Selena Rodriguez is the current student intern at TAINO. She was born in Atlantic City, NJ, to Cuban and Puerto Rican parents. She enjoys being outside, whether that is on the beach or hiking a mountain, advocates for social justice, is a proud animal lover, and is an avid reader. She currently works at her local library, where she has endless access to books. When the world gets too stressful, she likes to go camping (if the weather allows), put up a hammock, and read.
Driven by curiosity about people from the past and present, she earned her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Stockton University. During her time at Stockton, she volunteered for the Richard Cook Curation Project. The Richard Cook Curation Project, led by Dr. Bobbi Hornbeck, focused on applying a decolonizing methodology to projectile points donated by the family of an avocational archaeologist in the area. She and other volunteers presented their process to the Archaeological Society of New Jersey. Later, Selena volunteered at the Florida Museum of Natural History, where she read and cataloged books and artifacts from and about the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, specifically the Taino.
During her time in undergrad, she had used a DNA test to confirm her family’s claims of having indigenous ancestry. The results pushed her to learn more about her heritage, and in learning about her ancestors, she discovered that one of her ancestors’ remains are held in a museum archive in the northeast. She didn’t stop there and read the archaeological report about the remains. As heartbreaking as it was to learn that her ancestors aren’t resting where they’re meant to be, this discovery gave her a sense of purpose; that she is exactly where she needs to be. In the future, she looks forward to becoming an archaeologist who specializes in decolonizing methodology in the Caribbean region. “My dream is one day I have the honor to see my ancestors' remains repatriated back to the islands of the Caribbean, where they can rest in peace, not to be used or put on display.”