Yeah, good point. Well, better than before the casino boom when people didn't talk about Indians at all. I recently visited the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Connecticut. Even people from neighboring Massachussets don't know what that is. When checking the area for accomodation I got stuck at the town name Mystic. That actually does ring a bell with most people. "Ah, yes, Mystic Pizza 1988, the movie that made Julia Roberts a star" people would say to me at parties. Admittedly, my association had been different. "Mystic Massacre 1637, the massacre that killed twice as many Indians as Wounded Knee and almost exterminated the Pequots as a nation". The Pequots were honestly-but mistakenly-regarded as a vanished race in the 19th century. Herman Melville, in Moby Dick,'' called themas extinct as the ancient Medes.'' In Democracy in America,'' Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that the Pequots, Narragansetts and Mohegansnow live only in men's memories.'' The opposite is true. The Pequots rebounded from the verge of extinction and built Foxwoods Casino, today the largest Casino of the western hemisphere which has made them the richest Indians nationwide and one of the biggest employers and taxpayers in the state. When my wife and me spent an evening in the Casino we talked to one of the roulette supervisors. We told her that we had actually not come for gambling but had spent two days in the magnificent Pequot Museum the Pequots built from some of their revenues. The lady couldn't quite understand us. Standing among the hordes of the apathic jersey-clad slotmachine-feeders she just remarked "Why that, there is nothing to see there". By the way, the Mohegans aren't extint either. They have a Casino, too, in the neighborhood. The Mashantucket Pequot Museum is in fact the best Native American museum and probably the best museum I have ever visited. The Pequots of today are a very vital and vibrant community. It is quite amusing to see that the very greed of white folks that once almost exterminted them has now become the motor of their resurrection.

A wonderful place to visit is Plimouth Plantation. It is nice to speak with the peoples there (all of Native American descent and not actors). IT is shame that so many of the people have lost their identity as a community. I was reading in the paper just before I moved from the Boston area that the last man to really KNOW the Naragansett (I believe it was them) language died. That the people left trying to pass on the language and the stories learned because of his efforts to keep the language alive. Unfortunately, so much of it died with him as its final torch bearer. AGain, I am not sure of the tribal affiliation, but I'm sure you could find the story in the archives of the Boston Herald. It would have been between January and March of this year.

You have the American Government and uneducated idiots that make up at least half of this country to thank for that. I hope that one day when I have children, they can wear their heritege like other people and not be called Prairie "N" or Savage. Still... Reservations need an overhauling, and not one done by whites... White beurecrats(sp) only screw things up. Look at our President for pete's sake!