Atabey-

 

Reading and wanting to know more about my culture and heritage It was only right that I made a piece representing Atabey. 
Being that my family is of Quisqueya (Kisqueya) I found facts about the genocide Christopher Columbus brought to my people.
 Through it all I read of our faith. The taino meaning good or noble people put their family first and continued to the very end without fighting back. 
Atabey  is referred to  in various forms;
  she is prayed for guidance for a safe  child-birth, she is goddess of human fertility ,
taino women prayed to her for safe child birth. She is the goddess of the moon and ocean tides.
 Atabey is also mother of Yucahu. 
i used the reds to show the strugles and bloodshed . i wanted to change  the sky to the darker blue, grey and black giving it a more of an impact of the theme of strugles and life..
  Because she represents the fertility i opt'd to use a pregnate figure as a whisper to her right ear and left ear representing the Mother Nature aspect to her.



Here is direct quotes from Columbus's journal which described the people he

Encountered, "[They are] people so full of love and without greed… I believe there is no better race or land in the world. They exhibit great love toward all others in preference to themselves. I did not find, as some of us had expected, any cannibals among them, but, on the contrary, men of great deference and kindness."

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