INDIGENOUS RESURGENCE

in the CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN

Amerindian Survival and Revival

EDITED BY
Maximilian C. Forte

PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Indigenous resurgence in the contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian survival
and revival / edited by Maximilian C. Forte.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Indians of the West Indies—Ethnic identity. 2. Indians of the West Indies—
Social conditions. 3. Indians of the West Indies—Government relations.
4. Self-determination, National—Caribbean Area. I. Forte, Maximilian Christian.
F1619.3.E83I63 323.1197’0729—dc22 2005012816
ISBN 0-8204-7488-6

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 Ú C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N Ú

Searching for a Center

in the Digital Ether:
Notes on the Indigenous Caribbean
Resurgence on the Internet

Maximilian C. Forte

“I
went on the Internet to find out who I am.” These words of a Trini-
dadian resident in Canada were offered as part of an explanation of
how she came to probe her own aboriginal ancestral origins as a per-
son who once saw herself as being only of “mixed” descent, in a family where
some relatives preferred to label themselves “French.” She went on the Inter-
net in 2003 and encountered the website of Trinidad’s Santa Rosa Carib
Community (SRCC),1 which I designed and maintain as the webmaster of the
SRCC. It is not an entirely unique story. Many Trinidadians, especially those
residing overseas, possibly longing for the place in which they truly fit in as
persons at “home,” seeking to gain knowledge of their home, longing for a
sense of rootedness, and using the technology at their disposal, have come to
re-identify as Amerindian descendants in their adult years. This is a heavily
loaded bundle of partial explanations, yet one that largely resonates with what
I have distilled from over six years of correspondence with dozens of Trinida-
dians online, and from what I have witnessed from the feedback provided to
various sites by expatriates of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.2
The Internet, in and of itself, has no creative agency—it is simply a me-
dium. These are not “Internet Indians,” as if the Internet possessed some
agency to create identities and senses of belonging, as if the Internet somehow
elicited identity positions that individuals and groups never had before. The
Internet is a medium that conveys certain possibilities to those who are already
predisposed, to some degree, to position themselves and rearticulate their
254 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

identities as Amerindian descendants. The plethora of websites by Caribbean

Amerindians, especially Puerto Rican Taínos, stressing the message, “we are
not extinct,” has served to build a new field of possibility and a new space for
identity which older media, often monopolized by more conservative scholarly
interests, left largely closed (see Forte, 2002). Thus far, it is admittedly the case
that I have reduced a complex phenomenon to a simple and unequivocal
search for one’s identity using a special medium, as if it were a fast-food outlet,
immediately delivering a consumable good on demand.
Some difficult questions need to be addressed, therefore, if we are to more
fully appreciate the Internet as a new platform in the contemporary interna-
tional resurgence of Amerindian identification. My intention is to focus on
the practices of building a Caribbean indigenous presence online that aids
dispersed individuals and groups in further developing a sense of belonging to
a home, in the process of articulating their own representations as indigenous.
In my attempt to realize this intention, I will raise two questions. First, to what
extent has the Internet been useful in furthering Caribbean indigenous goals
of self-representation, regional organization and actual change “on the
ground”? Second, what are the challenges facing Caribbean indigenous utiliza-
tion of the Internet that limit their presence or the character of their represen-
tations?
The reason for asking these questions, and not other perfectly valid and
interesting questions, is not an indication of an attempt to secure a premature
closure of inquiry. The primary purpose of these questions is to explore and
chart Caribbean indigenous cultural practice through engagements with Inter-
net media on personal and collective levels. This is by no means the only angle
by which we can appreciate the flourishing growth of Caribbean indigenous
websites, but it is one way of arriving at an understanding of the relevance that
Internet media have for the forms of practice and organization that we refer to
under the heading of the resurgence of the indigenous Caribbean. These novel
means of communication impose certain constraints even while they open up
new opportunities for self-representation. We need to understand the nature
of those limitations in addition to the ways Internet media are used and en-
gaged.

What Is “New” about Indigeneity Online?

The Internet provides a qualitatively new and contemporary arena for identifi-
cation as Amerindian, whether Carib or Taíno as the cases tend to be. First, in
those cases involving solitary persons using the Internet to document, verify,
or give new voice to their self-identification as indigenous, one may detect a
certain degree of individuality in search of a community. On the other hand,
the Internet serves as yet another membrane for collecting stories and images
 •S E A R C H I N G F O R A C E N T E R I N T H E D I G I T A L E T H E R • 255

of the tribe, transmitting these directly, even if not face to face, to the newest
members of a tribe that is constantly in the process of reproducing itself. The
Internet serves as “screen memories” (to borrow Ginsburg’s metaphor), help-
ing to encode and establish presence where presence is precisely what has been
under threat: “indigenous people are using screen media not to mask but to
recuperate their own collective stories and histories…that have been erased in
the national narratives of the dominant culture and are in danger of being for-
gotten in local worlds as well” (Ginsburg, 2002, p. 40).
Second, while speaking of deeply personal needs for belonging, the online
mode of interaction often proceeds without face-to-face interaction and with-
out a shared geographic locality for the interactions, though the latter is not
always true of course. As some have already observed in studying interpersonal
relations on the Internet in broader terms, the Internet “enables two qualities
that individuals can find empowering: anonymity and intimacy” (Doheny-
Farina, 1996, p. 65). Through the Internet, some individuals may come to per-
ceive themselves as indigenous with the aid of others engaged in the same
process. I will return to this issue in the seventh point below.
Third, the Internet arena for this identification is substantially wider in
spatial terms, extending well beyond the Circum-Caribbean, and is shaped by
the acceleration of communication in temporal terms. This dimension of the
internationalization of Amerindian identification speaks to a uniquely con-
temporary situation that is not only indicative of the fact that there is a resur-
gence of this identification, but it can also show us the extent to which wider
spheres of this resurgence can occur in and through the Internet.
In line with the last point, one can see that the Internet has increasingly
become a significant vehicle in the propagation of a transnational, indigenous
Fourth World (Prins, 2002, p. 72). As Prins recognized, the Internet “enables
tribal communities and individuals to represent themselves and to do so
largely on their own terms and according to their own aesthetic preferences”
(2002, p. 70). The question of “transnationalized indigeneity,” to the extent
that one can meaningfully speak of this, represents an important paradox of
indigeneity: seemingly free floating whilst emphasizing local rootedness (see
Clifford, 1994). As Dávila (1999, p. 25) explains, Taíno groups and associa-
tions “have tended to conceptualize themselves not so much in nationalist as
in diasporic terms.” In addition, Dávila found that most of the Taíno revival-
ists were either born or raised in the US, with most residing there, and it was
in the US that “most of the Taínos recouped their indigenous identity” (1999,
p. 19). It seems that for many of the individuals I encounter both online and
in person, identification as indigenous is developed and defined, in part, in
and through a transnationalized network of representation. Returning to the
case of the Trinidadian woman who spoke at the outset of this chapter, she
had also accompanied Canadian aboriginals in various protest marches, had
256 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

studied Canadian aboriginals in various texts, and had “traveled” across a

spectrum of indigenous websites until she found her way back home, so to
speak, in examining Trinidadian aboriginal websites. Clifford’s paradox can be
seen in two different ways: individuals in the diaspora, seemingly free floating,
while home remains in place where they left it; or, individuals are rooted
wherever they are, and home is symbolically lifted from a place and appears to
be free floating over members of the diaspora.
Fourth, there are important parameters conditioning, even constraining,
this phenomenon of indigenous resurgence practiced via the Internet, which I
very loosely refer to as “Internet indigeneity,” that is, indigeneity partly con-
ceptualized and practiced in and through the Internet. By and large, only very
few indigenous Caribbean communities have been in the position to make
significant and sustained use of the Internet, apart from the Garifuna of Cen-
tral America. We can thus discern a spectrum of representation from the
Greater Antilles to the Mainland in terms of the decreased occurrence of what
we might call critiques of “extinctionist” discourse (i.e., emphatic repetition of
the thesis that no Amerindians remain in a given territory), proceeding
through the region from north to south. At the same time, we see the increas-
ing dominance of the number of websites by Caribbean Amerindians as we
move back from south to north. Most websites are by self-identified Taínos
from Puerto Rico; the fewest are by Guyanese Amerindians. Significantly then,
the theme of disputing extinction makes its presence felt heavily in the narra-
tives of these websites of the Greater Antillean diaspora. In an attempt to un-
derscore Amerindian survival, some websites have seemingly taken revenge
against older scholarly orthodoxies that asserted extinction, by stressing, maybe
even over communicating in some cases, the degree of social and cultural con-
tinuity. For my part, I do not lament the polemics that result from the clash of
two extremes, given that they serve to admit the fact that there is a debate to
be had (e.g., Borrero, 1999) and that older orthodoxies merit intense critical
scrutiny (see Barreiro and Guitar, Ferbel-Azcarate and Estevez, this volume).
Fifth, like previous media, use of new media such as the Internet are tied
up with issues of power. Both Turner (2002) and Alia (1999) observed how
involvement in film and television production, as well as journalism, among
the Kayapo of Brazil and the Inuit in northern Canada, offered a means for
some to graduate to higher political status within native communities, helping
them to become more prominent as political leaders, or simply cementing
their claims to authority through media use. As Turner observed with the
Kayapo: “political acts and projects, such as a young leader’s claims to chiefly
authority, that in the normal run of Kayapo political life would remain rela-
tively contingent and reversible, can be represented by video in ways that help
establish them as objective public realities” (2002, p. 87). To a limited extent,
this may also be true of some of the Taíno websites, insofar as claims to com-
 •S E A R C H I N G F O R A C E N T E R I N T H E D I G I T A L E T H E R • 257

munal and intercommunal leadership are made most forcibly, and visibly,
through the Internet. Indeed, the Internet can be used in those cases for or-
ganizations to indirectly contest each other’s claims to authority.3
Sixth, the Internet has gone a long way toward enabling some Caribbean
aboriginals, especially those who are best positioned to make use of it, to af-
firm self-determination in their own self-representations. As Turner found in
the case of video, new techniques of representation may empower persons to
transform their stock of social and cultural forms (2002, p. 80). The very prac-
tice of representation helps to establish the reality being recorded on Taíno
websites, for example (see Turner, 2002, p. 87).
Seventh, unlike previous media, the Internet provides the basis for new
ways of building and expressing community, for bringing the solitary “surfer”
back home. As Jones explains, resonating with the declaration at the start of
this paper, “we are struck, as we use the Internet, by the sense that there are
others out there like us” (1997, p. 17, emphasis in the original). Being on the
Internet is a time to be alone and yet with others (Jones, 1997, p. 17). Com-
munity is experienced imaginatively, even by the solitary surfer, in the surfer’s
process of establishing relevant and potentially meaningful connections in the
process of navigating across related websites: “the World Wide Web, exists as a
set of connections from one text to another, providing for choice in navigation
from text to text” (Jones, 1997, p. 28). Connections are also developed by
more communal means. Indeed, there is already a significant range of litera-
ture pointing to the emergence of communities online, no less “real” than off-
line communities: “community exists in the minds of the participants; it exists
because its participants define it and give it meaning” (Fernback, 1999, p.
213). As Fernback extends this argument, if communication is at the heart of
“community,” then, “community is real whether it exists within the same
physical locality or half a world away via the telephone wires” (Fernback, 1999,
p. 213). The development of indigenous community online is not any more
imaginary than the development of other mediated forms of collectivity, in-
cluding nationalism (see Anderson, 1991). In fact, given the pronounced de-
gree of interactivity of these new media, where the allegedly passive and
solitary media consumer of the past has largely vanished, communities medi-
ated by new media may be far less fictive than established forms of national-
ism. Though it may be practiced through a nonplace such as the Internet,
online indigeneity is place oriented: Trinidad and Puerto Rico, for example,
still figure prominently in the minds of online site producers and associated
visitors as respective locations of Carib and Taíno cultures.
In other words, we see the development of a community of webmasters,
discussants, and correspondents, some of whom may have little interaction
with each other off-line, especially where geographically dispersed. The central-
ity of the role of the Internet in this new phase of indigenous resurgence in the
258 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

Caribbean is that a much broader, transnational set of associations and link-

ages can be built, gathering disparate individuals and groups, in both the
homeland and the diaspora, into one “web” of mutual recognition and self-
definition. Home is thus both a place and a practice. The Carib-descended
Trinidadian web surfer is producing home by seeking it. The online commu-
nity to which that Trinidadian may find herself gravitating toward may not be
locale dependent, but it certainly is locale oriented. At the foundation of this
community is the presence of common symbolic meanings, ultimately of
greater importance than mere co-presence in one geographic point (see Cohen,
1989).

Representing Caribbean Indigeneity on the Internet

The first question I posed at the outset was “To what extent has the Internet
been useful in furthering Caribbean indigenous goals of self-representation,
regional organization and actual change ‘on the ground’?” There are three dis-
tinct elements to this question, all focused on the ability to realize some of the
positive potentials of the Internet, from the viewpoint of furthering and deep-
ening Caribbean indigenous resurgence.
Beginning with self-representation, the Internet is allowing relatively mar-
ginalized groups to recover a history and identity that colonialism, in large
part, helped to erase or distort, an absence which dominant social science has
unfortunately helped to inscribe. The online assertions of survival are able to
attain visibility precisely because the off-line realm places many more con-
straints on the dissemination of these assertions. Indeed, this becomes pain-
fully evident given the fact that there are no professional historians or
anthropologists who are Caribbean indigenes apart from the few who contrib-
ute to this very volume—otherwise, Caribs and Taínos, by and large, are spo-
ken for, and spoken about, by others, with agendas that only infrequently
emerge from within these communities. The Internet allows for a reversal of
that history of asymmetrical power in that now Taínos, for example, can en-
gage in their own self-exploration and self-expression, utilizing historical re-
sources, artistic expressions, and contemporary images to produce a Taíno
discourse of presence. It is important to note that, even in cases where they
have contracted non-Taíno webmasters, websites such as those of the United
Confederation of Taíno People, the Jatibonicu Taíno Tribal Nation, the Taíno
Nation of the Antilles, and especially those sites completely crafted by the site
owners themselves, such as those of Baramaya, Biaraku, and Valerie Nanaturey
Vargas’ Bohio Bajacu, Taínos themselves have full control over content crea-
tion, image composition, and communication with visitors.
This is a remarkable turn of events, more than may be realized at first: for
the first time in written history, those identifying themselves as Taíno Indians
 •S E A R C H I N G F O R A C E N T E R I N T H E D I G I T A L E T H E R • 259

are able to speak directly to the wider world. Histories of the Taínos featured
the latter largely as mute spectators to their own destruction; no wonder then
that contemporary history written by Taínos is so disturbing to some that they
prefer to believe these are somehow “fake” Taínos. The Internet, as a “tech-
nology of representation,” has also played a revitalizing role, “as a self-
conscious means of cultural preservation and production and a form of politi-
cal mobilization” (see Ginsburg, 2002, p. 41). With the advent of the Internet,
one may witness a considerable degree of reversal of previous invisibility and
distorted representations, along with a certain increase in intergroup commu-
nication. The creation of websites, by and for the region’s aboriginal commu-
nities and descendants, has helped to emphasize themes of cultural survival, to
outline current organizational efforts and practices centered on the revitaliza-
tion of traditions on a regional scale, and such sites have aided in directly chal-
lenging age-old colonial stereotypes of the “cannibalism” of the Caribs, or the
“extinction” of the Taínos, at least to a greater extent than before the Inter-
net’s rise. Taínos in particular have been steadfast and diligent in tracking
down sites that continue to misrepresent their ancestors, or their current situa-
tion, and have worked their way into various editorial and other contributing
positions on diverse open source websites. They have also attracted the interest
and support of numerous agents behind American Indian websites, many of
which list Taíno organizations as respected and recognized entities that they
view as members of a joint, pan-Indian struggle. An American Indian newspa-
pers, such as Indian Country Today, has also carried stories and editorials on the
Taínos that have been made available online (see www.indiancountry.com).
In helping to promote the visibility of peoples long believed to have been
extinct, or ignored for being minorities, the Internet also helps to embody and
embed groups facing difficulties in gaining offline acceptance as “indigenous.”
It simultaneously facilitates mutual online and offline recognition between
these groups, thereby lending further authority and authenticity to any given
group in its respective off-line context(s). It is also true that activities on the
Internet continue the overall communications efforts that accompany the
Taíno resurgence, for example, the 13 years in which the Taíno Nation of the
Antilles has been printing its bulletin, or the various conferences that have
been organized (see Barreiro, chapter 12).
There is a growing network of interlinked, mutually referring, Taíno web-
sites that now build on each other’s online presence. In the case of these
Taíno networks on the Internet, we can delineate patterns of association and
commonality. Via regular exchange (electronic newsletters, e-mail petitions,
mailing lists, listservs, newsgroups, message boards, chat rooms, and individual
e-mail messages) these sites build common interests (e.g., affirming Taíno sur-
vival, seeking recognition as Taínos). They do so through related content
(commonly reproduced essays on Taíno history and culture, and common
260 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

links to similar archaeological sites and language resources, etc.), shared per-
spectives and symbols (petroglyphic icons, zemis,4 animal figures seen as sacred
symbols in Taíno cosmology). By cross-referencing, the granting of awards, hy-
perlinks, webrings and the like, they form boundaries of mutual advantage.
More than that, they are demonstrating Taíno culture by putting it into prac-
tice in one particular arena.
The observation that the Internet has aided some Caribbean indigenous
groups in better representing and projecting themselves externally, while aid-
ing them in collaborating and communicating internally, that is, among them-
selves, seemingly conflicts with the fact there is no single representative
association uniting all of the disparate groups, nor any one website to which
all the rest act as tributaries or derivatives. We have therefore arrived at the
second element of the first question from the opening of this article, involving
regional organization. As indicated by Palacio (this volume), the biggest effort
yet at fostering some inter-island indigenous unity, has largely collapsed, at
least for now, that being the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples
(COIP). The COIP never had a website of its own, and indeed went into de-
cline before the Internet arose in most of the COIP member territories. Even
now, the presence of the Internet in the indigenous communities that consti-
tuted COIP is quite uneven, in some cases nonexistent. The Garifuna, both in
the US and in Central America, have been at the forefront of developing some
astoundingly comprehensive, well designed, and richly informative websites.
Only in the months before this article neared completion, did the Santa Rosa
Carib Community in Trinidad obtain one single computer, with a dial-up
Internet connection, and this is used solely for downloading. The diversity of
interests between island and mainland groups, the former acutely concerned
with identity politics, and the latter possibly more concerned with material
politics (such as defending rights to land), makes single and unified collabora-
tive projects very challenging.
At least at the academic level, the Internet has allowed for the formation
of an “invisible college” in the form of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
(www.centrelink.org) and Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History
and Anthropology (www.kacike.org).5 Indeed, this very volume is an expression
of that collaboration between contributors who, in most cases, have yet to
meet face-to-face, and who have worked on both the Centrelink and Kacike
(including Barreiro, J. Bulkan, Collomb, Estevez, Ferbel, Guitar, and myself).
Given the absence of “competitors” online, by default a certain degree of “cen-
trality” has been achieved, one that in many ways has aided in spreading rec-
ognition of Caribbean indigenous peoples among the broader Internet public.
This then takes us to the third element considered here, that being the de-
gree to which one might argue that activities on the Internet have helped to
promote change “on the ground.” On one level, it may be true for others, like
 •S E A R C H I N G F O R A C E N T E R I N T H E D I G I T A L E T H E R • 261

it was for myself until the late 1990s, that we knew of no contemporary Taíno
people until we saw them on the Internet. Indeed, this “first encounter,” be-
tween the non-aboriginal Internet visitor (like myself) and those representing
themselves as Taíno (for example) can produce results unwelcome to the
Taínos. The medium of the encounter can produce an unconscious biasing
effect: “I only saw them online, because they only exist online. These are
Internet Taínos, not real Taínos.” This is not speculation either, though the
statement itself is a fictitious example: one need only consult the many post-
ings in various newsgroups hosted by Google to see that this bias is shared by a
number of individuals. Then there are those who look to see where some of
these Taíno organizations are “based.” They will find, as in the case of the Jati-
bonicu Taíno Tribal Nation, that it is headquartered in New Jersey. This pro-
duces a second bias: “As they are based in New Jersey, they are fake Taínos,
because Taínos are indigenous to the Caribbean.” Indeed, this reference to
New Jersey is also not speculative: fused with malice, vulgar accusations of fak-
ery abound online, famously focused on “New Jersey.” The consideration that
indigenous people, like other people, are often forced to move, is simply not en-
tertained. Instead of thinking of Taínos in New Jersey, detractors recast them
as “New Jersey Taínos,” meant to ridicule, of course, as Taínos are not indige-
nous to that state. The “New Jersey Taínos,” which would be the equivalent of
“Maryland Maasai,” are meant in such constructions to be seen as “out of
place,” thus rendering their pronouncements “out of line.”
We might pause to ask why anyone would wish to “fake” being a Taíno?
After all, it is not as if there have been any proven material rewards associated
with this identification. This is an issue that hostile critics fumble over repeat-
edly, producing contradictory and unsubstantiated assertions, clearly rooted in
prejudice, and often expressed in forms of juvenile literary excreta, e.g., (a) the
aim is to get a casino (Who says so? Where is such a casino to be located? In
New Jersey? Are there not American Indian nations in that region who might
have something to say about immigrant Taínos claiming their lands as indige-
nous peoples? A casino back in Puerto Rico then? How would that work, as
they apparently reside in New Jersey?); or (b) they are trying to evade their
“Blackness” (Can anyone cite a representative number of examples to support
the assertion? If Indians with “one drop” of African blood are evading their
“Blackness” by proclaiming themselves Indian, then what do we say of Afri-
cans with “one drop” of Indian blood who proclaim themselves African?). In-
deed, “Black” is taken as the “normal,” “natural,” and unquestionable default
identity of Caribbean peoples in such arguments, and anyone claiming a dis-
tinct history must be motivated by a sinister, separatist or racist agenda. That
many indigenous cultural traditions, and even the Island Carib language, have
been retained and brought forward by one of the most visibly “Black” popula-
tions of the Caribbean—the Garifuna—must come as a complete shock to
262 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

some. Lurking in the background of these anti-Taíno criticisms are unexam-

ined and thus unquestioned attachments to outdated ideas of assimilation and
evolution, better suited to the era of scientific racism than the postcolonial pe-
riod.
These “first encounters” on the Internet can therefore produce unforeseen
outcomes, especially where viewers are in the grips of antiquated pseudo-
anthropological assumptions that Indians do not change, do not marry non-
Indians, do not move, do not use the Internet, and are supposed to remain
poor. This is a burden of biases that is uniquely applied against indigenous
peoples, a burden that the Internet may not mitigate, but may ironically rein-
force. This may be especially true in cases of individuals for whom valid and
reliable knowledge is that which appears in print and which precedes the
Internet. In these instances, the Internet may be seen as more telephone than
library, meaning a tool that anyone can use, and one that every “con artist”
will use.
Countervailing tendencies can also be witnessed, that is, where online
visibility has helped to embody groups who otherwise might not have been no-
ticed or distinguished and who, given this virtualized visibility and embodi-
ment, subsequently gain recognition. More than that even, the Caribbean
indigenous persons and groups representing themselves online can help to at-
tract and encourage many in the diaspora to overcome previous stigmas at-
tached to aboriginal ancestries, i.e., stigmas of poverty, ignorance,
backwardness or “cannibalism.” In this case, the Internet is more like a register
and a library.
As the webmaster for the Carib Community in Arima, Trinidad, I have
created venues for online visitors to express their opinions, having accumu-
lated in the process a number of electronic “guest books” filled with interest-
ing ethnographic data that were voluntarily supplied. I printed out these many
entries, along with individual e-mail messages, and passed them along to the
leadership of the Carib Community. What struck all of us was the emotional
intensity of the messages, as if a burden of repressed associations had been
lifted, allowing some to finally express their desire to proclaim their Amerin-
dian ancestry; the fact that many of these Trinidadians abroad were proudly
proclaiming their Amerindian ancestry, together constituting a number much
larger than the numbers involved in the Carib Community in Arima; and,
their apparent patriotism. One representative example of a statement sent by a
Trinidadian resident in California was the following: “My grandmother’s
grandmother was Carib and I have cousins in Arima who are married to pure
Carib Indians. We do have to keep our culture alive and there’s no better way
to doing it than through this medium” (emphasis added). In this case, the au-
thor of the message is identifying with Carib ancestry, referring to Carib cul-
ture as her own (“our culture”), and in fact praising use of the Internet for
 •S E A R C H I N G F O R A C E N T E R I N T H E D I G I T A L E T H E R • 263

promoting cultural survival and recognition. As another correspondent wrote,

“it is wonderful to see that our original culture has moved into the new age.”
Others clearly indicate, echoing the quote at the opening of this chapter, that
materials on the Internet have aided them in their personal process of re-
identifying with their Carib heritage and overcoming past stigma: “At one
point in time, I would never have…thought to reveal my heritage. I felt that
most people viewed us as being extinct, thanks to one-sided history books.
Now, whenever I am approached, or someone assumes that they know my
background, I am very pleased to proclaim who I AM. I appreciate the fact that
this site exists.” Some Trinidadians abroad indicate that they look to the
Internet, at least in part, for information on their Carib roots: “I would like to
learn more about my Carib roots from Trinidad, where I was born.” Affective
ties to their Trinidadian home are also expressed by self-identified Carib de-
scendants abroad: “knowing about my homeland means a lot to me.”
The presence of Trinidadian Carib materials on the web has also attracted
very interesting feedback from individuals across the Caribbean and its dias-
pora. Messages have been received from self-identified Amerindian descen-
dants, or from those related to them, from places about which little knowledge
of such populations is available. Examples include the following: “I live in An-
guilla, BWI (a British possession). Most of our island’s native inhabitants (in-
cluding my in-laws) were born of the union between Irish Settlers and Arawak
Indians”; from Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, one person wrote, “my
grandfather was an Arawak Indian”; from a young woman in Guadeloupe, a
French Overseas Department, “my grand-mother who is now 96 years old is
part Carib. She was born on the island of Marie-Galante”; and, from St. Tho-
mas, in the US Virgin Islands, one wrote, “my family on my father’s side are
from Nevis. My grandmother would tell us when we were little that she was
Amerindian and that our people lived in Nevis for centuries and centuries. In
the words of my aunt they always lived there. When the Europeans began
coming and bringing slaves, they moved to the mountains.” Some authors of
online postings also seek to use the medium as a means of communicating
with other Caribs, for example: “I am a Vincentian Carib living in America.
Would love to hear from other Caribs.”
There are no apparent material or political agendas that surface from such
messages, which instead seem to focus on affective ties and self-knowledge.
“Race” or “physical appearance” is possibly of limited importance to such
online Trinidadians and other Caribbean nationals. Though this is not a sci-
entific survey based on a representative sample, a voluntary guest poll for
anonymous users (safeguarded against repeat votes from the same computer)
was hosted on the Carib Community website for five years. The results are in-
teresting, and open to multiple interpretations. In defining what it is that
makes a person “indigenous,” only 19% chose “race, physical appearance.”
264 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

The same number chose “it’s all subjective.” The overwhelming majority re-
sponded with a combination of “proven aboriginal ties to the land” (37%),
“the persons say they are indigenous” (7%), and “observable cultural differ-
ence” (17%). With such polls one cannot know for certain that Trinidadians
or other Caribbean nationals posted the votes. However, given consistent traf-
fic statistics for the sites concerned over several years, a majority of visitors are
from Trinidad and Tobago itself, the rest being from Canada, the US, and the
UK, and it therefore seems likely that these visitors posted most of the votes.
Feedback from individuals in the Dominican Republic has also been
forthcoming in response to articles posted in the online journal, Kacike. Ex-
pressions range from pride and gratitude for making available information on
indigenous cultural survivals in the Dominican Republic, especially through a
special issue edited by Lynne Guitar. Some visitors feel encouraged that their
own ideas on indigenous cultural survival have been furthered and deepened,
or simply articulated, by what they have read online: “I never realized how
much of my own lifestyle has survived from my Taíno heritage…. American
textbooks had me in fooled in thinking that we Dominicans were just symbol-
izing a culture that was ‘extinct.’ I grew up in el campo [countryside] and much
of what was in [the] article applied to my vocabulary, cooking style, and cui-
sine.” Similar responses have been received from Cubans: “I thank you for
publishing these enriching articles and I agree with the fact that the indige-
nous presence in Cuba is not extinct, as it is evident in our diet, several tradi-
tions, and words that enrich our language.” The “extinction” theme appears to
have been increasingly eroded, and references to print sources that endorsed
this theme are looked back upon as having been misleading.
Taíno tribal organizations have also received considerable feedback as re-
corded in their online guest books. The United Confederation of Taíno Peo-
ple (www.uctp.org), as just one example, received responses that are primarily
focused on pride, self-knowledge and genealogy, rather than any overtly mate-
rial- or politically oriented messages, like the anti-Taíno critics would have us
expect. Illustrative of these comments are ones that state, “let’s all get together
and share our pride by helping each other with informative material,” which
again affirms the role of the Internet in this collective knowledge-sharing en-
terprise. The Internet acts as a bridge between what visitors had already
learned off-line, in many cases, and what is now given new voice online:
“Thank god for this site; my grandmother would talk to me about my Indian
background and it’s good to finally see some of it on the web. I was born in
New York, but like all the rest of us ‘Newyoricans,’ I am always holding on to
my Boricua heart.” Websites such as those of the UCTP thus allow some to de-
velop a sense of an indigenous home that is rooted, not in the US, but in
Boriquen, the indigenous name for Puerto Rico: “if it were not for them [the
UCTP] I would have been lost. I am now home with my own kind.” As an-
 •S E A R C H I N G F O R A C E N T E R I N T H E D I G I T A L E T H E R • 265

other visitor expressed this sense of belonging: “I was so alone…to realize that
there are people somewhere in the world just like me and to finally put mean-
ing and a sense of stability to all those nameless yearnings is quite overwhelm-
ing,” a comment that was affirmed by another visitor, “I always wanted to
know about my native roots, now that I have a computer I don't feel like a
freak anymore.” This sense of belonging to a larger community, finding a sense
of home, was condensed in one emotionally striking message: “All I can do is
read and cry not really knowing why I’m crying but finally finding my place in
the world. Thank you for helping me find my identity as a human being.” For
some, the Internet is clearly the means through which they explore themselves
as Taíno and find their way back to a symbolic homeland, in communion with
others online: “I am a Taíno descendant that, regrettably, has lost his way….
That’s about to finally change.” Having experienced a past when the stigma of
shame was attached to Taíno identity—“as a child my grandmother told us we
were Indians. My father unfortunately was ashamed of his ancestry, so he
never spoke of it or his childhood”—sites such as that of the UCTP help some
to overcome this stigma, to feel “more proud than ever now knowing that the
new generations are learning about their roots,” as another visitor explained.
While websites such as the UCTP are likely not creating anything that was not
already present offline, what they do is provide some inspiration and encour-
agement: “I plan on soaking in every last drop of knowledge available and em-
bracing my ancestry. I think this site, along with others devoted to
Taíno/Carib heritage and history, will become an excellent starting point in
my journey. Keep up the great work, as your site may inspire others to do the
same!”
Also critical is the fact that members of other indigenous communities in
the Caribbean now have a means for engaging in exchange with Taínos in the
US, by first making contact through the Internet. Indeed, this new means of
networking that renders distance immaterial has afforded the UCTP the
means for a considerable expansion of its web of ties and connections, as
noted on the front page of the site where they list all of their affiliated partner
communities across the Caribbean. This, when supplemented by the extensive
travels of the head of the UCTP, Roberto Mucaro Borrero, enables the crea-
tion of inter-tribal linkages that have not been possible for a large part of the
history of the Caribbean since European conquest. Likewise for the Santa
Rosa Carib Community, the development of their online presence since 1998
has attracted the attention of journalists, researchers, and other indigenous
groups, with the apparent result of a significant increase in their networking
and exchange activities. What we have then, at least as some likely results of
the Internet, are stronger senses of self-identification as indigenous, coupled
with increased regional networking, even in the absence of a central organizing
body such as COIP.
266 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

The Limits of Indigenous Resurgence via the Internet

The second question I raised at the start of this chapter concerned the chal-
lenges facing Caribbean indigenous utilization of the Internet. In speaking of
the practice of indigenous resurgence by way of the Internet, we must, at least
for now, respect the fact that there are practical, material constraints on Inter-
net access, and Internet use, for indigenous communities in the region. Some-
times groups in North America will attempt to aid in expanding the
communication facilities of those in the Caribbean, one of the most notable
examples that I am aware of being the UCTP’s gift of a fax machine to the
Santa Rosa Carib Community, which has been put to very intense use. Never-
theless, there are no Carib websites that emerge directly from communities in
Dominica, St. Vincent, and Trinidad (see Forte, 2003), even when they have
actual Internet access.
The fact remains that there is far more information on the Internet about
Caribbean aboriginals than there is by them. In addition, amongst the indige-
nous population of the Americas as a whole, there is differential representa-
tion on the Internet, with websites from Latin America and the Caribbean far
outnumbered by those from Canada and the US, even though the latter two
nations have an indigenous population that is only a fraction of that of South
America. This trend suggests that primarily North American representations of
aboriginality, and issues and debates peculiar to North America, become the
dominant representations, even if not exclusively so.
Further study is needed to understand why indigenous persons and or-
ganizations with Internet access, in Dominica and Trinidad, for example, have
not used those resources (thus far) to create any of their own websites. Indeed,
one very common feature, widely remarked upon by many of us outside of
those territories, is that the Caribs of Dominica simply use their machines as
download devices. This is also true, for now, of the Santa Rosa Carib Com-
munity. E-mails sent to these communities are never returned. Websites have
been downloaded in these communities, extensively and painstakingly in some
cases, making copies of each and every page of sites that sometimes have doz-
ens of pages, but no independent production of their own has been forthcom-
ing. One has to hope that this is not a sign of new media, like previous media,
being absorbed into a cultural mode of spectatorship.

Conclusions: Centering Indigenous Identities Online

A less-than-cheerful assessment of the impact of the Internet might call atten-
tion to the fact that while indigenous practices on the Internet have been suc-
cessful in encouraging and shaping indigenous self-representations, amongst
those who are already predisposed to identify as indigenous, representations to
 •S E A R C H I N G F O R A C E N T E R I N T H E D I G I T A L E T H E R • 267

hostile segments of the external audience have been less successful. It is impos-
sible for contemporary Taínos to explain their identity to individuals who re-
fuse, in advance, to admit that they could ever be speaking to Taínos. All the
Internet has done, seen from this vantage point, is to make the debate public,
and to transform the debate into two separate monologues. As a number of
observers have recognized, “cultural biases that exist offline can be made mani-
fest online in a variety of ways; therefore, the net is rarely a refuge from those
biases” (Doheny-Farina, 1996, p. 65; see also Nakamura, 2002).
Cyberspace—a nonspace on its own—is being adapted to individual and
group strategies for creating a sense of place that incorporates a wide variety of
geographically dispersed persons. Without that sense of place, there can be no
idea of roots, no vision of a home, and no basis for self-identification as in-
digenous. That is not to say that the Internet is the sole or primary means by
which that sense of place and associated identifications are being created. The
Internet does not have any power to create identity positions that individuals
and groups never possessed before. What the Internet does provide is a vehi-
cle, convenient to those who have access, to coordinate and communicate
ideas of indigeneity and plans for organization. What the printing press was to
European nationalists, the Internet is to aboriginal activists. The Internet will,
I believe, eventually be regarded as the primary communication medium of the
ongoing indigenous resurgence that has been taking place in multiple loca-
tions around the planet.
Caribbean indigenous peoples with an online presence have developed a
web of mutual recognition and self-definition. In the process, individuals who
conceptualize their indigeneity by multiple paths are called to belong to a vi-
sion of home, one that is both place and practice. Taíno activism on the
Internet has enabled the recovery of a history and identity that had been mar-
ginalized, reduced to a symbolic category without a living reality, and treated at
best as something to be commemorated rather than experienced personally.
From this vantage point, the Internet has afforded the means for reversing
previous invisibility while aiding intergroup communication between a variety
of Caribbean indigenous peoples. As the vehicle for a collective knowledge
sharing enterprise, the Internet has been important for networking of a quali-
tatively different order, as well as enabling self-definition on terms chosen by
participants. This medium has played an important role in fomenting a
broader resurgence of indigenous self-identification. As Ginsburg noted, “me-
dia practices are part of a broader project of constituting a cultural future in
which their [indigenous peoples’] traditions and contemporary technologies
are combined in ways that can give new vitality to [indigenous peoples’] life”
(2002, p. 43). By allowing indigenous participants to self-determine their own
representations and write their own histories, presenting images of themselves
as present, one might agree with Prins in noting the “current relief from visual
268 •M A X I M I L I A N C. F O R T E •

imperialism afforded to indigenous peoples by the web” (2002, p. 72). We

must also be cautious and admit that conclusions made about a “moving tar-
get,” a process in motion, may simply be invalidated by future developments.

Notes
1 The SRCC website can be found currently at http://www.kacike.org/srcc/.
2 This chapter does not pay sufficient attention to the range of topically expansive,
community embedded, Garifuna websites that exist—not because they do not merit
attention, but only because I encountered difficulty in trying to integrate voluminous
empirical data. I am forced to mention, only in passing, that Garifuna websites worthy of
note include the Garifuna Network (www.garinet.com), Labuga Livingston Garifunas
(www.labuga.com), the Official Website of Seine Bight Village (www.seinebight.com), and
Felene Cayetano (www.wadigidigi.com). For a concise overview of these Garifuna websites,
readers should consult Figueroa (2005).
3 See, for example, the websites of the Jatibonicu Taíno Tribal Nation at http://www.taino-
tribe.org, and the United Confederation of Taíno People at http://www.uctp.org.
4 Usually carved from wood or stone and not much bigger than can be held in a hand, these
are seen as containing spirits and are often associated with shamans and chiefs, sometimes
depicting skeletal yet fertile representations of shamans.
5 The term “invisible college” is now widely used with reference to scientific exchange across
locales, especially through electronic circuits of communication. The term has been in use
for some time as reportedly coined by Robert Boyle for referring to a small cluster of
intellectuals in 17th century England. See also Crane (1972).

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