Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, says she is part Taino – the people indigenous to the Caribbean who resided in places like Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, and the northern Lesser Antilles.

During an Instagram live Q&A, she said that meeting American indigenous groups while protesting the Standing Rock Pipeline in North Dakota made her want to connect with those roots.

‘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 said.

‘It really just clicked that this is nuts, like, the grace that they extended to say ‘no, you are a relative,’ was really formative for me. While we may not be and come from the same exact lineage, there is a commonality to that ancestry,’ she added.