The Bones of the Ancestors Remind Us!

As Tainos and as Paleros we are Muerteros!  

Our Ancestors and our Living Tradition is one which reveres, honors and values the Ancestors.  Our understanding is that our lives are built upon the "shoulders", the "foundation" of those who came before us.  We have an understanding of the Sacred Spiral of wisdom and understanding which is passed generation to generation through traditional practices and understandings.  It is this Sacred Spiral which is Spiritual and Mental that intertwines with the DNA that we receive from our Ancestors!  We revere, honor and adore the Ancestors because we understand the importance of the relationship between the Living and the Dead, we understand that Death is not an "ending" of the relationships of life but rather a transformation of that relationship.  As Tainos and as Paleros we keep our "Dead" close to us, and we keep their Sacred Physical Remains equally close, be it the bones of the Dead themselves or the soil that their bodies created through the process of decay.  As Tainos and Paleros we utterly disagree with the typical process of burial and the treatment of Ancestral Remains that is rampant within our urban (suburban and even rural) communities.

Within the Taino Bohio of ancient times we see a Sacred Gourd filled with Ancestral Bones, revered, caretaken, loved, appreciated and interrelated to.  Our Ancestors had such a strong ability to see the Dead that the Dead would appear so lifelike that they would have to check for the navels to be able to distinguish which world the Spirit was standing in.  Our Sacred Cemis also held bone or where even carved directly from the bones of the Ancestors.  As Tainos we understand the power, the progression, the spiritual evolution and growth that having this close relationship with the Ancestors through their remains allows us to live inside of!  As Paleros again we know there is a clear understanding of the Power, Progression, and Spiritual Upliftment which is innate within the relationship with the Ancestors through their Earthly Remains!  

Yet in the so called "dominant society", we encounter a struggle, a vast misconception, a fear, a horror, a prejudice and even an outright hatred against our Traditional Practices and Concepts.  Unfortunately at times we even experience this from within our own family, or larger community.  We may have to undergo the painful experience of watching a beloved relative be placed into the ground, embalmed with poisons, encased in vinyl and then cement, with relatives weeping, expressing such pain and loss, clinging onto either spiritual muteness or onto a hollow and misleading religious saying.  We may have to undergo this because we may not be the one who is making the decisions for the deceased.  Our powerlessness in this situation is due to miseducation of our extended families and larger communities, it is due to the indoctrination and the fear and horror of death which has been entangled within our communities for far too long.  We need to remember that the only cross that is relevant to us is the point where the World of the Living intersects with the World of the Dead!

Reflect on the difference between the Spiritual Process that an Ancestor, such as the one above who was buried at Tibes, goes through compared to the process an Ancestor who is encased in cement and slotted into the cemetery three to a grave goes through. In the natural burial which was the norm in our Ancestral Times, our Mother Earth embraced the Ancestors body and the natural process of decay in our Caribbean homelands would happen very quickly, allowing the Spirit of the Ancestor to quickly transition into the World of the Ancestors (which is not a distant land or a la la land) without confusion and without the rampant grief and disorientation of the Living adding to the confusion and difficulty.

Thousands upon thousands of bodies are encased within these modern cemeteries, graves opened with a back hoe, coffins lowered, rules and regulations which have to be followed, and families left feeling loss, feeling disoriented, and often worried about the financial burden of the whole process. In many circumstances we do not have the voice to intervene, however in our own lives and in our direct Families we do.  We are able to be the directors of what happens when the time for our own transformations arrives or for those transformations for which we are left to make the decisions.  We are able to retrieve our Ancestral Empowerment within this process and within that embracing of our Ancestral Empowerment we can also educate those around us.  

Many of our beloved ones are in these Cemeteries but that does not make it a requirement that we continue this barbaric practice.  It is easy to put on the clothes and headdresses of a Taino or Palero but what happens in that most Ceremonial Moment within that most Spiritual Process?  Taino, Palo, is not about rhetoric and it is definitely not about appearance, it is about Spirit, it is about Ancestors and it is about Earth, it is about the relationship between the Living and the Dead.  It is this active relationship with the Ancestors and our Mother Earth which defines our Taino-ness or our true empowerment as Paleros.  When we are able to, as communities, transform our approach to our own inevitable processes of Death and the processes of Death of all those within the Community, then we will be able to heal from the ravages that Conquest, murder, genocide and colonialism have done to our Traditions.  And at this point a more profound dimension will enter into our "earthly" Reality!