Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Selena Lapham. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Selena, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

My dad would always tell me, “Live your life to the fullest and make sure to leave your mark in this world.” As a young child, I didn’t understand what he meant by that. My dad recently passed away from complications due to COVID this year and now this phrase he said to me from long ago plays on repeat in my head like a broken record. What message do I want to leave behind? How can I contribute or be impactful?

Maya Angelou once said, “If you’re going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased.”

I hope my legacy will be as someone my daughter can be proud of. I want to be known as someone who showed kindness to everyone, fought and advocated so our future generations don’t have to, accomplish all I set out to do and to always stand by my morals, no matter what it’ll cost me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Selena Lapham, and I am an Indigenous Taíno and Maya woman with ancestral roots in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and El Salvador. I am an active tribal member of Arayeke Yukayek, a Taíno yukayeke (tribe) that is rooted in community, cultural continuity, spirituality, land acquisition, and language resurgence.

I am also a part of P.U.L.L. Community Outreach, a 501(c)(3) organization creating engagements in our community through activities that build lasting connections with peace, unity, and love.

I have published two books based on my indigenous Taíno roots, “Ananí and the Cave of Cacibajagua” and “Guak’toká Taíno! We are Taíno!” Both books were created to not only bring awareness to my people, the Taínos but to also dispel the false and harmful “extinction” narrative written in many history books about us and what they got wrong. The book, Ananí and the Cave of Cacibajagua is based on one of our creation stories passed down from generation to generation of a sacred cave called Cacibajagua located on a mountain called Cauta in Ayiti-Kiskeya (Haiti and Dominican Republic) that is the origin of our people and how we came to be, and Guak’toká Taíno! We are Taíno! is written about our people from the past to the present, along with the contributions within our community today.

I am also a TikTok creator under the username of taino_indigenous, and my page focuses on bringing awareness to the Taino community, providing resources/education, sharing my experiences as well as creating safe spaces for our people. My TikTok page is a place where I feel I can be my authentic self while supporting other Indigenous content creators.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is creating connections with other people and seeing the very things I’ve created and poured my heart into inspire others, which in turn, inspires me. Two years ago, I began my page taino_indigenous on TikTok that focuses primarily on Taíno education and my personal experiences as an Indigenous woman. I started my TikTok page because on #nativetiktok there was a lack of representation of our people and I was seeing a lot of people talk about our history, our trauma and still speaking about us in the past tense, as if we didn’t exist anymore. I started to create content and within a couple of months, I amassed a huge following and received so much positive feedback from so many people. To this day, I still get a lot of messages thanking me for sharing the things I’ve learned growing up as well as what I’m currently learning from my indigenous community. For me, it’s rewarding to see so many people reaching out and having that passion to learn more about their culture. Growing up, many of us from the Caribbean and diaspora heard from our parents and grandparents that we were “Indigenous” and that our people were the first to find the lost Christopher Columbus and his crew, so it’s wonderful to see the desire in people to learn more about that part of themselves and their history and teach that to their children and so forth. I also am an author of two books based on our people and our stories to help others within the diaspora learn more about the Taínos because as far as literature goes, there is also a lack of representation about our people then and now.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The mission driving my creative journey is continuing on the cultural continuity of our people that has been passed down to us from our ancestors and elders and bringing awareness to the Indigenous Taíno people and the fact that we are still here, we never left. A lot of people talk about Christopher Columbus and his voyage to the new world, but many unaware that it was our people, the Taíno, that he first encountered. Many of our Taino words such as Huracan (Hurricane), Iguana, Barbacoa (Barbecue), Canoa (Canoe), Hamaca (Hammock), Papaya, Pitahaya (Dragon fruit), Tiburón (Shark), Colibri (Hummingbird), Tabaco (Tobacco) and many more are still used within the English and Spanish language to this day.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: daka_taino
• Youtube: Taino_Indigenous
• Other: TikTok: taino_indigenous Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Selena–Lapham/e/B09RMWJ3FQ

Image Credits
Selena Lapham PULL Community Outreach