Bringing Tano Peoples Back Into History

An upcoming Smithsonian exhibition explores the legacy of Native peoples in the Greater Antilles and their contemporary heritage movement

By Ranald Woodaman
smithsonian.com
December 28, 2017 6:00AM


No exhibition has actually addressed the topic of Native peoples in the Caribbean after 1492. Native peoples, represented by the durable elements of their material culture, are contained in museums within the pre-colonial moment. To frame an exhibition that emphasizes the survival and contemporary vitality of these indigenous peoples is an intimidating task. But such is the upcoming “Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean,” now under preparation for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Gustav Heye Center in New York City.

In another lifetime—2008—I first approached the archeological Native American collections at the Smithsonian’s American Indian and Natural History museums with an interest in the history of the collections themselves. How were these artifacts first collected, and how did they end up at the Smithsonian? What were the political contexts, the ideologies behind collecting and the market forces at hand? About the time I was poking around collections, I heard someone in the Smithsonian leadership talk about the Taíno movement in Puerto Rico, and I thought to myself, “How’s that possible? Indians in Puerto Rico are extinct.”

The term Taíno was first recorded in Spanish chronicles in 1493. It probably meant “good people,” though the word’s original context is difficult to interpret.

Linguists and then archeologists of the 19th century used Taíno to group together the various Arawak-speaking peoples in the Greater Antilles, Bahamas and Virgin Islands. While archeology and historical texts show important trade, political and kinship relationships that connected Native communities across these islands, there’s a stark limit to understanding the past identities of their ancestral societies.


Today, Taíno has been embraced by many Caribbean people with Native ancestry as a term that unites their historical experiences and cultural identities before and after 1492.

Read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/bringing-taino-peoples-back-history-180967637/