The Power & Limits of Language: Linguistic Reclamation as a Driver of Taíno Identity in Borikén

The story of the Taíno people has been historically told from the narrative perspective of the dominant colonial viewpoint, which has been continuously employed as a tool to reinforce the idea of the Taíno community’s “extinction” or nonexistence. This paper outlines the role of the Taíno people as a key element within Caribbean indigeneity and demonstrates the central ways in which Taíno culture has been reinterpreted and carried forward in modernity. To this end, it assesses the lasting impact of language within the cultural landscape of Taíno nationhood.

. 1  cultural understanding or connection to ancestors, as well as to develop the knowledge and information set required to gain recognition from the government and reclaim rights to sacred grounds.

Discoveries and Movements Created Through Language: The Taíno Case-Study
Although many Boricua groups regard the project of language revival to be a critical step in mobilizing activism and culture, the Taíno case-study presents a unique set of challenges. Scholars estimate that Taíno was spoken as a native or mother-tongue language in Puerto Rico sometime around the 16th century. As such, there are limited linguistic resources and data from which to draw when analyzing attempts to reclaim the Taíno language. Furthermore, unlike other minority languages such as Wôpanâak and Manx, there are no bible translations, vocabulary databases, or legal documentation that could assist scholars in the reconstruction project. Currently, the recorded documents that display vocabulary from the Taíno language are scarce, but there are certain records that have been utilized in the process. For instance, there are sections transcribed in Taíno in the early journals and chronicles from expeditions to the Americas. Since Taíno was an Arawakan language, as evidenced by linguistic research, other related Arawakan languages have also been utilized to reconstruct pronunciation and phoneme aspects of the language.
Projects of language reconstruction, when devised with the intention of contemporary use, often become the podium for longstanding cultural debates between a variety of social actors. To this end, the reclamation of language and culture can be understood not only as an emblem of the associated group's resilience and visibility, but also as a pathway to pragmatic realms such as government recognition or the reacquisition of sacred sites and land. However, although groups such as the GKT have indeed demonstrated a more pragmatic facet to Taíno language reclamation efforts, it is different from other linguistic revival cases in that its main purpose is not contemporary use. Feliciano-Santos highlights that Taíno language practices are not anchored in any set of expectations of what Taíno should look or sound like. This is because while some Taíno/Boricua individuals do draw their conception of the language to the ways their ancestors spoke, others do not necessarily hold that same objective. For some individuals, speaking Taíno is not about sounding or speaking in the same way as their ancestors, but instead about reconnecting to their conception of nationhood and of what it means to be Taíno. As such, scholars note that language reclamation efforts are more concerned with progress and connections than they are with accuracy. Here, activists are shown to raise several critical debates on the question of Taínoness and on how to effectively create markers of continuity  visibility and reinforces its presence, creating a link between self-identification and language. This process is critical because it allows the Taíno community to shift the framework of what it means to be Taíno, and provides a pathway towards self-determination where community members obtain the space needed to develop their own decision making and their own self-identification. Ultimately, language reclamation is seen as one of the avenues available to shift the balance of power towards minority groups and to allow them the voices and spaces needed to deconstruct the colonial narrative of the Taíno community as "extinct".
If we apply this same conception to the language reclamation efforts of the General Council of Taíno (GCT) group, another key connection between self-determination and language comes to the forefront. The GCT has continuously criticized the formal or "textbook" format of the Taíno language reconstruction project, due to their belief that speaking Taíno is a spiritual manner. It is important to note that the GCT is not against language reclamation efforts -instead, they argue towards a linguistic project that does not necessarily define orthographical or phonetic norms, and instead redefines the language within the context of culture. As such, their argument has shifted the debate on language reclamation from the realm of structure towards the sphere of cultural reconnection. Here, they highlight the importance of language as a defining element of ideas, expression, and motives, rather than a normative structure. Within the GCT framework, each indigenous group has the voice to define what falls under the umbrella of their language.

Conclusion
Manuel Forte posits that indigenous identities in the Caribbean region are constantly being reproduced, rather than "invented". If we apply his argument to the case of Taínos in Puerto Rico, how one expresses Taíno culture in 2020 will not be the same as in 1492. The Taíno case-study of language reclamation demonstrates that how one expresses indigeneity is relational, and that the pathways utilized by communities to connect to the land and culture are constantly shifting. While the dominant colonial discourse is that Taíno people are extinct, various communities in Borikén prove otherwise. Oral societies convey and document their culture and histories in a range of different ways, such as songs, crafts, dances, instruments, and constructions. Although language reclamation efforts pose various challengesespecially in terms of accessing documentation and debates around different definitions of nationhood -it also brings forward a critical step in reshaping the construction of what it means to be Taíno.