Donna Caruso

Donna Ruth Caruso (born 1951), pen name Donna Laurent Caruso, is a freelance writer and editor of Abenaki descent. She received her Bachelor's of Science in English and Journalism from Suffolk University and continued on to study Communications at Boston University at the graduate level.

Since 2004, Caruso has written frequently for the award-winning newspaper Indian Country Today. She covers topics such as language preservation, pow wows and Abenaki culture. Caruso was the editor and marketing assistant of Tales from the Whispering Basket, written by Larry Spotted Crow Mann. She also wrote for Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise in the early 2000s, where she concentrated on issues of health, housing, and education. In addition, Caruso has published a book of short stories, To Solder the Birch Bark.

To Solder the Birch Bark and other Stories features short stories along with a haiku that shows the reader cultural understandings of the Abenaki community, along with ways and hardships of New England Indigenous life: "People think our enslavement, the taking of children, the stealing of our property and language, happened a long time ago in New England, but that is not true. A little Indian girl from Peskeompscut was placed in an orphanage by attorneys from Portsmouth, NH, in 1928. That little girl's mother, who had died, had an inherited English fortune, but because her father (George) was Indian, the little two-year-old was stolen from him and put away in an orphanage," an excerpt from "Ogawata (sits out of site; in the shadows, Abenaki)" (22). The stories in Caruso's book are the results of social issues for descendants of indigenous New England people. To solder is to mend two things together with a soldering iron. Birch bark can not be soldered without being destroyed. Caruso uses this symbolism in the book's title to demonstrate the reality that it is impossible to retrieve the past, as shown in the example above.

Publications

Short stories

To Solder the Birch Bark and other Stories.

Articles featured in Indian Country Today
Articles Featured in "Fitchburg Sentinel and Enterprise"
  • Board demands correspondence from developer May 2002
  • Police chief honored for 25 years of service May 2002
  • Indian center secures permanent Devens site May 2002
  • Hard Work Teens say summer jobs can be found, with effort May 2002
  • Antonioni to receive leadership award for [...] prevention efforts in Senate May 2002
  • Developer on Hill Road project to address buildings' problems with new team April 2002
  • Other speakers at youth conference talk of setting goals for success April 2002
  • 'You Are Not Alone' April 2002
  • U.S. Dept. of Ed. rep urges better math instruction April 2002
  • Many Hill Road homeowner problems to be addressed by next week April 2002
  • Hill Road homeowners face problems with subsidized homes March 2002
  • Nashua River Watershed Association requesting Squannassit be an Area of Critical Concern March 2002
  • State asked to restore prison funds March 2002
  • Loss of state funds a crisis for Shirley March 2002

Further reading

  • Calloway, Colin. The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
  • Wiseman, Matthew. Reclaiming the Ancestors Decolonizing a Taken Prehistory of the Far Northeast. Lebanon, NH: UP of New England, 2005

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