As a young girl, Joanna Soto Aviles was told not to talk about it. Her mother warned her that "we'd get locked up as crazy if we ever said anything about it." So Joanna kept quiet.

But all she really knew at the time was that her family in Brooklyn got together every couple of weeks around the times of the new and full moons. Mostly they would meet at the homes of her aunts in Brooklyn or Manhattan with family from Puerto Rico involved as well.

The gatherings would begin formally with an opening prayer explained Ms. Soto Aviles, now of Reading.

"And I remember very clearly they used the name Yukiyu (one of the supreme deities in the Taino religion)," she recounted. "They would summon Yukiyu in the opening prayer, run by elders, and then there were offerings of tobacco, bread, sometimes with honey representing the casabe, and the use of water and fire."

Then, as with any Puerto Rican family gathering, there would be a large meal and socializing and some music and, to Ms. Soto Aviles, the whole thing was "just like any other Puerto Rican extended family."

The gatherings lasted until Ms. Soto Aviles was well into her teens and then things started changing.

"My family circle dissolved," she said. "Family members joined various Christian movements and eventually looked back in shame on our earlier gatherings. And as a teenager, I just tried to fit in with my surroundings which were mostly white."

And as with many Boricuas who disconnect, there were the typical consequences; sadness, bitterness, confusion.

Her parents, aunts and uncles and cousins had drifted away from the traditions and, to a certain degree, from each other. But the new adjustment didn't work for young Joanna, to say the least, and many years later she started getting back "to the old ways" as she puts it.

Those ways involve traditional Taino healing practices as well as other storytelling and folkloric arts. On her paternal side of the family, they had been curanderos or healers, she explained. But there was no more instruction or stories about the family's ancient, unspoken culture. The larger gatherings had already ceased.

"So I continued, more or less privately, studying and learning," Ms. Soto Aviles stated.

"It was strange how even during the earlier times, family members had only made vague references to having that blood within us," Ms. Soto Aviles recounted, "but no one dared voice anything." Now the voices are being raised.

Ms. Soto Aviles and thousands of other people from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other islands in the Carribean are announcing to the world: the Tainos are still here and we intend to thrive.

This Pennsylvania Taino discovered connections to her culture in Boricua families from Philadelphia, Paoli and other cities. She was further inspired to continue and "come out of the closet."

"I also came across the Taino Inter-Tribal Council (based in Millville, NJ) website while surfing the Internet and I began making connections with other Tainos in this region and Puerto Rico," Ms. Soto Aviles explained.

One of those contacts was George Estevez, a Taino from the Dominican Republic and the public programs assistant in the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan.

"I consider myself Taino and I always more or less knew that," asserted Mr. Estevez who for several years has been collecting and disseminating information on the tribe's culture and history. He's also gathered personal stories of Tainos in the states and on the islands.

"We have a lot of customs and traditions that we didn't know where they came from and after doing years of research, many of us are finding out," he related, "that it means we are Taino."

Mr. Estevez said that there have always been people on the islands that identified themselves as "Indios" but that these claims were "donwplayed by various political entities over the years that didn't want to acknowledge us."

"After I came to the states for instance, people would ask me 'are you Indian?'," he continued. "Then I'd say I'm from the Dominican Republic and then they'd say there are no Indians in the Dominican Republic."

"We've been told for so long that we don't exist that it's harder for us to prove who we are," Mr. Estevez asserted. "Most of the info out there is one-sided as in, the Spaniards came and few decades later the Tainos were gone, period."

"But I've gathered a lot of data like dissertations and other accounts and our message is yes, we did survive," he said. "Now there are Tainos dancing at many eastern powwows and we're getting support from some other Native peoples."

"And there has been a Taino resurgence -in Puerto Rico especially- of epidemic proportions," he said laughing. "I'm going back to the island soon," Ms. Soto Aviles added.

"I'm still a girl but I'm about to enter the elder phase and I'll be preparing."

She'll be visiting with other Tainos on the island where, she noted, some people still "go by the old ways" including many on her husband's side of the family. According to both of the Taino sources used for this story, this resurgence of Taino pride and identity fits with the prediction that 500 years after the Spanish invasion, the Taino people would return and flourish.

Part of that revival includes visits back to Puerto Rico Ms. Soto Aviles said.

"We're like the coqui," she said referring to the tiny singing tree frog unique to Puerto Rico. "There's a lesson in that little frog who can't live outside of the island...a lot of people come here and lose their identity regardless of how they see themselves because if you're not really conscious of your identity, you start having many other problems."

"They have been trying to hide our identity," she continued. "Since when the Spaniards came, many of us fled and hid successfully. But we're not hiding anymore and we will no longer sit quietly and accept their extinction stories."

Those interested in hearing the other side of the Taino legacy are encouraged to contact: Joanna Soto Aviles, Joanna Soto Aviles, 23F Doral Dr., Flying Hills, Reading PA 19607-3396 at (610) 775-3569; or George Estevez, who has information to share, at (212) 514 3700 or (212) 514 3716. Taino ti...