A group of US-based Taíno descendants is to stage a protest outside British auction house Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza offices in New York City on Monday (November 8), as their request for the abandonment of an upcoming sale of priceless Awarak artefacts gathers steam.

The protest, which takes place at noon according to Cacique (or chief) of the Arayeke Yukayek Taíno community, Stephanie Bailey, will also include a cemi (zemi) ceremony. 

Cacique Bailey, in an interview with Our Today, decried Christie’s unflinching auction, which takes place in Paris on Wednesday and sees dozens of Taíno items going up for sale. 

“We are distraught! When we found out about the [auction] originally, we went through all the pieces getting auctioned off and, you know, it was an overwhelming amount of artefacts listed. It also included some Central American pieces we believe are from Mexico, so we were very upset to hear of the sale,”  she began.

“When we saw the quantity of pieces being sold, we felt the immediate urge to do something about it. A few of our tribal members created a petition and two other Arayeke Yukayek council members decided to take action on TikTok,” Bailey explained, adding that from TikTok, similar awareness campaigns were started on Facebook and Instagram.

The Change.org petition, in which the Arayeke Yukayek Taínos are seeking the immediate scrapping of Christie’s Paris auction, has received over 11,800 signatures in less than five days and is one of the platform’s most viral campaigns in recent weeks, Bailey told Our Today.

In their eyes, these artefacts, many of which are hundreds of years old, need to be repatriated to their homelands—but the Arayeke Yukayek Taínos will settle, for now, with a pause to the auction until further dialogue can be had with Christie’s.

“So many people agree with the Taínos that the artefacts should be returned and, at bare minimum, that the auction be halted until they’re able to sit and speak with the Taíno people to find a better way to address the problem,” Bailey said.

Multiple attempts on the Taínos’ side to get clarification from Christie’s regarding the legitimacy of the auction have all been met with near-identical, ‘generic’ replies.

Cacique Bailey said that Christie’s is standing by its right to host the auction, on the premise that its business received the blessing of the Government of France.

“We have generated emails to Christie’s but it seems Christie’s is responding to everybody with the same email, [which says] ‘Dear whomever, we understand your concern, however, we just want to let you know the way we source our items is not only legal but we pride ourselves on ensuring artefacts we receive are properly sourced and documented’. They claim they have a proper paper trail for it, but it does not address the concerns and that’s what we’re having the issue with,” Cacique Bailey told Our Today.

“When we continued our research, we found that they’ve done this with other groups. The Mexican Embassy actually reached out to them (Christie’s) a few weeks ago and asked them to halt [the auction], because they felt that the cultural pieces that they shared to be auctioned off were important to the culture [of Mexico],” she added.

In its sale overview of the auction, Christie’s disclosed that The Fiore Arts Collection of Taino art, circa AD 1000-1500, “is a unique private collection composed of 38 works made in a variety of media including manatee bone, shell and terracotta, layered with symbolically-charged iconography”.  

There is a discrepancy with the numerical listing of the Taíno pieces, however, as while the company states that 38 works of art will be on sale, the lots (or item count) stand at 139.

The items, ranging from ornamental rugs to rare deity totems and other sacred carvings, are up for bids between €2,500 and €250,000.

The auction also includes Amerindian artwork from the Mayan civilisation, checks by Our Today revealed, and a November 4 AFP article cited Mexican Minister of Culture Alejandra Frausto having written to Christie’s demanding an explanation as well as a cancellation of the forthcoming auction.

The company also claimed that the Taínos were an ‘extinct peoples’, something the Arayeke Yukayeks took great offence to.

“We are furious at it. The Taíno people are not extinct; we deserve to have context, we deserve to have communication and access to these things. We deserve to have them returned,” Bailey contended.

Still, the viral campaign has immense potential to dispel the myth of Taíno annihilation, which is perpetuated in literature and media across the Western world. 

“I think the biggest spill off effect that most of us would like to see is to break the notion that Taínos are extinct. One of the things Christie’s openly discussed as they created their advertisement videos for the auction was the rhetoric that ‘these people existed, they are no longer here’, and unfortunately, history books also teach that the Taíno people were wiped out by [Christopher] Columbus and that’s not true,” the Arayeke Yukayek chief continued.

“In fact, even over in Jamaica itself, we have a physical tribe run by Cacique Kalaan who provides education to the people. When you speak to [tribes] in Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti [and] the Dominican Republic—we have statues of our people, we have people who revere them, people who claim that identity and it’s like a slap in face when people say out loud in public spaces, ‘We were extinct’. And we’re standing right there, looking at them, because our voice isn’t loud enough and they refuse to hear it,” Bailey told Our Today.

Access to social media and the wide-reaching impact of the Change.org Taíno petition is creating much-needed dialogue around the indigenous peoples, a shift the American group vows to intensify to bolster recognition.

Cacique Bailey also told Our Today that a second protest will be staged at the Consulate General of France in New York City. 

Should no meaningful change come from Christie’s approach to auctions of sacred Taíno artefacts following today’s protests in New York, the Arayeke Yukayeks are not above taking the matter to court. 

“I would say that it would be a last resort, we’re not ruling it out and if the outcome is plausible then that could be something we look into. We’re ready to fight for the respect and the acknowledgement of the people itself,” the Taíno leader declared.