Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England

Stephanie M. Fielding

599 and refrigerate. Heat (or reheat) under the broiler for a couple of minutes without burning the mussels. Then serve. Stand back—everyone loves these. A variation could be steaming them in white wine and serving with shallot butter. Remember, Native Americans took advantage of all resources available to them. Stephanie M. Fielding (b. 1945) Stephanie Fielding’s aboriginal roots are in Connecticut in the East and Hawaii in the West. She has lived and traveled all over the world, including Baton Rouge, where she wrote for five city magazines, and Denver, where she wrote for another magazine. Fielding finally settled in Mohegan, where she became determined to help resurrect the Mohegan language. To this end, she earned an ma in linguistics at mit, wrote the Mohegan grammar, compiled a dictionary, and built the Mohegan Language Project website. In 2008 she was elected to the tribe’s Council of Elders. Fielding is the mother of three grown children and has five young grandchildren. She is the great-granddaughter of the late Mohegan chief Occum/Lemuel Fielding . The following pieces are original to this volume. Remembrance Rama sat up straight in bed. Eyes, wide open, looking into the dark. Tears coursing down her cheeks. It was a dream . . . only a dream. The relief was incredible, but she couldn’t stop the tears. She put her face in her hands and sobbed. “What’s wrong, honey?” asked her husband, sitting up in bed and putting his arms around her. He was worried; she never cried. “Bad dream?” She nodded, still weeping. He was relieved. “Tell me about it.” “It was Cori. She walked by with her friends—she was about nine—and she didn’t recognize me.” 600 mohegan Muggy smiled but tried to quench it so she couldn’t hear his smile in the dark. “But Cori’s only six months old and she knows you already.” “I know. But I want her to always remember me.” “There is no way she’s going to forget you. It was only a dream; let’s go back to sleep.” Muggy snuggled Rama against his chest and finally the sobs stopped, her breathing evened, and more pleasant dreams filled her sleeping mind. The next day at work, after debriefing his inspectors, Muggy called his daughter, mother of Cori, and set up their next visit. Stephie was happy to take a few days in Honolulu; the sugarcane town of Pahala on the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii was a little too quiet for her city-girl blood. ~ Of course, Cori never forgot her grandmother and grandfather. The monthly trips from Hawaii, the presents, the cards, the phone calls all were reminders of her much-loved grandparents. And when Cori, her mom, dad, and baby brother, Bill, moved to Pennsylvania the visits continued , though not as frequently, and everything else remained constant, including the memory of her grandparents. Her grandfather, who was known as one of the meanest men in Honolulu, was putty in her hands. He may have closed down a hundred bars, raided a presidential campaign fund-raising party, and arrested the governor’s son for underage drinking, but he was a pussycat with his little granddaughter. If you walked into their house and it smelled like chocolate chip cookies, you knew Grandpa could be given the credit. Grandma hadn’t cooked for nearly twenty years now. Instead she herded models and would-be movie stars. She also taught people to stand on their heads, increase their psychic abilities, and practice alternative healing processes. Both of them were totally unforgettable. The irony, of course, was that the forgetting started nearly thirty years later, but it was not on Cori’s part. That mysterious and dreaded disease, multi-infarct dementia, started stealing her grandmother’s memory a piece at a time. Rama and Muggy had moved to Connecticut along with their youngest son, Leo, to reestablish a connection with Rama’s tribe, the Mohegans. In Connecticut they called her by her given name, Margery, variations thereof, or Leading Cloud, her Indian name. She wanted them to know that she was a healer, a contribution to the community, but the dementia Stephanie M. Fielding 601 was chipping away at her abilities and she couldn’t sustain her classes or gather a following. Her beautiful presence was felt and appreciated at the powwows and outreach events. Her peaceful face framed by...