Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Saturday her connection to her "indigenous heritage" was awakened while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline with Native American tribes at Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Responding to a comment on Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez said she wanted to connect more with the ancestral roots of the Taíno, an indigenous people group of the Caribbean, and that American Indian tribes welcomed her as family. "One of the things that first started awakening and connecting me in a deep to my indigenous heritage was connecting to the Lakota Sioux at Standing Rock," Ocasio-Cortez says in the video.
