Do the Taino still exist?

Following dozens of comments from outraged commenters self-identifying as such, Nature changed its answer to this question.

Originally, this news article was titled ‘Breathing Life into an Extinct Ethnicity’ and stated:

“The Taínos were the first Native Americans to meet European explorers in the Caribbean. They soon fell victim to the diseases and violence brought by the outsiders, and today no Taínos remain.”

Three days later, the title was changed to ‘Rebuilding the genome of a hidden ethnicity’ and the offending paragraph was replaced with:

“The Taínos were the first Native Americans to meet European explorers in the Caribbean — and they soon fell victim to the diseases and violence brought by the outsiders. Today, the genomes of most if not all descendents of Taínos now contain few of the unique markers that characterized their ancestors. “

and a correction was added:

“This article originally stated that the Taíno were extinct, which is incorrect. Nature apologizes for the offence caused, and has corrected the text to better explain the research project described.”

The article is worth reading (some of the comments, too).  Here are some excerpts:

From the article:

But the genetic footprints of these ancestors are scattered throughout the genomes of modern Puerto Ricans, according to geneticist Carlos Bustamante at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California. On average, the genomes of Puerto Ricans contain 10–15% Native American DNA, which is largely Taíno, says Bustamante.

At a presentation at the 12th International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal, Canada, Bustamante described preliminary results from a study that aims to reconstruct the genetic features of the Taíno people. The cryptic information was found in the genomes of 70 modern Puerto Ricans, some of the latest additions to the ongoing 1000 Genomes project, an international consortium whose goal is to find the variations in DNA sequence among the genomes of all human populations.

...

The genomes of modern Puerto Ricans are a mosaic of African, European and Native American sequences. A set of single-nucleotide locations that are known to vary across these different ancestral groups helped Bustamente and his collaborators to identify whether a given region of the genome was African, European or Native American in origin, and thus begin to stitch together chromosomal segments corresponding to the Taíno heritage. The various Taíno sequences in the 70 different genomes will help to build a more complete picture of the ancestral Native American genomes.

The project has also shed light on the history of interactions between Native Americans, Africans and Europeans in the Caribbean. To infer when the various populations interbred, the team first estimated the lengths of each segment of African, European and Native American DNA in the modern genomes. They found the Taíno segments to be relatively short, suggesting a single ‘pulse’ of admixture — the result of interbreeding between populations — a few hundred years ago.

The small size of the ancestral segments fits with our understanding of the history of Puerto Rico, says Marc Via, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Barcelona, Spain, who was not involved in the study. “The admixture took place suddenly, so most of the population mixed with the African slaves and European settlers in the very early colonization of Puerto Rico.” With every generation, the segments of Taíno genome would become smaller and smaller, he says.

Most of the comments are from outraged people who identify themselves as Taino.

Roberto Borrero, who is apparently some community activist/leader, writes (all bolding that follows is mine):

This is an interesting article however it promoting misinformation by stating the “Taino no longer exist. It is unfortunate that this magazine and those conducting the DNA study would seek to comment on the culture of a living people. Taino DNA remains because Taino people remain. DNA does not determine culture nor does it affect the universal right to self-determination of the Taino People. There is plenty of evidence to present to show Taino People remain today. Why is this magazine taking a discriminatory stance against the Taino People?

A self-identified Taino spiritual leader and elder signing as Dr. Christina Wind Walker Bautista MD (MA) writes:

I am a Taino spiritual leader and elder. Last I heard, my People number at least 20,000 strong. We practice our ways, we speak our language, and we learn from and teach each other in the spirit of our ancestors.

We Taino have absolutely no intention whatsoever of suddenly becoming “extinct” - just because Nature magazine and uneducated “scientists” proclaim us so. Western science has often been wrong before. And publishing something doesn’t make it so.

Indigenous people’s right to self determination includes the privilege of deciding for ourselves who we are.

Luckily, we know who we are. We do not need permission or a genetic pedigree from Western science to walk the sacred path of our ancestors on the altar of Bibi Atabey (Mother Earth).

Taino lineage is passed through the female line. I can document an unbroken genetic lineage of Taino female ancestors: from as far back as possble through my mother to me. So I am an absolutely real Taino – as real as I could possibly be.

You must remember that our Native American indigenous ways are not the ways of Western civilization. We do not require “blood quantums” on the Red Road. As a traditional Hopi elder and clan leader once said to me: “In our way, even if you had just one drop of Native blood, you belong to us. You are ours.”

Western science is a glorious – but flawed and racist – mythology.

In the spirit of my ancestors,
Windsong

Many of the commenters admit that their community is admixed, but complain that they are being unfairly singled out:

“All native american indians are of mixed race..less than one percent of one percent are consider full bloods..We live our lives by what we are taught and was handed down from generations after generations.”

“Yes, we are the product of history, the mixture of different races,religions, cultures,wars, greed, slavery,and now research. Those realities are what make us the Tainos of today. ... No, we are not the pre-columbus Taino of 500 years ago.  ... To exclusively use DNA to determine the rights for the existence of certain groups of people it is discriminatory and offensive and will exterminate hundreds of communities”

“To try to sit there and say that we do not exhist because of a DNA study is to say the a very large percentage of Native Americans do not exhist for there are mixed bloods in all nations . So why are we being singled out ? How can you or anybody else try to tell us that what we were taught by our parents , our grandparents and great grandparents is a lie , is false is an untruth . We did not wake up one morning and decide we wanted to be Indians , this was passed down to us”

Their outrage at being labelled extinct is understandable, but their defense is as confused as it is spirited, as typified by the following comment:

Although the article is interesting, it’s full of mistakes, the first one being the extinction of the Tainos. I myself am Taino and I assure you that I am no ghost. These are some facts:

History teaches that 50 years after Columbus arrived, the Taino were wiped out, and yet, in the census taken in Puerto Rico in 1799, the Native population was being counted separately. That year, in the area of Las Indieras in Maricao, they counted 2,303. They only counted the full blooded natives in that region, leaving out the ones all around the rest of the island, and the mixed blood. One year later, the native category had the count of 0, and the category was erased. A new category was created, called “Pardos”, or free people of color, and 2,303 was the count on that one. Doesn’t that bring up a flag? During the Spanish-American War in 1898, when the US military occupied Puerto Rico, the general in charge was Nelson Miles, who wrote in his diarries about the large number of indigenous people, such as the ones he encountered in the American Southwest. He certainly knew what an Indian looked like. He was the man who arrested Geronimo!!! There are pictures of Tainos in the early 20th Century available, and you can actually get many more facts by contacting a Taino who works at the Museum of the American Indian in NYC.

Once, a woman asked me if I was “Indian”, to which I replied yes. When I was asked if I was full blooded, I explained that I have ancestors that were white. She then told me that I was no longer “Indian”, because I am mixed. I asked her if Chevy is an American car. She said “Of course!!!”. I asked her if she was sure, to which she said yes. I explained to her that parts of these cars come from outside the US, but the car is still American, correct? Well, I am Taino. Part of my bloodline came from elsewhere, but I am indeed Taino!!! MtDNA determines what you are, and about 64.5% of Puerto Ricans, 19% of Dominicans, and about 30% of Cubans have the DNA that shows them to be Native American. That is a very large amount of people that your article is declaring “Extinct”.

A ‘British Male’ comes to the rescue, using his anti-racism training to build up the integrity (moral and genetic) of the modern ‘Taino’:

Sirs

I am a British Male, according to the premise of your research I am also extinct and also so are you for there are no true Spanish left either. This being said I can assure you that The Taino are far from being extinct I know many of them I have many Taino frieds and also a few Taino enemies. I can assure you that you do not want to get on the wrong side of them . I too have conducted research into Taino heritage and culture and lineage. Most of the Taino I know can trace their ancestors back to a time when ours were running around covered in wode and clubbing women . It surprises me that a publication of the stature of this one can publish such flawed research work without at least checking the source material . It is flawed for I know from personal experience that the Taino do indeed exist, they may be mixed with others but by that criteria so is every other person on this earth . I would suggest that this publication actually seriously questions this research . The Taino are alive and well and living in the four corners of the world .

Respectfully yours

Maurice Travers Ba Msc

And finally, Carlos Bustamante, the population geneticist leading the study steps in to soothe feelings:

It was a mistake to refer to the Taino people as ‘extinct’ given the large number of people who self-identify as Taino.

...

We believe that DNA analysis is very separate and different from issues of cultural identity and continuity, and we welcome the opportunity to work with people and communities who identify as Taino. Our project is just beginning, and we believe it is very important that the views of the Taino community be heard and incorporated into the interpretation of the results. Going forward, when we speak to reporters we will make sure to emphasize the distinction between genetic ancestry and cultural continuity.

...

By connecting the Taino DNA across individuals to understand and celebrate its diversity [have to laugh when I see this], we can make this a key message of the project.

So do the Taino still exist?  Perhaps there are pockets in the Caribbean where we can find individuals with relatively low levels of European and African admixture.  But I suspect such cases will be rare and, given the admitted admixture of those stronly identifying today as Taino, they will eventually become amalgamated into the North American Mestizo population.
 

“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.” —Plutarch, Theseus

Posted by Dasein on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 06:26 AM in Anthropology
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