Extinct Series

When I was a child my mother used to take me to the market to shop and the elders, the Carib women would be seated on their stools braiding the coconut palms into baskets and hats to sell to the shoppers. We wore these hats to school with our uniforms.  She used to tell me all the stories of our Carib culture that she had learned in her childhood. When we came to the US, my father took us to the Museum of Natural History where we saw statues representing the native peoples of the Caribbean before Columbus. These were depictions of how they lived and fished and made various things to use in their daily life ....but the museum label also said that these people were "extinct".  When I became an adult and started making art I remembered these ancestors and the art they made and when I looked in the mirror I realized I was extinct.