On November 19th of last year, Puerto Ricans on the island and in the states celebrated, protested or ignored the 505th Anniversary of the "discovery" of Puerto Rico by Cristobal Colon.

But on that Fall day in Brooklyn in a large auditorium, a different gathering took place that subverted the controversial holiday. Men, women and children in traditional indigenous clothing came together to sing, dance, feast and pray together as Tainos; the same people supposedly eradicated by the conquistadors.

Taino Nation of the Antilles (Nación Taina de las Antillas) held it's "Day of the Taino People" to commemorate and celebrate the Sixth Anniversary of the restoration of a people thought to be extinct by most traditional scholars. But the Nación members from all of the Greater Antilles and the U.S. feel far from extinct. And one phrase keeps cropping up in discussions with and literature from the Nación, "...following in the footsteps of the grandfathers."

Finding and then following these particular trails have been a challenge. The Tainos are the indigenous people of the Greater Antilles -- Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba -- and according to most of the scholarly accounts, the Tainos became extinct in the mid to late sixteenth century due to the genocidal wars of conquest, disease and suicide according to the standard research. Some prominent anthropogists like Irving Rouse of Yale and Ricardo Alegria of the University of Puerto Rico concede that a few Tainos did escape the Spanish invasion and fled to the mountains, but that was about it.

In the last few years however, Taino Nation and a growing number of scholars have been contradicting the extinction story. It's known in Taino circles as the extinction myth. "We purposefully chose this day (Nov. 19) for the declaration of the restoration in 1992," asserted Rene Cibanakan Marcano, a chief or "kacike" of the Nation.

"We are taking it away from Columbus and using it for this special areito (celebration.)"

At the areito, which is an ancient Taino gathering, there were many people who had never accepted the extinction stories and had kept their feelings hidden before finding each other.

Nacion members like Nancy Hawarú Lion-Storm had been told as children of their "Indio" heritage. But she quickly discovered that there was no one to share it with as most people dismissed the idea or were openly contemptuous of such an assertion.

"I always thought of myself as Puerto Rican Taino," Hawaru asserted. "And throughout my whole life, when I mentioned to other Puerto Ricans that I was part Taino, they replied that I couldn't be. They said the Tainos are extinct and we're all a blend. This same thing happened when I was in college where I had professors telling me that I couldn't possibly be Taino."

Among the announcements and articles published in the Boletin are news of alliances with other tribes and Native nations, scholarship and recovery of ancient traditions and language. For instance, anthropologists such as Lynne Guitar and archaeologists like Peter Ferbel have provided solid counter arguments against the allegations of Taino extinction while writer/activists such as Jose Barreiro of the American Indian Program at Cornell University emphasize the living aspects of the culture.

Ferbel, who was the Director of Archaelogical and Anthropological Studies at the Historical Archives of Santiago, Dominican Republic, wrote "The Politics of Taino Indian Heritage in Post-Quincentennial Dominican Republic..." for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnessota in 1995. In an interview last summer, Ferbel expanded on some of his main points.

"The indigenous heritage survived principally in the country (el campo)...so the culture is there, the race (or bloodline) is there but not the identity...so you have people in the Antilles who live very similar to Tainos even though they may not make casabe but they work the higuero and they don't say 'I'm Taino,' they say 'I'm Dominican or Puerto Rican or Cuban..."

"History is often written by the people who won the wars. In this case it's the Spanish...The Tainos are not extinct," Ferbel asserted.

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