Taino A Novel

“José [Barreiro] writes the true story in Taíno—the Native view of what Columbus brought. Across the Americas, invasion, and resistance, the Taíno story repeated many times over.” – Chief Oren Lyons (Joagquisho), Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation The story of what really happened when Columbus arrived in the “New World,” as told by the Taíno people who were impacted In 1532, an elderly Taíno man named Guaikán sits down to write his story—an in-depth account of what happened when Columbus landed on Caribbean shores in 1492. As a boy, Guaikán was adopted by Columbus, uniquely positioning him to tell the story of Columbus’s “discovery,” directing our gaze where it rightfully belongs—on the Indigenous people for whom this land had long been home. Revised and updated by author José Barreiro (himself a descendant of the Taíno people) with new information and a new introduction, this richly imagined novel updates Guaikán’s carefully crafted narrative, chronicling what happened to the Taíno people when Columbus arrived and how their lives and culture were ruptured. Through Guaikán’s story, Barreiro penetrates the veil that still clouds the “discovery” of the Americas and in turn gives

Presently a senior fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Jose Barreiro is a novelist, essayist, and an activist of nearly four decades on American indigenous hemispheric themes. In 1974 Barreiro was enlisted by John Mohawk to help produce the national Native Newspaper Akwesasne Notes, published by the traditional Mohawk Nation. For ten years, they served as joint coordinators on numerous indigenous human rights and community-building campaigns. Barreiro was editor of Cornell University's Akwe:kon Press from 1984 to 2002, and later was senior editor of Indian Country