Bad Indians By Deborah Miranda Summary

Rarely is the voice of the Indian heard. The pre-European occupant of the land was classified only as a hindrance to the spreading of American civilization to the West Coast. In this book, Brown seeks to remedy the historical injustice

Similarly to what Brown does for our understanding of gender and power in colonial Virginia, Daniel Richter attempts to do by calling for a new perspective of Native American history with regards to westward expansion. In Facing East from Indian Country, he acknowledges how the difficulties presented by a lack of historical sources and distances of time make it impossible to see the world through the eyes of Native Americans. The best historians can do is to “capture something of how the past might have looked if we could observe it from Indian country.” Richter calls for researchers to break with tradition and examine colonization looking from the west to the east. In doing so, the author forces Native Americans to the front, and views Europeans

Not knowing much about Julia they began seeing each other opposing the Party's knowledge. Julia at first presents herself to be well mannered, well behaved, and caring about her society. After reading the book, Julia has been characterized very differently from our first thoughts. We learn that,

He will invariably have a thin sexy wife with stringy hair, an IQ of 191, and a vocabulary in which even the prepositions have eleven syllables” (79). In this text, Deloria argues how anthropologists purposely contrast themselves from Indians on reservations with how they dress to show their overwhelming wealth and intelligence over Indians while also crudely mocking how anthropologists pretend to be hierarchical snobs. High school students would be intrigued with the sass Deloria uses in his writing. Another appropriate type of reading would be Native Americans’ personal narratives of their own experiences on colonization, American politics, cultural appropriation, and more. Dawnland Voices edited by Siobhan Senier, for instance, would be a spectacular reading for this proposed class since it includes intimate indigenous short stories, poems, and writings from the New England region.

Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives offers two compelling stories that challenge the notion of cultural identity. Mary Rowlandson’s narrative equated the English family and English culture with a utopian society, while Mary Jemison’s story portrays the English civilization as a dystopian community. Rowlandson and Jemison were taken as captives by the Indians, and their families were killed in the process. Although Jemison was capture by the Indians when she was fifteen years old, she overlooked their brutality and chose not to return to her English home. Unlike Jemison who was captured by the Indians as a child, Rowlandson was taken from her family when she was an adult with three children and a husband.

"An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe," by Benjamin Madley is a significant piece in explaining Native American history. It helps shed a light on a dark chapter in American history that has been often overlooked by many. Madley's book provides a detailed account of the systematic extermination of the Native American population in California from the 1840s through the 1870s. By delving into the factors that fueled this genocide, such as greed for land and resources, white supremacist ideology, and state-sanctioned violence, Benjamin Madley examines the disturbing atrocities committed against Indigenous communities. His research draws from a wide range of sources, including archival materials and primary

Hilary Weaver argues in her piece of writing; that identifying indigenous identity is complex, complicated, and hard to grasp when internalized oppression and colonization has turned Native Americans to criticize one another. Throughout the text, Weaver focuses on three main points which she calls, the three facets. Self-identification, community identification, and external identification are all important factors that make up Native American identity. The author uses a story she calls, “The Big game” to support her ideologies and arguments about the issue of identity. After reading the article, it’s important to realize that Native American’s must decide their own history and not leave that open for non-natives to write about.

“For these alone, I’m prepared to love him” and “The world is full of possibilities” are two lines from the text, containing a positive tone, showing how the novel ends with the protagonist feeling optimistic and accepting in comparison to the negative tone at the beginning of the novel. The contrast in tone reveals to the reader that change in self is evident through the development of her maturity. The audience becomes more attached to the character and the story and further moved by using tone. The use of tone ultimately leads to the exploration in change in self and the development of the protagonists journey through

Once European men stepped foot onto what is now known as North America, the lives of the Native Americans were forever changed. The Indians suffered centuries of torment and ridicule from the settlers in America. Despite the reservations made for the Natives, there are still cultural issues occurring within America. In Sherman Alexie’s, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the tragic lives of Native Americans in modern society are depicted in a collection of short stories taking place in the Spokane Reservation in Washington state. Throughout the collection, a prominent and reoccurring melancholic theme of racism against Native Americans and their struggle to cope with such behavior from their counterpart in this modern day and age is shown.

The period of missionization was known to the Spaniards as a time to mold the Indigenous people into the spitting image of what they wanted; cultivating the Indigenous people into civilized, Christian practicing beings. However, through the eyes of the Indigenous people this period was considered to be the end of the world – an end to the world they came to know so well. Settler colonialism introduced a cruel and brutal world upon the Indigenous people, especially for Indigenous women who were targeted by the priests to fulfill their needs of lust, during the period of missionization. In the book, Bad Indians, author Deborah Miranda finds a captivating way of presenting the brave story of Vicenta Gutierrez, who fell victim to the priest on the mission and spoke up about her traumatic event, through the literary genre of a letter. Using the letter as her literary device, Miranda vividly illustrates the sexual violence brought upon Indian women and how the priests used rape to establish power on the missions had a dehumanizing effect on these women.

In Western stories, Native people are illustrated as antagonists and are never seen as the main characters. Native people are the other side of the so-called frontier, where wildness, savagery and chaos are met. Western stories do not represent native people fairly. The typical archetype of American Indians in western stories has influenced and created stereotypes about Native people that still remain in nowadays society. In the story of Louis L’Amour, “The Gift of Cochise”, Native people, also called ‘the other’, are represented more fairly compared to typical Westerns which portray them as non-civilized and savage.

Petalesharo’s writing reflected the treatment of Native Americans during the 1800s. Being a Native American himself, Petalesharo was able to give perspective on a point in history typically viewed from a white man’s opinion. The excerpt “Petalesharo” explains how the Native American was able “to prevent young women captured by other tribes from being sacrificed”, making Petalesharo well liked by the Americans (588). Petalesharo gave the “Speech of the Pawnee Chief” infront of Americans to convey the differences between Native Americans and Americans through emotion, logic, and credibility, which showed how the two groups will never be the same, but still can coexist in the world together.

Wilderness as a settler-colonial construct that embodies prejudice--racism and sexism--and that continues to shape and engrave settler-colonial ideologies in our society’s mindset, it should be questioned as to how it has been so powerful a cultural enterprise. Stories are what empower cultural persistence and cultural identity. In particular, the United States has implemented the use of story to shape and construct its cultural ideologies and to marginalize and disempower women and Indigenous people so that white men can assume a position of supremacy. Within these stories, the heroes are often depicted as innocent--similar to anti-conquest in which the colonizer naturalizes his own presence while establishing his power over native peoples

In all the different tribes, none of the women are seen as less than the men, however in European culture at the time, the women were seen as weak and lesser beings. Gunn Allen tackles this issue using ethos logos and pathos by appealing to the readers through logic, emotion and her personal experiences. With Ethos Gunn Allen makes herself a credible source by mentioning that she is a “half breed American Indian woman. ”(83) making her story worth paying attention to rather than if it were a story by an outsider who truly has nothing to do with the American Indian women.

You wanted a good time “They” meaning the party, wanted you to stop having it.” (Page 131) Julia enjoyed having sex and used that to practice her rebellion against the party. “I’ve been at school too dear. Sex talks once a month for the over-sixteens, and in the youth movement.