research and sources to back them up.

Even if it is readily demonstratable that the Taino are not a continuous culture and are instead represented by a sort of 'Neo-Taino' - this also warrants addressing in the article. As it stands, there are many people who claim to be Taino who attempt to edit Wikipedia or express themselves on the Talk page and are shut down. This isn't a very good look; and the controversy has led to an article that is confusing to a huge fault. For example: in the lead it says that the Taino 'were' a people, while in the article body it talks about many Taino communities; including one that received Federal Recognition in 2021 in the US Virgin Islands.

While the case of the expressed extinguishment of the Taino people would have been many generations before, from an Australian lens this doesn't seem enough to disqualify their legitimacy. Neither does, as one user said on this talk page, a requirement that they constantly speak Taino language, wear Taino clothes, or cook Taino food. This is not something that most people on reservations in the US do either. I also am unsure of the claim that because they are not a registered tribe by the US Federal Government, they are not a tribe. This sets off a lot of red flags as I'm sure anyone with a cursory knowledge of colonialism would understand.

Following input from users here, I think an RfC on this issue may be necessary to resolve this long-standing conflict.

Disclaimer: My understanding of North American indigenous peoples is limited. I've done some research into the Taino to try to get my head around it but have not formed an opinion on the issue. I am focused on Australia, where there are not the concepts of 'blood-quantum', formal tribal rolls, or recognition of 'sovereign' tribes. So the situation is significantly different, and the general understanding in Australia is that an Australian Aboriginal person is any person with Aboriginal heritage no matter how distant. There's also not a significant number of people here who claim Aboriginal ancestry without it being truthful. All these issues appear to be near-opposite in the USA. Specifically in regards to the Taino, in Australia, significant movements to reinvigorate near-extinguished cultures have been hugely successful and have been seen as legitimate because they are run by people of descent from those groups, and with the understanding that their culture was extinguished by force during colonisation.

PS I have also posted this comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America. Poketama (talk) 04:34, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

@Poketama: Just what do you propose that an RFC settle? Please note that Wikipedia:Reliable sources, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia:Fringe theories are all relevant to the article. I think the article is compliant with those guidelines, and a local consensus, if one did emerge from an RFC, cannot override those guidelines. - Donald Albury 12:54, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I think it would be good to hash out the differing claims that have been made over time in a consolidated place, to resolve the issue. I think clear consensus needs to been shown that the people who claim to be Taino are actually fringe theorists, and that their sources are unreliable. Just as there has not been reliable sources given for their claim, neither is there reliable sources presented that their claims are false. Furthermore, simply throwing sources at eachother does not solve the problem. Sustained discussion and analysis solves the problem.

Poketama (talk) 13:08, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

What are the good published sources that discuss neo-Taíno identity in light of the centuries of mainland Native Americans being sent to the Caribbean as slaves? Books like Slavery in Indian County just speak generally about colonists sending mainland Native Americans to the Caribbean, but I wonder if published sources discuss the Native ancestry in Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc. coming from the centuries of mainland enslaved American Indians, as opposed to the Taíno? Yuchitown (talk) 15:12, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

I don't have the sources at hand, but authors have suggested that Spanish raiders were kidnapping people from the North American mainland and enslaving them in the Caribbean even before Ponce de Leon "discovered" Florida. There also was a lot of shuffling around of Tainos. Within 20 years of Columbus "discovering" America, every last Lucayan had been removed from the Bahamas in an attempt to replace the large numbers of Tainos who had died in Hispaniola. I know there are sources that discuss Native American captives being sold on the slave market in Charles Town (Province of Carolina) and shipped to the West Indies, but those people were probably sent to English-held islands, and so probably did not contribute significantly to the ancestry of the peoples of Cuba, Hispaniola, or Puerto Rico. The few surviving Native Americans that the Spanish evacuated from Florida in the 18th century mostly died shortly after reaching Cuba. - Donald Albury 16:46, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

French and Spanish also sent mainland Native peoples to the Caribbean for centuries. The Spanish even sent American Indians from New Mexico to the Caribbean. Just need decent sources discussing the reality of neo-Taínos descending from centuries of mainland American Indians, since Wikipedia doesn't allow original research. Yuchitown (talk) 17:33, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

Barbuda Still Has A Native Taino Population

We still speak almost nothing but Taino. I learned to understand English, but I think it's too difficult to speak. I've been said to speak English poorly, when I tried to recently. --184.101.190.233 (talk) 06:46, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

You need to cite reliable sources that explicitly state that the Taino language is still the native language of people living on Barbuda. People who have learned Taino as a second language as part of an attempt to revive the language are not native speakers.- Donald Albury 17:40, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Estoy totalmente de acuerdo, quiero decir, ¿cómo puedo saber para obtener información confiable de usted cuando no usa recursos confiables? 166.182.86.2 (talk) 23:11, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Request for Comment on Modern Taino Identity

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a clear consensus to put discussion of modern Taino in a separate section. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:38, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

---

Do the Taino exist today, whether as an ongoing culture, people, or ethnic group? How should Wikipedia address the subject of modern communities who claim to be Taino? Poketama (talk) 11:31, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Amended: Changed question to clarify, old question was: Are the Taino an ongoing culture? How should Wikipedia address the subject of modern communities who claim to be Taino?Poketama (talk) 03:42, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Note: Moved comments posted here to discussion section Poketama (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Please see above for my comments on this issue. It is clear that this is an ongoing and nuanced issue that hasn't been solved for over a decade, and has lead to a confusing article that doesn't adequately address the issue. Poketama (talk) 11:33, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Survey

• Neutral - TBH, I don't know. GoodDay (talk) 13:28, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
• I don't know how to title this !vote. It's quite clear that the Taino as a culture were wiped out through assimilation or death, but their mestizo descendants still carry on some cultural traditions. However, as the Smithsonian magazine article points out, "The villagers did not call themselves Indian or Taíno, but they knew how Indian traditions had shaped life in the community". Thus, there isn't an ongoing Taino culture, but rather a shared heritage; this is the same way a person from Boston may partake in certain Irish traditions while identifying as culturally American. Curbon7 (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
  • @Curbon7: At the end of the Smithsonian article however, it is mentioned that many of the Taino descendants in a particular part of the the Oriente region of Cuba, some of whom are said to be of predominantly Taino descent, do refer to themselves as Indians. Skllagyook (talk) 12:07, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
• All modern claims in separate section. The historic people are one thing and are established. The modern claims and degree of relation are a separate issue and should be laid out in a separate section in the article as in the current "Taíno descendants today" section.PrisonerB (talk) 14:28, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
• Separate section - It seems the literature maintains that there was a big gap between the historic Taino culture and the modern day attempts at revival. It would probably be wiser to address the revival in a dedicated section for now, unless enough sources describe Taino culture as a continuum. PraiseVivec (talk) 17:52, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
• Separate sections for historical communities and contemporary neo-Taíno movements. Seek published literature than can fill in historical gaps between the late 16th century Taíno history and communities today. Yuchitown (talk) 00:21, 4 August 2022 (UTC)Yuchtiwon
• Separate articles: One focused on the historical society/culture that was iredeemably lost in the sixteenth century and another describing the various neo-Taino movements. Glendoremus (talk) 16:33, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
• Integrate into the article as appropriate. I disagree with the assertion above that the literature draws a clear-cut line between "real" Taino and so-called "neo-Taino"; that isn't what eg. [1] says:

• Still, some scholars remain skeptical. “You have to be aware of people running around saying they’re Taíno, because they are after a federal subsidy,” said Bernardo Vega, a former director of the Museum of the Dominican Man and the Dominican Republic’s former ambassador to the United States. Yvonne M. Narganes Storde, an archaeologist at the University of Puerto Rico agreed. She gives the activists credit for preserving important sites on the island, but she sounded wary of their emphasis on establishing a separate Taíno identity. “All the cultures are blended here,” she said. “I probably have Taíno genes. We all do. We have incorporated all these cultures—African, Spanish and Indian. We have to live with it.”
• A few pockets of Taíno culture remain in eastern Cuba, an area shaped by rugged mountains and years of isolation. “Anybody who talks about the extinction of the Taíno has not really looked at the record,” said Alejandro Hartmann Matos, the city historian of Baracoa, Cuba’s oldest city, and an authority on the island’s earliest inhabitants.

Plainly these two quotes show that there is a dispute among scholars - but it's not clear-cut "these are the Taíno; and these are the 'neo-Taíno', a totally separate subject." We should cover both perspectives throughout this article according to what the sources say. --Aquillion (talk) 12:22, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

• Devoted section: agree with " literature maintains that there was a big gap between the historic Taino culture and the modern day " .Kyra Landzelius (2004). Native on the Net: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples in the Virtual Age. Routledge. pp. 143–. ISBN 978-1-134-50180-9.Moxy- 15:17, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
• Integrate into article with appropriate sections As noted in recent sources cited, there are isolated communities in Cuba who have maintained a distinct culture that are not affiliated with the Neo-Taíno movement and have existed long prior. Conflating the two would be a disservice to them, so using sources to fill in these gaps and distinguishing them is preferred. Mwatuangi (talk) 18:41, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
• Integrate into article with seperate section The Neo-Taino movement is recognised by the US Virgin Islands among other sources. I suggest a lead change and additional sections for the modern movement. eg. 'The Taino are an indigenous people of the Caribbean. The term Taino refers to both the historical pre-colonial Taino people and modern descendants of these people who have revitalised a shifting Taino culture. Poketama (talk) 15:36, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
• Separate section or article, some groups may have claims but I don't think there's a universally single accepted successor to the culture right now.

Discussion

I'm not certain what their status is. GoodDay (talk) 13:28, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• I am not aware of any reliable source that supports any statement that the Taino culture has survived as a culture. There are attempts to revive the Taino languge and other aspects of Taino culture, but these are based on modern interpretations of old traditions and reports. It has been established that a large component of the genetic makeup of the Greater Antilles is derived from indigenous peoples of the Americas, but genes do not carry culture. The cultures of the Greater Antilles may include elements derived from Taino culture, but mixed with elements derived from various African cultures and from European, especially Spanish, culture. In Wikipedia, we go by what reliable sources say, and without reliable sources stating that the Taino culture has survived more or less intact, and not just in fragments mixed into modern Caribbean cultures, we cannot say in Wikipedia that it has survived. - Donald Albury 15:04, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• • Regarding the genetic data, Gabriel Haslip-Viera, professor of sociology at City College of New York, has written an article, The politics of Taino revivalism: the insignificance of Amerindian mtDNA in the population history of Puerto Ricans: A comment on recent research discussing it. The abstract says:

"This article responds to statements made most recently in the fall of 2005, namely, that Amerindian/Taino mitochondrial DNA is an important factor in the genetic/biological history of Puerto Ricans. Based on demographic/historical evidence, the article raises questions about the claimed significance of findings that show that 61.3% of Puerto Rican islanders have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, which is passed exclusively through the female line. It is noted that this type of genetic material could have been passed to a Puerto Rican alive today by a single Taino/Amerindian female living in the 10th century, that (technically) a small Amerindian/Taino "founder population" of only about 135 individuals could have generated the results judged to be significant, and that mitochondrial DNA is a very poor analytical tool for use in determining the actual biological history of ethnically mixed populations--including Puerto Ricans, who are overwhelmingly European and African in origin according to well-documented historical evidence."

Carlstak (talk) 14:49, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Note: I have attempted to let all users who have discussed this topic on this page know about this RFC. However, many of the people claiming Taino identity have been anonymous users and so there may be some bias against their POV as they won't likely contribute. Poketama (talk) 23:11, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Again, we are required by policy to go by what independent, secondary, reliable sources say. Possible sources for developing content on the modern Neo-Taíno movement include:

• Indigenous Revival, Indigeneity, and the Jíbaro in Borikén
• How do you speak Taíno? Indigenous Activism and Linguistic Practices in Puerto Rico
• Taíno Warriors?: Strategies for Recovering Indigenous Voices in Colonial and Contemporary Hispanic Caribbean Discourses
• The Taíno Identity Movement Among Caribbean Latinas/os in the United States
• Taíno as a Romantic Term: Notes on the Representation of the Indigenous in Puerto Rican Archaeology and Ethnohistory

At first glance, I think the above sources are acceptable as reliable sources, although each source must be evaluated for its reliablility and suitability for the content sourced to it. I have other demands on my time, so I will not be working on this, but those sources look like a good place to start in adding material about the modern Neo-Taíno movement. - Donald Albury 12:22, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Here are some other academic sources:

Taino Genealogy and Revitalization

Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival

Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics

Taíno Survival on Hispaniola, Focusing on the Dominican Republic

The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico)

A Contested Caribbean Indigeneity: Language, Social Practice, and Identity within Puerto Rican Taíno Activism

Extinction: The Historical Trope of Anti-Indigeneity in the Caribbean

Randle Sloan Toraño of Jaume I University in Castelló de la Plana, Spain, has written extensively on this particular subject as a graduate student, but I'm not sure what his academic status is now. For example,

Caribbean History and Heritage Crisis Resulting from Generic Standardization and Substitution of the Native Borinqueños, Boriquans or Boricuas of Puerto Rico Subsequent to Suspicious Taino Research

I don't have the time presently to contribute. Carlstak (talk) 14:24, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment:Poketama, Wanted to make this comment while the discussion in still in its embryonic stages. Most Wikipedians have little time to contribute to the encyclopedia and even less to (deserving) discussions like this one. To be most effective, I would suggest you add a one-liner next to each of the sources you listed above stating what, IYO, is the most important factual takeaway of each source. That way, editors interested in digging in further based on the one liner can do so. Also, like at least one editor above stated, I am not certain what the current status of Taino culture is, both within WP (among editors) or in the literature at large. Assuming you are relatively acquainted with its current status, if I had been you, I would had also added a short 2-4 sentence introductory paragraph to give passersby a quick update in that respect. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 23:45, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

I think you mean Carlstak. Poketama (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment: I think they survived per: https://global.si.edu/projects/caribbean-indigenous-legacies-project# says "the Caribbean Indigenous Legacies Project is revealing how Taíno culture survived..."

In P.R. what we understand is that we are a mix of three: European, Native, African and that is what the DNA results show. See the statues in Manati, Puerto Rico show one of each and then a 4th = Boricua . --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 00:09, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

@Poketama:, @Donald Albury:, @Carlstak:, and all those other editors who have been most active in this Talk page, What exactly are you traying to accomplish with this discussion? Gaining consensus? Consensus for what?

• For changing the "were" to an "are" in Taino's opening sentence?
• For stating, somewhere in the article, that Tainos do exist today?
• For creating a new article covering the subject of "modern communities who claim to be Taino"?
• For stating, somewhere in the article, that Taino is an ongoing culture?
• For something else?

We need to know --precisely-- what the one and main, and (hopefully) only goal of this Discussion is, or else it will shoot out in all directions aimlessly. And, again, most Wikipedians don't have time for such aimless pursuits. Respectfully, Mercy11 (talk) 00:12, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure what the proposer of this RFC had in mind, but I think there is merit to adding some information, here or in another article, on the attempts to revive Taino cultire and language and on the claims that the Taino people and culture have a continuous history up to the present. Carlstak and I have been offering links to more-or-less academic sources about the revival movement that may be useful for adding such content. I hope nobody is looking for a consensus to add content that is not supported by reliable sources. - Donald Albury 01:15, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

My sentiments exactly. Carlstak (talk) 01:35, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion more than I've already said, but there is a need for consolidated discussion on the issue and a space for those to make their points for and against, and ideally show their sources. Yes, essentially the point is should the 'were' be changed to 'are' but the outcome will be the same - a need for sustained discussion and sourcing, and a shift in how many parts of the article are written. Poketama (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment: I think, looking at the history of edits, one of the main issues is whether to use "are" or "were". This article should say that the Taino "are" the people who were met by the conquerors, some went into hiding, but up to 90% may have been wiped out and current research has found their culture did not die out. DNA research shows it as well. --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 01:07, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

References

Comment On pg 161, "The Tainos : rise & decline of the people who greeted Columbus" by Rouse, Irving, (1913-2006) states:

"Even though the Tainos themselves are extinct, persons claiming Taino ancestry have survived in all three of the Spanish-speaking countries: DR, PR, and Cuba..."

then Rouse added: "... a large proportion of the modern population of the DR, PR, and Cuba is able to claim partial descent from the Tainos."

This article's lead is using pg 161 of Rouse's book to say Tainos "were". IP and other editors change it to "are" and these edits have gone back and forth for a long time.

.. but Rouse continues (and this article should continue with the rest of the statement Rouse made on pg 161), which (again) states that "... a large proportion of the modern population of the DR, PR, and Cuba is able to claim partial descent from the Tainos."

The book is available for borrowing from the Internet Archives. So I think saying "partial descent from the Tainos" is best. --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 12:10, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment Perhaps lead should say "Taino refers to the people who were met by the explorers looking for gold, and the people who (in modern times) can claim to be partially descended from them." BTW, on birth certificates in Hawaii, the percentage of Hawaiian ancestry is included, even if it is tiny / minute. --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 12:45, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Even Native American tribes and First Nations who use blood quantum as a citizenship criterion don't expect members to be fullblood. If the strictest tribes (e.g. Northern Ute and Tohono O'odham) don't expect their citizens to be fullblood, why on earth would anyone expect contemporary Taíno people today to be 100% Taíno? "partially descended" is *extremely* insulting. The situation with Taíno today is based on how people define indigeneity (which changes from country to country throughout the Americas), so just discuss those different viewpoints (as published in literature). The proposed lede sentence, "Taino refers to the people who were met by the explorers looking for gold, and the people who (in modern times) can claim to be partially descended from them," presents several other problems. Generations of Taíno people who lived prior to European contact are certainly Taíno; it doesn't take meeting a Spaniard to make that happen. Since this is truly a complex situation, it isn't Wikipedia's job to resolve it but to just reflect the different perspectives that have been published. The article could say, "The Taíno were an historical Indigenous people of the Caribbean and is a contemporary Indigenous Caribbean identity." Yuchitown (talk) 16:13, 4 August 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

I got the "partially descended" from comment from pg 161, "The Tainos : rise & decline of the people who greeted Columbus" by Rouse, Irving, (1913-2006). --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 16:52, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Let's please not use this non-Native archaeologist's perspective from 30 years ago in the first introductory sentence. Yuchitown (talk)Yuchitown

One critical source that needs to be addressed is the US Virgin Islands official recognition of the Taino as a tribe. I havn't seen any discussion of it except to suggest the source is unreliable, but the documents look authentic. I can contact the department I suppose to verify authenticity.

If it is authentic, I think its hard for us to justify not listing Taino as existing. https://stthomassource.com/content/2022/04/06/usvi-taino-chief-seeks-members/#:~:text=The%20official%20recognition%20was%20the,U.S.%20Virgin%20Islands%20in%202021. Poketama (talk) 22:21, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Agreeing with what Poketama states. Yes, and that today's descendants of the Taino "challenge" the outdated extinction theory, because of the island-wide DNA study by the University of Puerto Rico. See here. I don't think the lead should say "were" because that would be in agreement with the extinction theory. Can we say that Hawaiians are extinct because they're not 100% Hawaiian? Of course not. Anyway. I know this article needs work, but I think the main controversy is the matter of 'extinct or not'. They were 'extinct' on paper because of census documents not allowing for them to self-identify as indigenous. I'll be honest, this is difficult and I'm only stating that I believe the research shows it can not be said Taino are extinct, despite the archaelogist saying they were 30 years ago. The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 23:49, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

See the Ancient_Hawaiian_population - just because I think it's kind of interesting that an article exists about Ancient Hawaiians, which covers their numbers prior to their encounter with James Cook. --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 23:54, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment Much of this controversy seems to stem from varying interpretations of the word people, as in "The Taíno are/were an indigenous people of the Caribbean." I take it to refer broadly to the society/culture that existed at the time of their Columbian encounter. I've read Rouse's book and it's clear to me that he intended the same meaning. Others appear to take a more literal definition of the people: the group of human beings who were living in the Caribbean at the time. In this case, Rouse's unfortunate misuse of the word extinction raises all sorts of objections because, not surprisingly, there are people alive today that are related to those who were part of the Taino culture. Rouse and most academics would agree that the Taino society/culture was destroyed but descendants of that population survived and are alive today. My suggestions would be to clarify the opening sentence to mean Taino society and/or culture. I would also back off on the use of the words extinct and extinction. No one claims there was a biological extinction and it's used multiple times in the article as a strawman. (They said the Taino were extinct but DNA evidence...). Glendoremus (talk) 14:54, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment This seems a lot like mestizo identity in Mexico. Give up your language, and you're mestizo, even if you're 100% indigenous by ancestry. In the US, you'd still consider yourself Indian, but not in Mexico. There's also some degree of indigenous revival in Mexico (and among Chicanos in the US), though with the complication that you likely don't know what your ancestry is exactly. In Cuba, you can be pretty sure it's Taino, as the non-Taino peoples were marginal even at the time of the Conquest.

A culture, like a language or a religion, can go extinct without any decline or shift in population. In Cuba, the Taino are no longer a distinct people. Whether you call the Taino 'extinct' is a matter of semantics. The Germanic tribes are extinct, though Germans obviously aren't. The Etruscans are extinct, though their descendants live on. We speak of several 'extinct' Finnic peoples of Russia, though to a large extent they are the Russians. The Ainu are extinct in mainland Japan, though I remember one Japanese scholar who argued that the samurai were Ainu by descent.

For a long time there was a question over whether the Britons went extinct, at least in the east of England, and were replaced by the invading Germanic tribes, but now it seems that they were linguistically assimilated, and that the English are mostly Celtic by ancestry. Yet we wouldn't say that a Yorkshireman was 'Welsh', even if we could prove that he was 100% Welsh by ancestry. A people is defined by culture and ethnic identity, and so can go 'extinct' if they give up that identity and are absorbed into something else.

But there is often the implication that 'extinct' means they died off. And they did, in the sense that those who maintained their identity died off, as their descendants assimilated. But it was big news in Puerto Rico when it was discovered that Puerto Ricans were 60% indigenous by ancestry. As with the English, it was generally assumed that since the Taino/Welsh were gone, the present people must descend from the invaders. That's an implication we should guard against even when there's no cultural revival to challenge it. — kwami (talk) 05:43, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

• Comment apologies if these other Smithsonian sources have been posted, but they look useful.[2][3][4]. Doug Weller talk 15:19, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment Re: the subject, as an Afro-indigenous person, a problem that I continue to see especially in the mainland US, is a very regressive and settler colonialist view that Natives have to be virtual facsimiles of their ancestors in order to exist in a contemporaneous context culturally. This renders us ahistorical, because it means we can really only exist as an unchanging reified past, never as one that is too modern, because the culture is suddenly too different to be "Native". Cultures change for a variety of reasons, some voluntarily, others involuntarily like those descending from colonized regions. Things are lost and/or outright abandoned, other elements survive in full or in part, and new things are created, sometimes involuntarily (i.e. rape). All living societies experience this more or less, which makes questions about whether Taínos exist as a people strange, but not unexpected coming from non-Natives. You also can't attack and disenfranchise cultures that do not exist; folk and spiritual traditions of those who identified as indigenous and those whom were African were specifically targeted as backwards and antithetical to Puerto Rican culture in state-sanctioned propaganda...during the 40's. Not centuries ago, decades ago, as highlighted in this essay from the Centro Journal of Puerto Rican studies. The fact these elements mixed into another but remained identifiable doesn't suggest extinction but adaptation. They survive as part of a larger whole.

Some of the arguments here for "intact" cultures and using modern interpretations as a disqualifier actually discredit the existence of generally accepted Native groups who've had to "modernize" otherwise dying languages to prevent their extinction. White Sage, most-commonly associated with smudging, was also used in cuisine once and that practice is being reintroduced in a contemporaneous context. There are the Nahua. There is even, with respect to this debate, a well-established community of thousands in Cuba descending from and maintaining the remaining Taíno traditions and culture that managed to survive genocide, especially in La Rancheria. They were even featured by the Smithsonian. That alone easily satisfies an argument for the survival of the natives commonly-called Taínos in academic discourse. Do they need to be the same and "pure" culturally? No, because no society remains entirely unchanged throughout hundreds of years and numerous surviving Native groups posted on this site have descendants who've experienced similar acculturation.

Are modern people known as Taínos the same as their ancestors culturally? No; the culture in most instances is largely different for obvious reasons, and there's no harm in distinguishing this in the same way one distinguishes the Maya civilization of the past from the Maya people who are their descendants of the present identified as such. We know they have genetic descendants(not the earlier island study I see frequently cited) who are now predominantly mixed, we know there are communities studied that maintain some of it, and that there are native descendants who have chosen to more explicitly ID as Taíno culturally in a contemporaneous context. Personal arguments about the legitimacy or lack thereof of descendants maintaining an authentically "Taíno" culture should be presented in a relevant section in the article. I mean, even the Spanish article doesn't have a problem speaking of Taínos in the way people have asked objectively and noting the distinction. So what is truly stopping this one? Mwatuangi (talk) 17:51, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Your thoughts are well expressed, Mwatuangi, but as I and others have pointed out above, the fact that slightly more than 61% of Puerto Rican islanders appear to have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA does not indicate the amount of Taíno ancestry they have. Also, I would like to remind everyone commenting here that, as Tony Castanha, Lecturer of Indigenous and American Indian Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Hawai'i Pacific University, who wrote The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico), [5] says:

The name "Taino" is also not an accurate word to describe indigenous Caribbean peoples of the northern Antilles as it was never used by inhabitants as a term of self-ascription, at least prior to its nineteenth-century anthropological invention.

As our own article says, "Taíno" is a term coined by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836.

To be clear, Castanha is critical of neocolonialist ideologies, and has published other papers on the subject. Anyone who has access to Gale Academic (which I do) can access three of them on the Gale website..

It seems to me that defending the continuous existence of that people as a cultural entity is complicated by the fact that those who claim they are "Taíno" don't know the name that this group called themselves in their own language. It certainly wasn't "Taíno". Carlstak (talk) 21:46, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

You didn't read the source provided, which is the actual study done sequencing archaeological data in 2018, not the DNA study done in Puerto Rico decades ago. Genetic ancestry is not what determines tribal identity, let alone Nativeness. Many Natives are not "pure" and legally recognized as full members. Secondly, as also cited, there are multiple examples in Cuba alone of Taíno culture surviving that aren't in any form associated with the Neo-Taíno movement. Lastly, not knowing their original name has not prevented them from having an identifiable culture that has been studied and written about. The fact that they didn't originally call themselves "Taíno" and that it is a product of colonial imagining simply allows us to view their societies in context, as-is done with other groups known by a collective name their ancestors likely didn't use; once again, Maya are an example of this, and even the Wiki page notes this. No conflict in seeing those people as clearly still existing, regardless of what any choose to call themselves. There's nothing complex about the issue: a group of Native people were given a simplified and mainly inaccurate name by those who colonized them and some of their descendants use that name and interpret it in a new way. Mwatuangi (talk) 22:28, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Did you read your source? It says, "Modern DNA studies also point to South America, but they are complicated by the fact that modern Caribbean genomes are largely composed of African and European ancestry and that only relatively little indigenous Caribbean ancestry remains" and "Puerto Ricans, for example, harbor between 10 and 15% Native American ancestry; however, it is unclear to what extent this component reflects Taino ancestry." The genome sequence was recovered from a tooth of a single Taíno individual who lived in the Bahamas ∼500 y before European contact. It's presumptuous of you to say that "questions about whether Taínos exist as a people [are] strange, but not unexpected coming from non-Natives"—you don't know the racial makeup of people commenting here. One of my great grandmothers was Cherokee, and I understand that I also have Choctaw ancestry, so it would appear that I have as much Amerindian ancestry as those who say they're Taíno, not that it matters to whether or not I should have a point of view regarding the subject. Carlstak (talk) 22:56, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

There are examples of [unsigned] trolls on this very talk page literally saying it isn't "racist" to say they're extinct as well as people using arguments that directly contradict mainland Native understandings of cultural identity; even a source by a Non-Native is being used as a definitive account on whether or not Taínos can be said to exist contempoaneously, whether literally or culturally. I am not presuming without reason. Your last statement once again illustrates a common misconception about Nativeness by limiting it to genes when tribes don't use genetic percentages(Blood Quantum isn't based on DNA) and some don't even use Blood Quantum. There are people in some tribes who are literally fractions of percentages Native if we go by DNA; they are still members because their group defines indigeneity in a way that doesn't depend on notions of science. Some are simply matriarchal or patriarchal (i.e. a person is a Native member of their group as long as a mother or father was). Some members are actual descendants of people adopted into tribes via treaty -especially Freedmen descendants- once again making how many "Cherokee" genes a person has irrelevant. If either of those tribes accepted you, it wouldn't be based on an ancestry DNA test, and you'd be a full member. That's why this question is strange. It already happens, and the Taíno debate isn't one premised on racial or genetic purity, but of survival in spite of the opposite. Mwatuangi (talk) 23:30, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

You're deflecting. There's only one IP on this page who's written that it isn't racist to say the Taíno are extinct, and you seem to be implying that anyone who says they are is racist. Also, I'm not talking about tribal rolls (of which there are none in Puerto Rico or Cuba) or blood quantum, I'm talking about genetics, which is what the article you cited, Origins and genetic legacies of the Caribbean Taino, is about, and to which I was referring. It doesn't use the word "tribe" or "tribal"; I'm discussing this in the terms used by your own source. Carlstak (talk) 03:15, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

No I'm not. I referred specifically to that particular instance as an example, mentioned other misconceptions that other editors have noted and clearly addressed yours afterward. Secondly, arguments for their extinction have been commonly using genetics, as seen in earlier discussions; you even misapplied genetic ancestry as a measurement for tribal identity with a bad analogy. My primary arguments of survival have been cultural. You still haven't answered my original query either; another page has solved the issue while also noting contemporaneous Taínos are different. Why is that not an option here? Mwatuangi (talk) 03:33, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Your original query wasn't addressed to me, it was general, and I was responding to something else you said. As I said, you seem to be implying that anyone who says the Taíno are extinct is racist—that seems pretty provocative to me, so it's not surprising that I responded perhaps emotionally, considering that I do have native heritage. You seem knowledgable, Mwatuangi—rather than expounding here, why don't you write up a section that addresses these points with your sources and boldly post it to the article? The worst that can happen is it will be reverted and we'll continue the discussion here. I feel sure that you can put together something good, and you can channel your energy to good use.;-) Carlstak (talk) 04:02, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

That said, I'm not implying that. Whether or not Taínos have survived culturally has been plainly made clear as the argument currently being discussed and arguments for or against it as far as the page is concerned are academic, which wasn't the case in the instance from the troll - distinguishing them from a regular editor - I cited. Unfortunately my laptop is trash and I'm using an app to type, which explains why it takes so long to respond. I've mostly monitored the pages over the years and saw this discussion pop up. To be honest, I think the question is a bit of a catch-22: people are basically using a term the Taínos can't be said to have used collectively to weigh whether people in the region who are indigenous and use it accurately reflect them in a modern means today. Mwatuangi (talk) 04:33, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Seriously, if you can post to this page, you can post to the article. Why not give it a go? As long as you maintain a NPOV and use the good sources you have access to, you should be able to get something up that will improve the article. I have other pressing things going on in my life, and work on various WP articles mostly in spare moments nowadays (with a way too long to-do list hanging over my head), otherwise I would jump right in myself. Carlstak (talk) 05:08, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. A good group to compare to might be the Garifuna. Also looking at the Métis and Chicano articles might be helpful. No one expects any culture to remain static for 530 years. People collectively undertake cultural revivals, and indigeneity is defined differently across countries. Yuchitown (talk) 22:21, 7 August 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

Thanks for the examples but now I'm more confused. These all seem to be cases of ethnogenesis, the formation of a new ethnicity created by the melding of multiple cultural influences. Is that your view of the modern Taino movement? Glendoremus (talk) 19:54, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

• Comment With regard to the reports of mitochondrial DNA in Caribbean populations, the findings in other populations are illuminating. A number of instances have been found now in which the mtDNA of a modern population is primarily derived from one ancient population, while the Y-chromosone DNA of the modern population is primarily derived from an entirely different ancient population. Quite often, the modern population speaks a language descended from that of the male conquerers. And we tend to identify populations by the language they speak. Just something to keep in mind. - Donald Albury 00:10, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment Yes, in some ways this is analogous to the situation in Iceland, where the mtDNA genetic heritage is primarily derived from ancient Irish female lineage, while the Y-chromosone DNA of the modern population is primarily derived from Nordic male lines. I suggest that for the time being we don't address the question "do the Taino exist today" in the lede, and in the meantime we add content to the body that better describes the various positions of involved parties and commentary from scholars representing those positions, both pro and con, till a consensus is reached. That way we can at least make progress. Carlstak (talk) 01:12, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

  Comment. Many languages are not currently spoken. Would you tell the Delaware Nation or Delaware Tribe of Indians that they are extinct because they speak English? Yuchitown (talk) 12:46, 8 August 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

  I was thinking of examples from Eurasia. Here is a source talking about the language affinity of a population almost always correlating with the Y-chromosome lineage of that population (there are some exceptions).[6] This pattern is probably more applicable to the Caribbean than to mainland North America. The situation in the Caribbean is complicated by the importation of large numbers of Africans. Small populations losing their historic languages under pressure from larger neighbors is a different process, such as happened to Norn, and is currently happening to Scottish Gaelic, in Scotland. Donald Albury 17:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment: For the lead, these points should be included (of course, worded better).

1) The Taíno are an Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean (including: in the Bahamas) Documenting Myth of Taíno Extinction Lynne Guitar 2002

2) Taino is the term used to refer to the indigenous following contact with explorers of the New World. It's not what the native people called themselves.

3) Their original tribes were decimated by colonization, and disease...

3) Officially recognized in the U.S. Virgin Islands

4) Remnants of the people and their culture have been studied....

5) Despite Mr. Rouse stating in 1970, that they were extinct...

6) DNA and other studies show they were not extinct except for on paper Census, Caribbean Archaeology and Taino Survival

7) Neither has the culture disappeared but has changed throughout the years.. a resurgence of interest began with Ricardo Alegria from the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture. 5th Centenario de la rebelion Taina

I apologize for not being able to say that more eloquently. --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 21:22, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

References

Comment - Reliable Source states "Our findings do not support historical narratives of complete population replacement or genetic extinction of Indigenous communities in Puerto Rico." --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 22:21, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wording of changes to Taino article based on RFC

I've made a couple edits to reflect the current state of the article and include the seperate section as the RFC concluded. After your revert, what would you propose as alternative to what I have done @Donald Albury? Do you have any specific criticism? I would rather improve the article through cumulative edits as there is a lot of work to do. Poketama (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I have reverted myself. I was too hasty. I still would like to see discussion of the wording, but I'm short of time right now. I'll come back later to discuss this. - Donald Albury 16:13, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

If no one else is concerned about your phrasing, then I withdraw my objections. - Donald Albury 22:57, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Wording theories of extinction vs. prevalence in intro section

I've made some edits in the intro section to reflect the three arguments about Taino extinction vs. prevalence. See my edits here. Have I captured the three arguments correctly? Thanks! CareAhLine (talk) 01:30, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

How did the Tainos enjoy themselves?

The Tainos enjoy themselves by playing a ball game.They played a game called batos.Batos was played in an open field.It was played by two teams which tried to hit a rubber ball using their hips, knees, heads,elbows and shoulder.

   The ball was made from the sap of a tree. The aim of the ball game was to hit the ball over the goal line of the opposite team. 63.143.116.216 (talk) 00:56, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this is explained in this section of the article. Jarble (talk) 18:10, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Matrilineal inheritance statement accuracy check

> When a male heir did not exist, the inheritance or succession would go to the oldest male child of the sister of the deceased.

Did you mean, "when a female heir did not exist..."? 68.108.243.87 (talk) 17:58, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

In a matrilineal society, which it is believed the Taino were, inheritance is through the mother. I don't know the details for leadership succession in the Taino society, but in many matrilineal societies in the Americas, certain leadership positions were reserved for members of a specific clan, and individuals inherited clan membership from their mothers. In such a system, a chief could be succeeded by another male member of his clan, who could be his brother (by a shared mother), the son of a sister (by the same mother), or some other clan member, but never by his own son or by the son of a brother. If the Taino were indeed matrilineal, then the sentence you have questioned doesn't make sense to me, as the son of a sister is the closest male heir (after a brother of the leader). The details may be hard to confirm, as the Spanish seem to have assumed that all societies were patrilineal, and misinterpreted inheritance patterns in the societies they encountered in the Americas. Hopefully, we can find better reliable sources that make this clearer. Donald Albury 21:47, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Found a source, Keegan, William F.; Maclachlan, Morgan D. (September 1989). "The Evolution of Avunculocal Chiefdoms: A Reconstruction of Taino Kinship and Politics". American Anthropologist. 91: 613–630. JSTOR 680869.. That source argues that the Taino were matrilineal, that a wife moved in with her husband, who in turned lived in his maternal uncle's household. Rank was inherited throught the female line. Women could sometimes hold high rank. The Spanish reported that rank could sometimes be inherited by the eldest son, but the authors note that such patrilineal inheritance may have resulted from Spanish disruption of the social system.(P. 618) - Donald Albury 01:43, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Tense in First Sentence

Why use the verb “were” to refer to a people when the article later goes on to say are continuing and reviving their culture? If the culture continues, as the first sentence states, then shouldn’t the people be referred to in the present tense? Bovianchovy (talk) 02:08, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Just caught up on the Great Debate of 2022… where does this stand?? Bovianchovy (talk) 02:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

While elements of Taino culture may have survived in isolated rural communities, I am not aware of anywhere that the Taino culture has survived intact. In fact, the article discusses how Taino successor communities resulted from the admixture of European and African people (primarily men) with Taino people. As for the "revival" of Taino culture, that process is more of a "reinvention", based on a mixture of colonial records, which surely are a poor representation of Taino culture of the time, and modern rural customs, which may (or may nor) derive (with an unknown degree of modification) from Taino culture of the 15th century. Cultures evolve. Cultures that have been severely disrupted, as happened to Taino culture after the Spanish arrival, evolve very rapidly, if they don't disappear. People in the Greater Antilles are descended in various proportions from Tainos, Europeans, and Africans, and their cultures are likewise derived in different proportions from Taino, European, and African pre-contact cultures. Donald Albury 19:12, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

We did not come to a consensus, as the record shows. Our perspectives vary to varying degrees- I for example, obviously don't agree with Donald's. Donald's answer reflects his opinion alone. Mwatuangi (talk) 16:08, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

DAs answer reflects the consensus of the current academic literature on the subject. We do not get to substitute the wishes of a few WP editors and a slew of driveby IPs for the mainstream academic views on a subject. Heiro 16:14, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Current academic literature varies, as was shown by multiple articles, and doesn't even consider the literature written by historians in non-Anglophone countries elsewhere. The primary gist of this debate was over the structure of the article and how certain issues about its content should be addressed, not something that can't be settled decisively in a simple RFC by people who aren't scholars in this field. We can make sure the content that is added is well-sourced and NPOV, but let's not pretend this issue is settled when other Wikipedia pages on the very subject clearly suggest otherwise. Mwatuangi (talk) 17:10, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

This is quite true. The page should be rewritten to capture this ongoing debate. It's definitely perceived different among indigenous scholars. Uninterruptedness is not the issue. The issue is whether anything remains of the Taino (whether it's mtDNA - which still exists, SNP markers (which exist - I have them), or language or whatever. NO cultures have survived intact from the past. But when writing about modern Rome we do not say "Romans were people who lived in the city of Rome." Regardless of whether Roman culture has changed (or new genes came in or some left), Romans live in the present tense - just like contemporary Taino do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by El Cubedo (talk • contribs) 17:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

What other Wikipedia pages say is not material, as Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Can you provided citations to reliable sources that say that the Taino people and culture have persisted uninterrupted? Donald Albury 19:29, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Neither is this page's either, so presenting your opinion as what literature has agreed upon when there is literally a historian cited up there that says their culture has survived (Alejandro Hartmann Matos) isn't reflective of what's been presented. Note that other pages do not approach the subject with either of our perspectives with the sources they have, some support yours, others mine - I respect your perspective, by the way - and some even refrain and simply note that it's a very controversial and hotly-debated subject. We have already decided upon a suitable solution for addressing the main conflict of the page and made it far better than it was before; questions of culture at this point are philosophical (what constitutes a culture, how much change a culture endure before a society "loses it", etc.) and something that are not NPOV. There's no need to drag this out further. Mwatuangi (talk) 19:49, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Addressing citation needed tag in "Women" section

I looked into this claim which was tagged as needing a citation:

"Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician who traveled with Christopher Columbus, reported in a letter that Spaniards took as many women as they possibly could and kept them as concubines."

I believe it's referencing a letter from Chanca in which he says that Caribes, not Spaniards, kidnapped other indigenous women (probably including, but not specifically, Taíno women):

"The habits of these Caribbees (sic.) are brutal .... In their attacks upon the neighboring islands, these people capture as many of the women as they can, especially those who are young and beautiful, and keep them as servants or to have as concubines." https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/aj/id/4381

This reference could be added to the earlier paragraph about Carib raids, but given that Chanca's letter doesn't refer to Taíno women specifically, I am opting to remove it entirely. 74.71.162.63 (talk) 14:49, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Virgin Islands Proclamation

So, I remembered someone referencing a local news article about the US Virgin Islands government recognizing the Guainia Taíno Tribe in a proclamation, which was shown in it. Someone asked to verify it. I have found a proclamation for Indigenous People’s Day on the official government site that recognizes the contributions of the tribe mentioned in the VI article and its leader explicitly, noting “The tribal membership of the Guainia Taino tribe of the Virgin Islands, as attested by their signatures and in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, formally conferred on Maekiaphan Phillips the rank and honor of Kasike (Chief)and Chairwoman of the Guainia Taino of the Virgin Islands' Tribal Council,”. So it appears the recognition mentioned in the first article is legit. Mwatuangi (talk) 14:32, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Let's see. The proclamation states that "there are descendants of Indigenous Amerindian people living in the Virgin Islands." That is well covered in this article. The rest of that paragraph is about the Guiania Taino tribe conferring the title of Kasike and Chairwoman on Maekiaphan Phillips. Another paragraph talks about the Guiania Taino tribe and related groups spearheading historic preservation, educational research, and historic restoration. I do not see anything in that which supports changing what this article currently states. Donald Albury 15:01, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

This article clearly references the group as an official tribe and its tribal council in its proclamation, lending credence to the previous article that cited their recognition by the local government, and in fact explicitly distinguishes them from other tribal organizations based there. If you want to continue to edit war with WP editors on over a verb tense despite a local government clearly recognizing them in an official capacity, that’s your prerogative. Mwatuangi (talk) 15:10, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

It refers to a corporate body that calls itself "Taino". That does not prove that it represents an uninterrupted and continuing tribal entity. Donald Albury 18:44, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

"O'pia Taino Inc." and the Guainia Taíno Tribe in the US Virgin Islands are separate entities, not the same. The original proclamation explicitly grants the latter - as shown in the document originally cited- legal eligibility to apply for "federal health benefits, federal education benefits, housing benefits, job training, land use, and the right to engage in traditional religious practices and ceremonies." They are now legally recognized as a distinct tribal entity by the gov't there and this proclamation on Indigenous People's Day specifically references them as a Tribe with an official leader, Council, and membership system, even citing the UN Declaration in support of this. This information is not listed in the article under the appropriate section on modern communities. I'm really not understanding why you are attempting to turn this into some kind of cultural argument.

Plenty of legitimate Nations in the mainland US who were state-recognized were only recently recognized federally after years of applying - Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, Inc. in 2007, as well as the Pamunkey Indian Tribe in 2015, as examples. Myriad nations have also experienced "interruptions", not including the literal loss or endangerment of their languages and suppression, displacement of their original societies through genocide and legal policy; those still have continuing cultures albeit in a different context despite having to adjust to these changes, and I'm not sure why you've applied the need for a group to be "uninterrupted" as a requirement when it harms them, regardless of whether or not you consider Taínos continuous. This also isn't about academic arguments and I have not been editing this article, I just provided a source already requested supporting the verification of a previous claim reported in a secondary source.

A gov't recognizes that particular tribe in the US VI as a contemporaneous people. Whether this page continues to refer to Taínos collectively in the past tense or not is irrelevant to that. The point is that the Guainia Taíno Tribe specifically is not simply an unofficial "revivalist" group, and that at the very least needs to be acknowledged. Mwatuangi (talk) 20:19, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Can you give an example of the changes you'd like to see? It sounds reasonable, thanks for digging up that source. Poketama (talk) 04:45, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I just wanted to see what I could find and now that I have, share it. Although we know the news source is reliable now, it’s still a secondary reference, so we could focus on the Guainia Taíno Tribe based in the U.S.V.I. having the formal election of their chief by the Tribal membership acknowledged by Governor Bryan in the second proclamation I found as that source links directly to the U.S.V.I. government site. Mwatuangi (talk) 18:45, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

It would be great to denote which labels were indigenous and which are merely Spanish label

Why does the article use a colonial Spanish corruption of the original Arawak word (cacique came from Arawak kassiquan), It means "keeper of a house" or "housekeeper." In Spanish it means "chief" and is used in that manner throughout Latin America (when it's used at all).

The Spanish misunderstood the Arawak concept and then corrupted the language and made it a synonym for "jefe" (so that they could believe they were talking to someone with authority to give up land).

Why not just use the indigenous word, since it's known? If needed, the Spanish equivalent could be in parenthesis - and link to the article that actually explains the etymology of cacique. El Cubedo (talk) 17:47, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Indians

It is highly unlikely that Columbus called the Taino "Indians" (as in thinking they are in India" as that doesn't even fit Spanish or Italian word structure. It's far more likely he referred to them as "Indios", as in a shortened form of "indigena", meaning " the indigenous people of that area. Columbus and his men were very skilled sailors with modern maps at the time. The idea that they went in the entirely wrong direction at every turn and still think they wound up in India is laughable. Disinfectantrum (talk) 19:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Columbus seriously underestimated the size of the Earth (see Christopher Columbus#Quest for Asia) and thought that he had reached the East Indies. Are you aware of any reliable source that supports your proposal that Columbus called the people he encountered "indigenas" rather than "indios"? Donald Albury 22:08, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Still not addressed in 2024

This article and talk page looks really quite poor. A clear standard should be discussed as to what even meets the conditions of "continued existence", and if the Taino are not of continued existence then a page or large section of the article should be dedicated to Neo Taino. This is clearly a hot political topic but as such it deserves more attention. 84.71.252.187 (talk) 13:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, everything in Wikipedia articles has to be supported by reliable sources, and we are all volunteers here. If you are aware of reliable sources that support statements about the topic that are not already used in the article, then please present them. You are also welcome to contribute to the article, subject to agreement by other editors that your edits comply with policies such as using reliable sources, avoiding original research, and maintaining a neutral point of view. I will note that I believe there is a difference between the "continued existence" of the Taino people as a political or cultural entity and the "continued existence" of Taino DNA in the current Caribbean population or of isolated cultural practices that may have been inherited from Taino ancestors. Donald Albury 14:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 January 2024

I feel like the term mixed race is just incorrect. There is no biological basis for race, the correct term to the best of my knowledge should be mixed heritage, multicultural, or multinational ancestory.

Therefore I think that we should change mixed-race to the more accurate multicultural ancestory, or similar. 82.38.199.49 (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

 Not done Multiculturalism is not genetic. Note that in Wikipedia, Mixed ethnicity redirects to Multiracial people. If you want to deprecate the use of "race" in Wikpedia, you will need to start a discussion at WP:Village pump (idea lab). - Donald Albury 23:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

race isn't genetic either, skin tone is, race is a social construct like culture, gender, etc that grouped people based on physical and social traits.

thanks for linking to the correct location for the request/discussion, ill take a look. 82.38.199.49 (talk) 01:13, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 May 2024

CHANGE: While the scholar Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel sees the development of the Neo-Taíno movement in Puerto Rico as a useful counter to the domination of the island by the United States and the Spanish legacies of island society, she also notes that the Neo-Taíno movement in Puerto Rico "could be seen as a useless anachronistic reinvention of a 'Boricua coqui' identity can also be conceived as a productive example of Spivak's 'strategic essentialism'" TO: While the scholar Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel sees the development of the Neo-Taíno movement in Puerto Rico as a useful counter to the domination of the island by the United States and the Spanish legacies of island society, she also notes with reference to the Neo-Taíno movement in Puerto Rico that "what could be seen as a useless anachronistic reinvention of a 'Boricua coqui' identity can also be conceived as a productive example of Spivak's 'strategic essentialism'" REASON: The current version is ungrammatical. Note that the word "what" added inside the quoted material is taken directly from the cited article.d Gkshenaut (talk) 17:53, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

 Done ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 02:56, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Genocide versus depopulation

At one point, this article had "Genocide" as the header for the section on why the Taíno's numbers have dwindled. That got changed to "Depopulation" (which may have been a revert back to a prior title). There is also an article entitled "Taíno genocide" which shares a talk page with this one. The section itself goes backwards and forwards on what the primary cause was.

Having checked Ngrams and Google Scholar, "Taíno genocide" seems to be way more popular in the literature. See here: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Taino%2Bgenocide%2CTaino%2Bdepopulation&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true Google Scholar gives 98 pages of hits for "Taíno genocide" but only 34 for "Taíno depopulation" (dropping to 19 of you also exclude the word "genocide"). The former term also appears to have risen sharply in usage in the latter half of the last century, which is reflected in the Google Scholar sources.

As such, to make the subtitles match and follow WP:COMMONNAME, I've set the subtitle's name to "Genocide and depopulation". I suspect you could also rearrange it, so that the section is divided into subsections such as "Disease", "Slavery", etc, but I thought I'd leave the section text as is for now. Lewisguile (talk) 09:56, 23 September 2024 (UTC)