`` Bad Indians `` By Deborah Miranda

Institutional structures have the power to configure adolescent growth through repression and liberation. The capability that adolescents have to create their own destiny and choose their own social institution can be limited, but not impossible. In Trites article, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” the author argues that kids have personal power, whether they acknowledge it and use it to their own advantage or not. Michel Foucault declares that “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Trites). Power is inevitable, there will never be no such thing as power in this world; it will never diminish or fade. Trites also conveyed that, “power not only acts on a subject but, in a transitive

Cabeza de Vaca’s account reveals that the native populations of the Americas (the Indians) were cruel to the Europeans; and as a result, they deserve punishment for their aggression.

Even though there are many articles show us much information at these times, the details may be so different from each other that the Colonial Era is still in mystery for most of us today. For instance, some of us may know the Native Americans as brutal and cruel people without understanding deeply about their life. Baily describes their life before the arrivals of the Europeans as a peaceful life and rich culture. He tells us that they have their own civilization from the organization of family and the country 1. The author also explores the foundation of new societies as bloody and costly ways when the Europeans from many countries came to Indian land. The evidence is that there are many terrifying encounter among these countries because of the conflict in building their own society

Miranda opens Bad Indians with a brief explanation of her family history and who she is within the book’s introduction. However, she quickly changes point of view when the introduction opens into the main text that presents us first with a set of poems written by Junípero Serra, who many view as the founding father of the mission system. We enter a book that can be described as harboring resentment for and against the mission system from the perspective of the man who began the mission system within California. This allows us to understand what some of Serra’s thoughts were in regards to the Indigenous peoples, not through an explanation given by an outside source, but through his own writings and expressions. Immediately after his poem we learn about the mission project required by most fourth grade curriculum and transition then into a text titled “Adobe Bricks” which lays out a recipe for building a mission. This depiction of what it takes to build a mission displays how the Indians were viewed as mere ingredients to a project rather than as actual human beings. The recipe explains how the Indians must “haul some dirt in” and run “back

Inventing the Savage: The Social Construct of Native American Criminality. Luana Ross. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1998.

In her novel, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, Deborah A. Miranda theorizes that the underlying patronage of her father’s violent behavior arises from the original acts of violence carried out by the Spanish Catholic Church during the era of missionization in California. The structure of her novel plays an essential role in the development of her theory, and allows her to further generalize it to encompass the entire human population. “In this beautiful and devastating book, part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems.” Patching together every individual source to create the story of a culture as a whole, Miranda facilitates the task of conceptualizing how Societal Process Theory could play into the domestic violence she experiences growing up as the daughter of a California Indian.

Mormons and Paiute Indians from Utah massacre 120 emigrants, men and women, on wagon train.

Europeans tore through America in the 1700s and destroyed the lives of Native Americans, and yet their culture remained principled with a high level of respect and honor. This is shown in a meeting that was held by the six nations of the Iroquois, where Chief Red Jacket gave a speech on the Native Americans view on missionary stations that the Europeans wanted to set up. Red Jacket explained their past with the first settlers, “We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return” (1). These first Europeans set the tone for how these new colonist treated the natives. They took what they wanted and left a trail of death and destruction in their path. However, the natives acted in return with upstanding respect and treated these missionaries

This section highlights that history has created a false narrative depicting the natives as a victimized people, which they were to some extent but only in the fashion that they did not possess the same technology for warfare, immunity of communal diseases transmitted, and they were not anticipating combat. All other factors considered, the natives stood to be a potential threat. In regards to knowledge obtained by Spaniards prior to arrival and knowledge gained from observation, it would be remiss had they not prepared for battle. This argument is not to be misconstrued in approving their actions; I do recognize colonization as an evil for both the reasons employed and its damaging effects, but rather to change the narrative surrounding that of the native people. While they did experience a tragedy, I feel that it is erroneous to write them into history as being incompetent resulting from their

Poverty hits children hardest in the world. When I was younger, the Armenians had faced the hard facts of poverty after they break up with the Soviet Union, war with Azerbaijan, and a devastating earthquake. My family moved into our motherland Armenia while our nation was going through these huge dramatic changes. Furthermore the poor economy and inflation destroyed numerous hopes and futures. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Arnold Spirit, describes his hardships involving poverty living on Spokane reservation. The people on the reservation are stuck in a prison of poverty. They are imprisoned there due to lack of resources and general contempt from the outside world, so they are left with little chance for success. Like Arnold, I also went through hardships regarding poverty and education.

Being a Native American woman during the period of European conquest came with many hardships. One of these hardships resulting in perceived inferiority, is the subjection to rape and other degrading and violent actions. Michele de Cuneo describes the violence he inflicts on the Carib women in his letter by stating, “I took a rope and thrashed her well” (Cuneo 1). Furthermore, he asserts, “Finally we came to an agreement…” (1). As the letter progresses, it becomes apparent that the Native American woman is in pain, can no longer fight to protect herself, and the actions between them are not consensual. The way that Cuneo so freely describes his experience with the Native American woman validates the idea that he finds his unjust actions exciting and he gathers feelings of pride from them. In fact, Roger Bartra in his article “A la Chingada,” emphasizes that men specifically choose untouched women to rape so that they feel “perpetually guilty” and if she is consensual the rape is not as enjoyable (Bartra 161-162). From the ideas of rape produced by Cuneo and Bartra it can be concluded that

For more than 300 years, since the days of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Government, an attempt of genocide of the Native American Indian has existed. From mass brutal murders and destruction by Spanish and American armies, to self-annihilation through suicide, homicide, and alcohol induced deaths brought about because of failed internal colonialism and white racial framing. Early Explores used Indigenous inhabitants upon first arriving to the America’s to survive the New World and once they adapted, internal colonialism began with attempts to convert the Indians to Christianity, repressing their values and way of life, forcing them into slavery, and nearly exterminating an entire culture from existence.

The process of colonization in the Americas was a complex and complicated series of events, each driven by the varied interests of an array of European empires. For some, the Americas were a world of untold riches, while for others, this discovery allowed for missionary efforts to convert Native Americans to their faith. Regardless of the reason, violence against the many Native Americans who inhabited this “new land” was a common colonization tool to achieve these means. Direct violence is the most well-known approach, one that Spain wielded so effectively that the Black Legend was created to attest to their cruelty. Yet, the violence used was not all direct in nature. Cultural violence, which England employed itself, was used just as often. Overall, though the Black Legend has led to Spain being viewed as the most violent colonizer in the Americas, England’s use of indirect violence through engagement in the fur trade and missionary efforts was just as destructive to Native Americans.

We all believe in good and evil, that through this belief becomes our morals as humans. However, during this early American period it’s known that the colonial people in Massachusetts had their beliefs set on the puritan way of life and living. Furthermore, these colonial people who settled in the Massachusetts Bay colony didn’t expect there life to be disrupted through attacks taken place. Through the experience of one woman, A Narrative of the Captivity by Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, an American colonial women, accurately depicts historical record of the attacks made of the King Philips war and her being held for ransom eleven weeks in its descriptions of the brutalities and godliness which sets the tone between what is truth and what is contradictory in the eyes of Rowlandson and the native Americans. Moreover, through this war fueled battle the colonial people felt as if their colony was disrupted and attacked. Not to mention, how the natives felt, particularly the Wampanoag tribe. The natives had been kind to share half of their land while the English were killing their crops. This drove the Natives mad and through this they were labeled as “savages” by the English people.

"Double-consciousness this sense of always looking at one 's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one 's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Dubois, 8). W.E.B. Du Bois had a perfect definition of double-consciousness. The action of viewing one 's self through the eyes of others and measuring one 's soul. Looking at all of the thoughts good or bad coming from others. This is present in the main character of the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. The Absolutely True Diary is about a boy named Junior that is fourteen years old and living on the Spokane Reservation. Junior was born with too