Sweet Grass

"We have a saying in Indian Country: "Knowledge is passed down to the next seven generations ahead." In 1985 I initiated a process that led to my writing short auto- biographical sketches of contemporary Indian women; in 1997 1 have completed it. I started by jotting down notes of childhood experiences that I remembered during a stressful period of my life. Those memories unfolded in graphic pictures, almost as if I were looking through a kaleidoscope. Whether or not I had the technical ability to "write" was of no consequence. I just did. In 1987 1 graduated from Boston College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in social science. Several years later I submitted an application to Mel King, Director of the Urban Community Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I was accepted into the program. While at M.I.T as a Community Fellow, I embarked on several projects. One was to research my ancestry and the history of the Ojibway tribe, of which I am a member. That same year I interviewed "Rita" (whose story is in this book) and became acutely aware that information about Native American women-particularly those of the Northeast-was scarce and hard to locate. The first part of this book-"Sweet Grass"--Is my own story. The second part consists of briefly told lives of five Native American women-three Micmacs, one Mohawk, and one Wampanoag. Some of those stories have been fictionalized; others are presented as interviews which I conducted with them."--Author's website.