Juneena To Bad Indians Analysis

Hurt, shame, humiliation, and pain. The struggle for Indigenous people is a continuous cycle of abuse and one of broken hopes and dreams. In Deborah Miranda’s tribal memoir, Bad Indians, she uses her narrative along with primary sources and related stories to reassess previous knowledge about how the lives of American Indians were affected by colonialism. Through the use of tone, point of view, and counter discourse, Miranda sheds light on how the gender-based violence and sexual abuse that accompanies colonialism, despite the notion that settlers were following Christian ideals, shaped a new Indigenous society that tore their culture apart and led to a mosaic of their broken identities. By creating a distinction between historically dominant
accounts of the past and the toil that Indigenous people were in fact put through, the reality that strikes makes one realize how colonialism deeply scarred the Indigenous peoples through the accumulation of violent acts.
How a story is told can become a major impact on how the story is received by others, therefore the tone of Miranda’s story is an essential element towards the rediscovering of Indian truths because the tone conveys a sense of sincerity that comes across to the audience with the use of pathos. A prime example of this within Bad Indians is the part titled Dear Vicenta, because it is a pivotal moment in the story where the underlying tone is what makes the impact of the story so valuable. It acknowledges the gender violence that played a large role in the overall abuse of Indian women, and helps Miranda demonstrate through the resigned and despairing tone just how badly Vicenta was hurt. One can hear the anguish and the impotence coming across the page from the way that there was no justice done in the story until it was too late.
It is evident that in the past any accusations of sexual and gender based violence reported by any Indigenous women would be deemed as irrelevant and false. Today, after being aware of all of the suffering that Indigenous women were put through simply because they were of lowly class, it is evident that full responsibility lies upon the perpetrators. Considering how such violent acts in the past were simply seen as a natural reoccurrence that weren’t worthy of any punishment, one can clearly see how colonialism shaped a much more suppressed society of Indigenous peoples. The fact that they were forced to keep quiet and would be ignored and penalized if they ever told the truth demonstrates the strain and control that colonialism imposed upon them. The realization of all the pressure that colonialism had on American Indians was what caused Miranda to speak out on behalf of the Indian’s point of view.
Connecting with an audience can be a crucial aspect of making a story come across the page efficiently, and Miranda has demonstrated how with the use of multiple point of views the retellings of Indigenous people’s struggles with abuse resonate with more truth than they ever have before.
Distinct point of views such as a child’s, an adult’s or even Miranda’s helps the audience comprehend how much their people were hurt as a whole. The excerpt from Miranda’s memoir titled Novena to Bad Indians is a clear indicator of the effects of point of views as it demonstrates individual stories of refusal and resistance to being a bad Indian. A first person point of view is used throughout the Novena to convey to the audience the urgency and immediacy of the beggar’s pleas as an anonymous Indian expresses his or her pain by depicting the different scenarios caused by the violence placed on the Indians. The first point of view is essential in this piece because it validates how the inner thoughts provided by the Indians makes the one understand the constant belittlement and hopelessness that they felt; “Even dead Indians aren’t good enough”
(98).
On Day 8 of the Novena for Bad Indians, we see an example of plural point of views through several Indians who came together to create a resistance movement against the white privileged race.
Such things show the solidarity that the Indigenous people displayed towards the violence that was imposed on them. This use of plural point of views helps the audience recognize how the Indigenous had no other choice but to express their distress by any means possible and to fight back; one Indian states “I could find no other way to revenge myself”.
In the past, the expression of all of the Indian’s resistance was seen as rebellious and deemed as imprudent choices. Now after full consideration, one can see that that was their only way out, and how anything other than rebellious acts would have just lead to greater and greater events of violence inflicted upon them. Therefore, the conclusions behind Indian’s reasoning’s have changed over time to the point where now it is understandable why they reacted and tried to put a stop to the abuse before it got
worse.
One of Miranda’s main strategies is to use counter discourse in order to challenge the relations of domination and subordination. This strategy becomes the core of her argument in proving how torn the Indigenous peoples were due to physical and sexual violence. In the piece entitled A Californian Indian in the Philadelphia Airport Miranda takes this idea of counter discourse and then addresses how even though a group, in this case the Indigenous, can be damaged, the broken pieces can still be brought back to eventually heal together. Miranda’s ways of thinking about the Indian culture being reconciled and healing once again as a whole opposes the social norm way of thinking about the Indian cultures. In present time, the Indian culture is thought to be primarily isolated and dying out little by little, all leading back to when colonialism was forced upon the peoples. Yet the way Miranda studies the remnants nowadays, she says that there is still a chance for the culture to come back together despite the common suggestions, “If we allow the pieces of our culture to lie scattered in the dust of history, tramples on by racism and hate, then yes, we are irreparably damaged. But if we pick up the pieces and use them in new ways that honor their integrity…then we do those pieces justice.” (135).
The lives of Indigenous peoples were poisoned by the introduction of colonialism to their culture, and the outcome led to their cultural demise. Overall, through the use of literary devices such as tone and point of view along with concepts such as counter discourse, Miranda was able to convey the grand effect that colonialism instituted upon the Indigenous people. Colonialism is at fault for the implementation of all of the sexual and gender-based violence that was inflicted on the Indians. Moreover, throughout the novel Miranda works to shift one’s understanding of Indigenous peoples history by using strategies that make one understand the pain and struggle that the Indians were subjected to.