"Wherever Paulla Dove Jennings looks in Charlestown, she is confronted with loss.
The house where she lived for most of her youth, on Buckeye Brook Trail, is a vacant lot, only its rusty water pump still standing. The apple, pear and quince trees that surrounded it are long since cut down.
In many other places in town, the opposite is true: new houses have gone up on what once were pristine woods or spaces sacred to the Narragansett Indians. The trees no longer meet in a canopy over Shumankanuc Hill Road, where Jennings and her brother once went sledding.
Even the tribe’s own land isn’t immune: people come out in their 4-by-4s, tearing holes in the soil. “We don’t find out till later, when we’re cleaning up their trash,” she says. “They think, ‘There’s nothing there — it’s only the reservation.’ ”
There’s a sense of frustration in Jennings’ words, of helplessness and injustice — and also, later, of something far more disturbing."
Get the Story:Alan Rosenberg: A sacred past collides with the future (The Providence Journal 10/31)
pwpwd Relevant Links:
Narragansett Tribe - http://www.narragansett-tribe.org
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