I was raised to know certain things. As a child, I possessed an innate sense of my Indigenous Caribbean heritage, but did not have much information to prove it. I began my ancestral research four years ago by collecting oral histories from family members to forge a connection I longed for, a link in the chain of my self-identity as an Indigenous Caribbean woman (Taíno/Jibara). Using baptismal records and census data, I could trace my great-grandmother's lineage, whose identity had been repeatedly misconstrued. The term "paper genocide" refers to this kind of racial erasing. After the Indigenous race category was eliminated from census data in the early 1800s, many Indigenous people of the Caribbean were forced to identify as white, black, or mixed on subsequent census reports. This was one of the many ways the Taíno people were erased from history books, creating the myth of their extinction.
My project, Ways of Knowing, is about reclaiming, learning, healing, and reconnecting with my Indigenous Caribbean community, identity, family, and ancestors through oral storytelling. The purpose of this project is to address the paper genocide of the Taínos and retell our story in a way that does not feed into the false settler colonial narrative of our erasure. Ways of Knowing is a type of knowledge that recognizes the beauty, complexity, and diversity of African and Indigenous ways of learning, connecting, and teaching through oral storytelling. An intimate and ancient tradition, oral storytelling involves a storyteller and an audience. According to Rebecca Smallberg, oral storytelling offers an abundance of opportunities for individuals to reconnect, exchange narratives, retell cultural folktales, or make up new stories. It fosters connection while also enhancing developmental skills (Smallberg, 2017). The thread that binds our history and present together is storytelling (Smallberg, 2017). But this art form is slowly disappearing due to the increase of technology, urbanization, large-scale migration, industrialization, and environmental change. My goal is to collect, document, and uplift oral histories, dreams, rituals, and memories from family members and people from the Caribbean diaspora. At the conclusion of this project, I intend to address the detrimental impact of false settler myths and histories, develop a stronger sense of identity and community that can aid in helping us retrace how we got here, pick up what was lost along the way, and challenge the history we have been taught.