Exposing Tainoism — A Corporation Posing as an Indigenous Nation

For decades, tainoism has presented itself as an Indigenous revival.
In truth, tainoism is not an Indigenous nation. Tainoism is a cult system that mimics Indigenous sovereignty to create power, money, and control.

tainoism is a conglomerate of nonprofit corporations that call themselves "tribes." These nonprofits act as cults to protect, market, and promote the taino brand. 

 
How the taino cult operates/recruits:

1. Invented Leadership Structures
Self-appointed “kasikes,” “grandmothers,” and “spiritual councils” grant each other titles without any historical governance, nationhood, or political legitimacy.

2. Manufactured Ceremonies
Ceremonies are created from imagination, not from surviving traditional practices. These invented rituals are marketed as “ancient wisdom” to recruit followers and monetize participation.

3. Identity Gatekeeping
They claim the exclusive right to decide who qualifies as “Indigenous” — not based on any unbroken community, but on submission to their organization’s authority.

4. Exploiting DNA Marketing
They weaponize DNA test percentages to convince Puerto Ricans, tribal citizens, political figures, academic institutions, potential employers that distant genetic markers equal Indigenous nationhood — which they do not.

5. Financial Control
They monetize access to land, identity, and invented/culturally appropriated ceremonies — selling “Indigenous belonging” to vulnerable Puerto Ricans who are seeking cultural reconnection.

6. Psychological Manipulation
They exploit the colonial trauma that Puerto Ricans carry from 500 years of occupation, selling tainoism as a spiritual solution to that trauma.

7. Silencing Dissent
Anyone who questions their legitimacy is accused of “colonial violence” or “erasure,” using real Indigenous rights language to protect their fabricated structure.

 8. Grooming Native American people/ Native American elders
Tainoists are well versed on grooming Native American elders to gain access to native ceremony, spaces, and knowledge to then mine the trauma, ceremony, and knowlege to rebrand as taino

9. Take space/funding/culture from Native American peoples 
Tainoists have the audacity to enter into a Native American centered space and claim they are native, demand access, and speak for and as a native person. 

10. Tainoism is not a protected class like Native Americans
Tainoists falsely present as an indigenous nation when in reality, it is nothing more than a Native American enthusiast club the preys on vulnerable identity seekers in the island of Puerto Rico and her diaspora. 

We know:

There was never a unified Taíno nation.
There was never a Taíno government
There is no land base, no treaties, no political continuity.
Tainoism is a modern invention built in the diaspora — not an Indigenous nation.
 
How Tainoism is Dangerous:

Tainoism ERASES real continuous Indigenous Caribbean nations (Kalinago, Garifuna, Lokono) and our Boricua heritage.

Tainoism CONFUSES the public, academics, and institutions into legitimizing a fabricated tribal structure.

Tainoism EXPLOITS Puerto Rican colonial trauma for profit and power.

Tainoism UNDERMINES real decolonization by replacing historical truth with spiritual fantasy.
 
Our Demands:

END institutional recognition of tainoist “sovereignty” claims that have no political or historical foundation.

PROTECT historical truth by clearly separating cultural ancestry from political nationhood.

(Having Indigenous ancestry does not create a sovereign nation. Nationhood requires unbroken governance, community, land, and legal continuity.)

HONOR Boricua identity in its full complexity — without allowing fabricated “tribes” to rewrite history.

EXPOSE the cult manipulation behind tainoism’s self-created power structures.
 
We are BORICUA of the Island BORIQUEN.
We are not props for a cult’s identity hustle.
We are a real people with a real history — and we reject the fraud of tainoism.

Call to Action:

The Smithsonian's NMAI plays a central role in shaping public narratives around Indigenous identity. This petition calls on their Office of Museum Research and Scholarship to investigate and cease legitimizing fabricated Tainoist sovereignty claims that misrepresent Boricua history and erase real Indigenous Caribbean nations.

United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)

The UNPFII is an international body responsible for addressing Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and representation globally. This petition calls upon UNPFII to investigate the growing issue of race-shifting movements—specifically tainoism—which falsely present themselves as sovereign Indigenous nations without unbroken governance, land, or political continuity. Tainoism exploits the language of Indigenous sovereignty while erasing both real Indigenous Caribbean nations and the true historical identity of Puerto Ricans. The UNPFII must take steps to prevent fabricated identity movements from gaining false international legitimacy that undermines legitimate Indigenous struggles worldwide.

The Puerto Rico Department of State and its affiliated cultural institutions have played a direct role in promoting the taino narrative as the official Indigenous identity of Puerto Rico since the mid-20th century. Under the influence of figures like Ricardo Alegría, the term taino was adopted in the 1950s as part of an assimilationist framework designed to fit Puerto Rico’s Indigenous history into Americanized educational models. This narrative displaced the original Indigenous identifier Boricua, erasing authentic heritage and simplifying the island’s complex history to serve colonial academic agendas.

Today, race-shifting groups continue to build on this foundation, manipulating the language of sovereignty to present themselves as legitimate Indigenous nations, despite lacking unbroken governance, land base, or political continuity. This petition calls on the Puerto Rico Department of State / Cultural Affairs to end the legitimization of these fabricated sovereignty claims, acknowledge the role historical policy has played in distorting Boricua identity, and commit to historical accuracy that honors Puerto Rico’s full and complex ancestral truth.

Boricua Public & Global Community

This petition calls directly on the Boricua people — both on the island and in the global diaspora — as well as the academic, cultural, and Indigenous rights communities worldwide. Tainoism is not an Indigenous nation; it is a modern cult movement that manipulates Puerto Rican colonial trauma and fabricates sovereignty claims for power, money, and control.

We Boricua people have carried the weight of 500 years of colonization,  tainoism exploits this history by offering a fantasy of indigeneity that was manufactured in the 20th century, erasing our original Indigenous identity of Boricua. This movement replaces historical complexity with invented tribal structures, self-appointed titles, fabricated ceremonies, and monetized identity schemes.

We call on the Boricua people, our global allies, and the wider Indigenous rights community to reject tainoism’s false narrative, to defend historical truth, and to protect our Boricua identity from race-shifting cultural fraud.

SIGN NOW to demand institutions, media, and the public stop legitimizing this cult system.

Donate NOW to @fierceboricua (Venmo) to support the efforts of exposing tainoism so that no one will be harmed ever again by the vicious, insidious, manipulative identity cult posing as an indigenous nation known as taino.

All proceeds go to the education, healing, and policy updates for personal and organizational change out of supporting the pretendian cult called taino. Please note, taino is NOT a protected class of indigenous peoples. Taino/ism/ists are members of extractive nonprofits posing as indigenous nations.