Pequot Tribe Members Hit the Genetic Jackpot

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For the past 24 years, the tribe's public face has been its white-skinned former tribal chairman, Hayward, whose Indian ancestors intermarried with whites. The new chairman is Kenneth M. Reels, described in The Day newspaper of New London, Connecticut, as being of Mashantucket Pequot, Narragansett, Portuguese, and African American descent. Reels, 38, grew up in Rhode Island, one of 18 children in a family living on welfare. He currently owns a golf course, a real estate firm, two apartment complexes, an office building, a self-service laundry, and a waterfront home. Last year, Reels attended a minority business expo and NAACP dinners, and addressed the first Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. community dialogue. Despite his openness, many in the tribe don't want to harm their bottom line by broaching the ugly subject of race.

Elder Clifford Sebastian is not one of them. "A lot of us who appear like we marry out too far, we are marrying back in to make the blood stronger," he says.

Relatively new Pequot member Valerie Burgess agrees, though she seems torn. She's married to a man of African American and Cherokee heritage but says she would encourage her son to marry an Indian for the sake of the tribe. But others, such as elder John Perry, say the tribe cannot mandate whom people should love. "In this modern time, it is going to be kind of hard to have a pure Indian race," he says, although talk of racial purity does obsess some Pequot.

Instead of trying to "improve the blood," Vincent Sebastian says, members must learn what they can about Indian language and culture. After 11 years as a full-fledged Indian, he is likely to be found at a powwow dressed in full Indian regalia, drumming or taking part in a traditional dance. "I don't speak the language," he says. "But I'm getting into the culture now."

The Pequot have embarked on several high-profile cultural projects: a $193 million Indian museum on their reservation, a $10 million donation to the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, and millions of dollars worth of Indian art displayed in casinos and hotels. They also sponsor, each September, the Feast of Green Corn and Dance, which draws upwards of 50,000 Indians from more than 500 tribes across the United States and Canada and offers the best performers nearly $1 million in prize money.

These efforts have not made the Pequot popular with long-established tribes, says Arlene Hirschfelder, co-author of The Native American Almanac (Macmillan, 1999). "There are Native American people who react to tribal groups who've intermarried with blacks," says Hirschfelder, a lecturer at New York's New School for Social Research. "They're criticized for not having their language and traditions. They see them as people without a culture. I look at it as these Pequot people are trying to relearn who they are."

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