She is 43, working as administrative assistant to the director of the Mashantucket Pequot education department. Her husband is a full-time minister. She was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and has five children, ages 11 to 25. She moved to the reservation five years ago.
People ask about our lives here and they're looking for tepees . . .
We live just like you. I lived in New York all my life, so I'm just coming back to something I'm trying to learn, too. Most of the time Native American was considered being savages, so you just kind of kept your mouth shut. Either way, Native American or African-American, either way you're sort of like persecuted, so sometimes you just kept quiet. To the blacks I was considered Indian, to the Indians I was considered black.