We Are Still Here

Artist Statement

This collage titled, Ocama-Daca Taíno (Hear Me, I am Taíno), is intended to represent the fluid spectrum of Indigenous Indigeneity and queer identity as it survives and is reconstructed in the modern era. It serves as a queer assemblage, mirroring the "logic of the altar" found in Caribbean spiritual traditions. I focused on how these traditions provide a vital space for queer, trans, and non-binary people to resist colonial heteronormativity, which is the historical and ongoing assumption that being heterosexual and fitting into a rigid male/female binary is the only "normal" way to exist. This suppression was reinforced by a form of "paper genocide" used as a colonial tool to erase Indigenous authority and non-normative identities, claiming that the myth of Taíno extinction. Contemporary descendants are now "re-storying" this past to prevent their community from being disappeared by history and to say, "We are still here".

Foundational Taíno creation myths offer a sacred precedent for non-binary life, describing original beings who were "neither men, nor women" because they lacked specific sex organs, these beings are represented by the blue figures residing within and by the river. Their central presence in the landscape establishes a sacred, pre-colonial precedent for trans and non-binary identities, proving that gender variance is an original Caribbean state of being rather than a modern import. The shimmering and colorful beings scattered throughout the collage represent the "Rainbow People" or Kiwari. Kiwari is a term from the reconstructed Hiwatahia language meaning "rainbow," which modern reconnection movements have adopted as a beautiful and positive umbrella term for the queer, trans, and non-binary Taíno community to resist historical erasure. Positioned on the left of the river, is the Ceiba tree (or Tree of Life) which symbolizes the vehicle for survival because it provided the wood for the canoas (canoes) that allowed ancestors to populate the islands and continues to carry the community from the ancestral past into the present.

Also incorporated throughout this collage are Taíno symbols of power. The symbol of Atabey (the Mother of Waters and Earth Mother, upper left corner) and the flowing river represent the life-giving force of Kiskeya. This aligns with the concept of transcorporeality, where the spirit is seen as multiple and removable, allowing the body to be a temporary vessel for different gendered energies. The symbols of Guey (Sun, upper right corner) and Coqui (frog, beside the river) ground the queer identity in the physical environment and matrilineal authority. In myth, children transformed into frogs when crying for their mothers, linking the natural world to the female lines of inheritance that defined Taíno society. Visible in the mirror, these stones represent Yocahu Bagua Maraocoti, sometimes referred to as Yúcahu or Cemi/Zemi, the spirit of growth. This spirit represents "differently gendered possibilities", encompassing the category of maorocoti, which is "neither and both" masculine and feminine.

Lastly, present in the foreground in the river is Anaisa Pye, a beloved and golden-clad Dominican deity with Indigenous Taíno roots. As an avatar of the Taíno river spirit Coatrisque, she serves as a "mirror and map" for queer individuals in the diaspora, protecting those who exist in a "third space" outside colonial categories. Through her, gender fluidity is recognized not as a transgression, but as a sacred "blessing" that allows practitioners to be surrounded by "multiply gendered spirits". Ultimately, this demonstrates that Taino queerness is a survival of a transhistorical nature, insisting that the Taino resurgence is encompassed by its gender-nonconforming origins and the embracing as gender as mutable to achieve a truly decolonized universe. Asserting through these acts of reconnection through spiritualism, gender exploration, and language reconstruction that they are in fact still here.