Taino Genealogy and Revitalization

Download or read book Taino Genealogy and Revitalization written by Richard Morrow Porrata, PH D and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-11-16 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This seminal work was assembled by Dr. Richard Morrow Porrata, a retired professor from the University of Puerto Rico's Multilingual and Cultural Institute Division of Continuing Education. He is a Native American descendant of Taino ancestry. He is presently the administrator for the Taino Descendants of Puerto Rico with FamilyTreeDNA.com and the Chairman for Descendants of Puerto Rico's First Nation. Additionally, he was the national president for the Native American and Alaskan Native Coalition during the Clinton administration. He also served as an ambassador for the Taino people and was a former Taino chief in 1994, and a deputy chief under Paramount Chief Hilary Frederick of the Caribe Indian Nation in 1997. Moreover, he is a Doctorate Fellow of Walden University. Dr. Morrow has been fascinated with his Taino ancestry since childhood when his Puerto Rican mother told him that her mother's side of the family were Taino Indians. After moving to Puerto Rico in 1991 from the Continental United States he was surprised to find out that many Puerto Ricans believed that the Taino Indians had all dissapeared 500 years ago. This led Dr. Morrow on a quest to conduct genealogical research to prove his mother's words by acquiring documented evidence in the form of vital statistics that not only identified ancestors as indigenous but also a paper trail that led his native roots straight back to the Indiera, the last known Taino settlement in Puerto Rico written about by the famous historian Dr. Salvador Brau. Moreover, the age of DNA proved without a doubt that his mother's lineage was indeed Native American, which National Geographic stated went back some 30,000 years to some of the first people who enter the Americas. This intrigued Dr. Morrow so much that he continued digging deeper by not only using historic documents but studying Native American pottery for several years; not to become a potter but to learn the engineering process behind ceramics such as local materials and designs used in the construction of clay vessels. By using his maternal DNA results along with his knowledge of Native American pottery, he was able to trace an Ostionoid lineage out of Puerto Rico going back to the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys. Not only did he trace a native lineage going back to the Mississippi and Hopewell cultures but he broaden his investigation by proving an indigenous presence on the island of Puerto Rico by going forward starting from the year 1797; a date that most historians thought was the last documented evidence of Indian people living on the island. He made several discoveries such as allocating an old 1817 militia roll from San German, Puerto Rico that identifies 382 Indian soldiers with their full names and ranks. Dr. Morrow devotes an entire chapter in honor of these soldiers. This is the first historic book about Puerto Rico that gives a written account about the existence of these Taino warriors. He discribes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, an American Indian existence in Puerto Rico into the 20th Century by presenting government documents of that era from both local and federal archives. Dr. Morrow's research took many years that has added up into thousands of hours. He includes all of his technics and discoveries into this book so that anyone who has an oral history of being Taino can learn how to validate their Taino lineage supported by documented evidence without having to spend decades researching as he has done. In his book he explains his research methods from acquiring documents, to DNA matching, and the use of ArcheoCeramic technology.. He explains in detail how to use direct and indirect evidence as tools for proving one's Taino lineage. This book is not only a valuable resource for the Taino descendant of Puerto Rican heritage but it can also benefit people from the Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica who may also have a family oral history of being Taino.