#taino #nativeamerican #DNA #cubangenealogy #caribbean #ancestry #ChicanOstinoid
Welcome to podcast #104: we are discussing the Taino ancestry…
But first, it’s news time! Here’s some express news we’d like to share! The Cuban Genealogy Podcast was mentioned on the Genealogy Gems most recent podcast #223! Genealogy Gems is hosted by Lisa Louise Cook. Her podcasts are informative and so useful, covering so many family history topics and she is the one who inspired us to start the Cuban podcast. You can follow her podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to podcasts. Cemetery record news: more and more cemetery records are going online at FindAGrave.com. La Salud is at 200, it was at 3 records earlier this year. We also have photographers documenting: San Antonio and Bejucal. Cementerio Viejo are going online soon! Here’s a quick message we got from Bill on Facebook: Hey, Brian... I wanted to thank you. Amongst the more than 1,500 tombs you documented in Colon cemetery was the brother of my great great grandmother. Thank you, Bill, that is what this project is all about. Collaboration! We also have a free Cuban Genealogy presentation on Jan 12, 2019 at the Seacaucus Public Library in NJ. 11 am…free! And there’s RootsTech in February, the Cuban Genealogy Podcast will be there to report live and keep you updated on genealogy research if you’re unable to attend this year. I went last year and I learned so much from the workshops and there’s a large expo where you can explore DNA companies, family history societies and genealogy gift booths.
To help you with your research we are planning a few interesting podcast projects: how to join or start a Cuban surname study, a one sheet reference sheet for beginners and the ongoing cemetery records project. 2019 will be another exciting year for Cuban genealogy.
And for fun and historical reference we are going to start a monthly book club… and a quarterly newsletter that you can download for free from DigitalCuba.org and we will also start with some famous…celebrity family trees starting with the next podcast where will dive into the Bacardi family and focus on some of their French ancestry.
And on to the podcast! Just as a brief note, I am not a Taino expert but I do find the history fascinating. And according to 23andMe, I also have 4% Native American DNA ancestry categorized under Cuba. So, in this podcast we will discuss the Taino and then the second half of the podcast will cover an introduction to Cuban DNA in general.
In October I went to New York City to visit the Smithsonian museum, which is located in the financial district near Battery Park.
Here’s a description of the Taino exhibit from the website:
Over the past thirty years, a diverse Taíno movement has taken form. This movement challenges the prevalent belief that Native peoples became extinct shortly after European colonization in the Greater Antilles. It is spurring a regeneration of Indigenous identity within the racially mixed and culturally blended societies of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, as well as other areas of the Caribbean.
In this exhibition, visitors will explore the rural roots of the Taíno movement and find information about the legacy of Native peoples throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands and their U.S. diasporas. Welcome to part 2 we are going to discuss what to expect from a DNA test and how it can help you with your Cuban ancestry research. I know some of you are researching all the way back to Spain, I am not quite ready to focus my personal research on Spain yet but last week I did make my first Spain DNA connection and it made me think, you know, maybe I can work from both ends to link myself to the past. And it is certainly fun to know that I have living cousins in Spain!
Okay, enough about me! Drum roll please, the main DNA tests are: ancestry.com, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritageDNA. LivingDNA is also on the rise.