Living As A Compassionate Native In A Materialistic World

A major question modern Natives and Native-descendants struggle with is what it means to be Native. I am a modern-day Native who has reached his 41st year without ever having worn buckskin, slept in a longhouse, or danced in a powwow. I am of mixed Native and European descent on both paternal and maternal lines, and was exposed to both Catholicism and Native beliefs. I am also not just a product of my upbringing, but of my continuing life as well. Every time I encounter new people, new environments, or new experiences, I change, grow, and evolve. As with being human, being Native is an intense, wildly dynamic thing.



My life has grown to an almost exclusively Owasco-NiTaino lifestyle. Surely, I own a computer, live in a building with electricity, and work in a public library. But I also speak Taino fluently, I am quite proficient in Owasco, and I tend a series of altars. I have corrected well-meaning but erroneous curators of museum exhibits. I make offerings to the gods and ancestors, and frequently engage in temescal sweats. I have translated the Amatl Turey sacred stories, have studied the archeology, and live by Owasco-NiTaino mores and rules.

Living by traditional ethics and morals means that I must be compassionate and empathic in everything I do. I have a temper and an ego, to be sure, but I hold myself to the frame no matter what. The term NiTaino itself literally translates as “the good and noble people”. This in itself presents the biggest difficulty in the modern world, as the modern world is all about materialism, greed, and power-lust. The obsession with politics, economics, and control have separated us not only from our environment, but ourselves and each other as well. In a world where everything is a commodity, humanity is hard to hold onto.
All of the modern-day systems for social modeling and control- every -ist and -ism imaginable- have come directly out of the Industrial Revolution and the philosophies that were used to support, manipulate, or challenge it. The entire paradigm is directly influenced by mass industrialization mind-frame, be it defense of or criticism of it. Talk of fiat currencies, mass-manufacture, humans as a commodity (“labor”), and Nature as an abusable “thing” have replaced vocabulary of humanity, valor, and compassion. Both Smith's “capitalism”, and Marx's “communism” (and all of the subsequent re-workings of both by whomever) fail in keeping the humanity in greater society, much less to protect Nature and the environment. In the approximately 260 years since the Industrial Revolution began, all paradigms and models offered to the public have failed miserably. The situation for both our species and our planet has worsened significantly; all the while cheerleaders and apologists for both sides continue to spin propaganda in their favor to gain power. It is most obvious that some other ideal beyond a Central European imperial industrial model must be tried. As this conundrum deeply pains me, I would like to present the NiTaino social model as a viable alternative.

A quick review of NiTaino history is in order, for those who may not be familiar. Most people will only have a fleeting knowledge of NiTaino history and culture, as the Iberian Jesuits and mercenaries have run an intensive (and so far quite successful) campaign since 1492 to eradicate and bury the NiTaino culture. The campaign continues to this day, with Stevens-Arroyo and a gaggle of his followers misrepresenting NiTaino culture as a Marian Catholicism, and Cohen and Dixon claiming all NiTainos were “black Africans”, and therefore not Native. For a NiTaino descendant who is trying to reclaim their heritage, things have become quite difficult. We are graced by the oral tradition and folkways, which have preserved tremendous amounts of the sacred mythology, vocabulary, linguistics, and mind-frame veneered, but relatively intact.
The NiTaino culture reached its classical peak on the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean, several hundred years before the Iberian invasion. The culture can claim roots in several places, based on archeology and linguistics- the Eastern slopes of the Peruvian mountains facing into the Amazon River Basin, extreme Southwestern Guatemala and Northeastern El Salvador, and also the Yucatan. These roots merge to form a cultural complex that stretches from the Yucatan and Miskito Coast of Nicaragua, into Cuba, Quiskeya (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamaica, Boriken (Puerto Rico), and the Virgin Islands. Related and influenced groups range down the rest of the archipelago, to Trinidad and Tobago, and into the Orinoco coastline. Major living groups in the NiTaino cultural spectrum are Ciboney, Macorix, Taino, CaciTaino, Carib, Lukkuyo, and Igneri. There are also the Arawak cousins, and even the Korubo and Xingu deep in the Amazon. NiTaino-influenced groups include Garifuna, Miskito, Gullah, and various “creoles”.
The NiTaino language group (referred to as”Maipurean” by the Rockefeller-funded Pentecostal groups Summer Institute of Linguistics and New Tribes Mission) contain the “R” and “K” phonemes as markers. The other major linguistic phoneme markers in the Americas are “L” and an “L and N”. Because of lack of success with modern missionary conversion activities, these institutes have declared the NiTaino languages “dead”, even though modern English and Spanish are riddled with NiTaino vocabulary, and tens of thousands of people still speak the language in some form as part of their daily, common communications.
NiTainos were great fishermen, and worked with many resources from the sea, and flourished. Lacking large mammals, their diet was mostly seafood, fruits, nuts, and root vegetables. They were fantastic seafarers, and were quite adept at long-distance sea-trade. They also apparently had a penchant for collecting antiques and curiosities of other cultures. They worked stone, wood, and shell into any tools or objects needed, and left us a large quantity of exquisitely carved artifacts.
NiTaino culture is centered around communities which are rooted in appreciation and connection with the natural world, the Cosmos, and their ancestors. Everything in the human world is seen as akin and influenced by the natural world. All extant people, animals, plants, objects, or things are venerated and respected. This leads to a quite different way of not only looking at, but interacting with the world around you. Entirely lacking is the greedy, consumptive “it's all here only for our own use and will” that is present in the current paradigms.
Food and resources in NiTaino culture were shared with who needed them, at the time they were needed. While yucca was kept growing in mounds year round, other food was truly seasonal, and was only available when it was in season. Being a tropical maritime climate, there were rarely any times of starvation. Even during a drought, the people could turn to the sea.

Socially, the NiTaino lived in small villages, where bohios (houses) made of the Royal Palm or a Kapok tree were arranged in a sort of circle around the center dance grounds or batey-court. At one point (usually at the end of the center commons area), there was a shell midden with a square kaney house built upon it. In this kaney were stored the zemis and other venerated artifacts for the community. It was a public house in the truest sense of the word- it belonged to everyone. If there was a selected cacique (leader), they may be permitted to live in this house. During arrieto celebrations, the musicians may have been stationed in the doorway of the kaney, so that everyone could see and hear them clearly. The behique healers worked where the patients were, not in a special building, although behiques may have lived a bit isolated from the village proper, to give them a better connection to the spirits who roamed the forests and beaches.
Within this basic local community geographic structure, the NiTaino culture was an egalitarian, fratrifocal culture. All initiated adults had the same legal rights and inviolable autonomy, and were expected to help keep the society together. Once initiated and recognized as an adult, there were no longer any special mutterrecht or obligation to the parents and elders as overlords; and adult was an adult. A lively true democracy- one person, one vote- was how decisions were made. Experts may have led a certain project or activity, but overall was much more fairer distribution of leadership and power. There were no centralized or regional pyramid structure to politics or leadership, everything was done locally and the reach of a politician was not very far. Behiques were a lifetime position due to training and knowledge involved, but the political caciques were not. A cacique who failed in their projects could easily be voted out and removed to another village or island where they would be a naboria, or commoner. There was no job security in politics at all, the will and whims of the people were paramount. Being a cacique was not for the easily-bruised ego. Every adult individual was expected to be autonomous and self-actualized, and no adult was responsible for any other adult or their actions. The young ones and infants were the responsibility of the whole community, not just the birth parents.
The Nitaino culture was openly and joyously erotic, and the resulting polyamory caused paternity to be indeterminable in most cases. Therefore, infants were provided for by the likeliest candidates, his Guatiao, and the rest of the village. These multiple resource streams created healthier, stronger, and more intelligent children. Indeed, a common phrase for this system was “the boy has two fathers”.
The frequent arrietos were town meetings with feasts and dancing, all used to help bond the community together (and even bond them to the neighboring communities when visits were made). During arrietos, the moral codes of the groups present were recited, as were stories of ancestry and sacred mythology. Each group knew a different part of the stories, so to get the entire story, it required different groups to be present. Even within one village unit, different demographics knew different parts of the larger group stories. This is a wonderful way of fostering bonds and interaction without competition or domination. Everyone in this system is important and included. The basic human need for significance was not ignored or left to ego or chance.

The NiTaino culture took the training and initiation of its adults quite seriously, and encampments were set up so that the young males could be trained outside of the domestic villages. The young females were trained in a separate area of the main village. The village proper was considered the domestic realm because of the children present, which created a responsibility of all who were present to care for them. Males were expected to do childcare, but during the initiation period, they were exempt.
The encampments for the males were called conuco, which is a reference to a garden. This shows an interesting mindframe, that the encampments were literally a “garden for growing men”. Efforts and resources were focused on making autonomous adults, as those adults would make the foundation of a better overall society. When people do not live as underlings- be it due to age, color, gender, etc.- it makes everyone in the society at large stronger.
Another important aspect of NiTaino culture is the Guatiao system. Guatiao is a social bonding idea, where two or three males who are not related by lineage of clan do a ceremony for name-exchange, and are then recognized as a full part of the other's family. Since relatives rarely fought, and always shared everything, An individual could then count on assistance and help from his Guatiao's clan members. Guatiao, therefore is a mutually-beneficial, affection-based system that works towards co-operation, cohesion, and benefit for the larger social network of an individual.
Likewise, the status of all members of your village or related groups reflected on you. If anyone in your village or affiliated groups was hungry, cold, sick, neglected, alone, or behaving cruelly, it would reflect negatively on you as well. It was to your benefit for everyone in your group to be well off and provided for. Such a social model is based on compassion, and not materialism. This idea flips all of the modern paradigms with their “he who dies with the most toys wins” attitude on their heads.
The NiTaino cultural model encourages strong individuals, so that they may be stronger and better for the greater good, and not the usual imbalance of either individuality being crushed for the group, or the individual triumphing at the expense of the many. As throughout my examples, we could learn much here. The NiTaino culture, while quite capable of battle evidenced by the weaponry and vocabulary that have survived, was quite reluctant to use violence. The encounter with the brutal Iberians shows this clearly. The NiTainos would rather die than fight the new visitors, whom they treated with great respect at first. So deeply foreign was the response of the Iberians to the hospitality that the NiTaino showed, that even del Torres' infamous line: “The people here are naked and defenseless, they will make us good slaves” should be unfathomable even to modern imperial ears.
The NiTaino cultures also had no currency, everything was gifted, or was directly traded, object or service for another object or service. The whole idea of abstract symbols having value over living things or objects was so foreign, that when the Spanish introduced their economedia system, the NiTainos could not figure out why a disc of silver had any value outside of being a wearable pendant, much less the power to purchase a human. When a fiat currency exists, it is already a symptom of a political pyramid power structure- the currency was minted and issued on the authority of a government propped up by a militia and its missionaries. Without such a pathological paradigm, no currency can exist, nor is it ever needed.

So with an overview of what has come before, how can we apply this to our modern situation? It is going to be intensely uncomfortable, and take a lot of work on the part of those interested. The most difficult part will be opening our hearts and minds to be compassionate towards everything in our world, to everyone and everything we encounter. That will take most people the rest of their lives, as they are rooted in imperial pathologies in every aspect of their lives, but it is the most important NiTaino aspect of all. The next stage would be to keep it local and decentralized as the NiTaino did. Why can't power and ideas be shared, and follow a natural flow, instead of having to go through an already-concrete power structure? The third aspect would be to rid yourself of the scarcity of commodities mantra. Everything you need to live locally is provided locally, in abundant quantities. Importing blueberries from Chile to New York because the local blueberries are not deemed gourmet enough to be desirable is just one example of this. Fourthly, open your heart and mind over medieval definitions, and extend the borders of your “family”. The Latin root of “family” is the same as “familiar”- all those familiar to us are our families, like it or not. We should treat them as such.

- Joaquin 2 Cacimarex, Seawaornock, Manahatouac