Native Arawak - Kalinago - Taino - Carib - Maroon

Guess I know now why I am writing this documentation as a pioneer. I am deviating very far from the path colonization setup for my people. 

I have been a part of this shift it since my birth into this life of timelines.

I intend to overstand and innerstand the process and my role. 

First and foremost I came into this life understanding myself as a West Indian or Caribbean. They tried to teach me in school that I was black or african. My mother always said she was not “black”. I look at my family members and never saw an african or black person. Black started to take on a meaning that only meant brown skin person who did not know where they came from, or had not stories of their past and heritage. 

My family has many stories and many travels around the Caribbean intermixing with various English, French, Dutch and Spanish colonized islands. I never saw a divide from one island to the next. I never understood why “Hispanic or Latina” could not be applied to me as it seemed the closest identifiable associated region to my home lands and I did not innerstand yet that West Indian meant Native Indian or Native American. 

I knew I was not black. I knew I did not come from the continent of Africa and I knew my family had too many native ways about them to simply check a box that was other than other. I knew not until the 2000′s that such labels were bogus and not needed. A box after all, why are humans a box?