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![from the south bronx reservation opening flyer]()
From the South Bronx Reservation Opening Reception
Thursday, October 8, 2026, 6:00pm
Museum of Bronx History
3266 Bainbridge Ave., The Bronx, NY 10467
Join BCHS, the Bobby González Legacy Project, From The Bronx, and The Bronx Beer Hall for the grand opening of “From The South Bronx Reservation,” an exhibit curated by Edwin Pagán and Maria Aponte highlighting late twentieth-century Native American revival movements in The Bronx through the life of the late Bobby González, Bronx-born Taíno historian, poet, and educator. The exhibit will showcase Bobby’s personal history and artifacts as a lens for exploring the persistence, flourishing, and intermingling of indigenous cultures from North and South America in The Bronx today. The opening will include contributions by Tecumseh Ceaser (Matinecock, Unkechaug, Montaukett), Shihan Candy Warixi Soto Bohike (Yamacuno Yukayeke Taino), and Grupo Higuayagua (Taino).
Made possible by New York State Senator Gustavo Rivera.
About the Exhibit
Bobby González (1951–2023) was a Taíno and Puerto Rican storyteller, poet, and lecturer who grew up in the South Bronx. For nearly four decades, he spoke about Indigenous history at schools, colleges, and museums in 48 states. He co-founded the Taíno cultural group Taíno del Norte, organized the Bronx Native American Festival, and wrote several books, including The Last Puerto Rican Indian.
In a short prose piece, Bobby listed the people who passed through his family’s bodega at 154th Street and Courtlandt Avenue: Cherokee, Maya, Mohawk, Quechua, Garífuna, Lenape, Taíno. Most customers, he wrote, were counted as “Hispanic,” and few knew their own Indigenous ancestry. “They might have been detribalized and Hispanicized, but they were still Indian.” He called the neighborhood the South Bronx Reservation.
Above: Bobby with some of the puppets and instruments he would use as for Indigenous storytelling, n.d. Courtesy of Maria Aponte-González.
This exhibit uses Bobby’s life and work to tell a larger story. The Taíno, the Indigenous people of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, were declared extinct in colonial records and, later, in American textbooks. Yet Taíno ancestry, language, and knowledge survived inside Caribbean families. In the late twentieth century, Taíno people in The Bronx and New York began reclaiming that identity publicly, and Bobby was a central part of that movement.
The Bronx was where he learned this history and where he chose to tell it. The objects here come from his home, loaned by his widow, Maria Aponte-González, founder of the Bobby González Legacy Project and an accomplished poet and educator herself.