"You people are geared for time," Moore says. "See the reason these people are existing right now is because we stopped thinking your way. You people are geared to eat, sleep, work certain hours of the week. See, we don't."

Since Passamaquoddy values are not dominated by the drive for wealth and individual gain, capital is not so sacredly measured, nor valued as it is in white cultures. The reservation construction workers are learning a trade. At the same time they are building their own homes and their neighbors' homes. The fisherman feeds his peers. People work for the community, not exclusively for themselves. The value systems are so different for these two cultures that many Indians cannot adapt to white ways. Stripped of the security and otherworldliness of the reservation, they feel diminished, torn.

Moore reflects, "See, this is the whole thing. They [the whites] don't even respect life. They don't even respect flowers. They don't even respect the ground you walk on. And especially animals.

"To me, I have went to school from the outside world, and I have graduated from the outside world." Like Nicholas, Moore served in the military. "But I never learned anything. The only knowledge I have is the knowledge I have right here on the reservation. That I have learned anything--as a matter of fact they are so far behind. Well, I'll put it this wayf.oh, I don't know, see, they're geared for time, they live fast, they want to do this, they want to do that. For me, I'm geared for my own time. And my people and the way we think," he adds.

The idea of money angers Moore. "There is no such thing as money! We are geared for security and state of mind."

Many of the Indians living in and around the Boston area are Mic Mac Indians. They come from New Brunswick and bring with them their own language, which further alienates them from the city. "They frequently receive inadequate medical care," Saunders says. Indian efforts to assimilate into white culture are often met with either rejection or tongue-in-cheek discrimination.

Indians are constantly flowing in and out of the Boston area looking for work and a new home. Most never find it. Cliff Saunders estimates that there are roughly 4000 Indians in the area. Of these, 50-55 per cent are unemployed.

The Boston Indian Council provides meals for the elderly, a Comprehensive Employment Training Act program, a baby-sitting service that is converting to a day-care center, alcoholic counseling, as well as a place in the confusing metropolis where Indians can meet other Indians.

At Pleasant Point, Maine, people are also building. New homes are being erected all over the reservation--cheap homes, but adequate and efficient for people who have historically used hand-made shacks with no plumbing or heating. A solar-heated house goes up on the hill overlooking the bay, a sewage treatment plant churns, an electric power station is being planned. A fish processing plant is nearly operational. A recreation league is being organized. A health center is working to provide the Passamaquoddies with good medical care. David Francis has been around long enough to see the improvement. So was another Passamaquoddy, Albert Sockabasin. "When I was a kid, you were afraid to admit you were an Indian. Now it's the opposite, things have changed."

The key to the Indians' hope for the future is the education of their children. Education is a sacred concept for Indians. It is a tool, the only way for them to cope with Western ways, the only way to survive.

Moore erases all uncertainties. "They will survive! There is no such thing as 'if.' They will survive, because they will adapt, they adapt with our own ways."

And this is the sensitive question, the one that hurts. It represents the ultimate baring of their identity.

"We are Indians before Americans," is the dogmatic statement issued by many Passamaquoddies, and it is the feeling countless more emit. "We are a nation," Moore states.

It is hazy on the highway, but still one can see the fork in the road and the divider. The road behind has shown the Indian losing many of his traditions and ways. "Kids don't want to make baskets anymore," David Francis complains. From the very outset of this cultural insemination, they lost their native religion. Though Catholicism embraces many traditional beliefs and values, it does so in a white man's forum, in a white man's way.

A question Indians frequently face asks whether, by gaining the skills to live in white society, by living and succeeding in white society, by growing up in white society apart from the cultural and Indian support of the reservation, the Indians will lose their Indianness totally. Moore answers the question. "No, and definitely not. See, it's funny, but we can communicate just by looking at you...we may change their ways, but we all have the same mind. So when you come right down to it, we haven't changed at all. We are far superior minds in many ways, because some people don't use...wisdom."