I identify myself as Dominican/American. My parents are both from Dominican Republic and I was born in New York.

I've got a strange ancestry, made up of Italian/Spaniard on my father's side and Spaniard/African/Taino on my mother's side. Some might say that Taino is mostly washed out of the blood line but according to a new DNA study conducted in the Dominican Republic a large segment of the country’s population retains indigenous Taino ancestry through their mother’s bloodline.

The study, conducted by the University of Puerto Rico, reveals that approximately 15-18% of Dominicans have Native American Mitochondrial DNA out of a population of nearly 10,000,000. Mostly concentrated in the smaller villages in the heart of Dominican Republic, known as "Cibao".

Both my parents are "Cibaeño", mostly forest people who have now come into the future in the past 60 some years.