Embracing my Taíno heritage
<p>It’s Native American Heritage Month, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my own heritage. Ever since I was a little girl, my mother taught me to be proud of our family’s history. She made sure I knew we were strong Puerto Ricans, and strong Taínos.</p>
<p>It’s the Taíno part of my history that makes this month so special for me. The Taíno were the Indigenous people living in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean when Europeans landed in 1492. Decimated by disease and violence, historians thought they had died out completely. But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/science/dna-caribbean-islands.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the truth is</a>, millions of living people have traces of Taíno DNA, including a large percentage of Puerto Ricans. Like me.</p>
<p><a href="https://aftvoices.org/embracing-my-ta%C3%ADno-heritage-146a53b552b8"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>