Faculty First Year Seminars 191FYS12 - "We Are Not Extinct!" Taino

Tainos, inhabitants of Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas, were the first Native American people to experience, as well as resist, European colonization beginning in 1492 and continuing to this day. Yet many of us were taught that Tainos became extinct. In this introduction to Taino survival and continuance, we will look at how knowledge about Taino culture thrived but was also threatened by violence, the myth of extinction, and ?paper genocide.? We will look at research from multiple disciplines in the last 30 years and will touch on Tainos in history as well as the contemporary Taino resurgence in the Caribbean and in the United States. We will also learn about Taino visions for future generations. This course will also focus on ways new students themselves can not only survive but thrive and be fulfilled in college. The instructor is a librarian with 26 years of experience and connections at UMass and loves working with students and connecting people to each other and to practical tools and resources for research and learning, including library tools such as Zotero and specialized databases, and generative ai, with an approach to research that honors Indigenous ways of knowing.

First-year (R1ST)