My First Story

Hi, my name is Laura “Wendy” Maxwell, that is my birth name, but my Indigenous Taino name is Inaru Tureygua, which means, “Celestial Woman” or “Woman of the Heavens”. This is the name given to me by my Cacique, my Chieftess, from the Arayeke Yukayek tribe. You may have heard of this tribe from a couple of months ago when they were protesting the sales of Christie’s Auction House in New York City, due to the fact that Christie’s was selling off a couple of sacred relics belonging to the Taino Nation as a whole.

I say, “as a whole” because within the reconnecting and decolonization experience of every Taino individual, we have now, as a people, formed various Taino tribes that encompass our beliefs (as much as we can remember and read about from historical accounts) along with added information from other traditions and cultures that have helped us “connect the dots” along the way, so-to-speak. Not every tribe operates the same way, but throughout this process, for the most part, I would say that we are all doing a fantastic job trying to regroup and find our way amidst our displacement.

Furthermore, I am also a devotee of an African Traditional Religion that honors the Orisa (also can be written and is pronounced as Orisha) which, in my understanding as a loyal devotee, represents various elemental forces of nature that assist humanity with various aspects concerning human evolution and…