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Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir
This book leads readers through a troubled past using the author's family circle as a touch point and resource for discovery. Personal and strong, these stories present an evocative new view of the shaping of California and the lives of Indians during the Mission period in California. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry and playful all at once.
217 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 198 reviews
November 25, 2016
Enjoyed this very much, not everyone knows but the 1950's and early 60's the US Government had a program to separate out native children from their culture The Indian Adoption Project was a federal program that acquired Indian children from 1958 to 1967 with the help of the prestigious Child Welfare League of America; a successor organization, the Adoption Resource Exchange of North America, functioned from 1966 until the early 1970s. Churches were also involved. In the Southwest, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints took thousands of Navajo children to live in Mormon homes and work on Mormon farms, and the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations swept many more Indian youngsters into residential institutions they ran nationwide, from which some children were then fostered or adopted out. As many as one third of Indian children were separated from their families between 1941 and 1967. I'm one of those children so is my wife. Our tribe is now the urban Rez of Los Angeles and we prosper here with many friends who are also adoptees some know their backgrounds some do not. So this book spoke right too me, it is so well written so poetic at times I learn something and that's all I really want from a book.
August 15, 2013
There were many things I liked about this book, including Ms. Miranda's poetry. Her cultural reclamation and correction of the historical narrative of the settling of California and the treatment of the Native tribes by these settlers is both necessary and important.
But I think I have OD'd on dysfuntional childhoods. Seemingly everyone has stories, horrifying stories, in their past and in their families. The pain and sorrow of the unacknowledged and the untold permeate countless family and cultural histories. Every memoir I pick up now seems to say the same things, and Miranda has no new revelations about bad parenting.
To her credit, Miranda does deal with some of my nagging thoughts when reading about these families: if you've been damaged, do you get a free pass to inflict damage on others? And does taking on the identity of a victim help or hurt? Can healing coming without this identity? She doesn't have an answer either, but she has the questions, and that's a start.
And she has certainly overcome the terrors she experienced growing up. She has reached back in a positive way to the part of her that was nearly forgotten, the California Indians of her father's family. And yet there is more to her, a part that she seems to dismiss. Though she does make passing references to her European and Jewish ancestors, she does not embrace them at all in her identity or her life. Most immigrants did not come to American because they had such wonderful lives in their native lands. They too lost family and culture, either before or after they came to the United States; they too have stories to tell that have resonance and meaning.
As a nation, we are long past any purity of racial, ethnic, or religious identity (although some would try to deny this and make us all the same). Deborah Miranda is a perfect example of who "we the people" are in 2013. I wish she had been stronger and clearer about how well she reflects America and all of its peoples.
But I think I have OD'd on dysfuntional childhoods. Seemingly everyone has stories, horrifying stories, in their past and in their families. The pain and sorrow of the unacknowledged and the untold permeate countless family and cultural histories. Every memoir I pick up now seems to say the same things, and Miranda has no new revelations about bad parenting.
To her credit, Miranda does deal with some of my nagging thoughts when reading about these families: if you've been damaged, do you get a free pass to inflict damage on others? And does taking on the identity of a victim help or hurt? Can healing coming without this identity? She doesn't have an answer either, but she has the questions, and that's a start.
And she has certainly overcome the terrors she experienced growing up. She has reached back in a positive way to the part of her that was nearly forgotten, the California Indians of her father's family. And yet there is more to her, a part that she seems to dismiss. Though she does make passing references to her European and Jewish ancestors, she does not embrace them at all in her identity or her life. Most immigrants did not come to American because they had such wonderful lives in their native lands. They too lost family and culture, either before or after they came to the United States; they too have stories to tell that have resonance and meaning.
As a nation, we are long past any purity of racial, ethnic, or religious identity (although some would try to deny this and make us all the same). Deborah Miranda is a perfect example of who "we the people" are in 2013. I wish she had been stronger and clearer about how well she reflects America and all of its peoples.
March 15, 2022
i tried to finish BAD INDIANS by deborah miranda but couldn't. her book on indigenous californians was rife with shoddy scholarship and shoddy writing. i got 80% of the way through and had to abandon it.
the trap that some natives fall into is being stuck in tape loops produced by their anger regarding the history of colonial oppression. in this case, she seemed to be perpetuating the language of the oppressors in just about every page of the first half of the book. she was able to narrate some of the horror of the mission period in california, and the insidious racism that is part of the curriculum that just about every california resident is subject to in 4th grade when we are force fed "the mission unit" (californians will know what i'm talking about).
she deconstructs it successfully to some extent (by offering useful facts without attaching too much personal emotion), but because she fails to give the reader any sense of what life was like for indigenous californians before the spanish arrived, the bulk of the writing stays mired in the spanish perspective that all indians were dirty, lazy, and ignorant. she has failed to transcend this narrative and in some cases is just passing it along. it's clear we have to heal these wounds before we can talk about them in ways that are instructive or illuminating. we need more than horror stories. we need to reveal how we have survived and thrived. i realize there are few such examples (because the campaign of genocide was so successful), but is it helpful to always retell the story of the victim? it's useful as a tool of therapy, but historical scholarship must offer more than that.
i say this knowing all too well that many americans just don't know the story and it is our responsibility to reveal it. but so far, over the course of the 30 or so years of native scholarship that i have undertaken, the books that have stayed with me, the books that have inspired, are the ones that balance the celebration of native accomplishments with narratives of oppression.
the trap that some natives fall into is being stuck in tape loops produced by their anger regarding the history of colonial oppression. in this case, she seemed to be perpetuating the language of the oppressors in just about every page of the first half of the book. she was able to narrate some of the horror of the mission period in california, and the insidious racism that is part of the curriculum that just about every california resident is subject to in 4th grade when we are force fed "the mission unit" (californians will know what i'm talking about).
she deconstructs it successfully to some extent (by offering useful facts without attaching too much personal emotion), but because she fails to give the reader any sense of what life was like for indigenous californians before the spanish arrived, the bulk of the writing stays mired in the spanish perspective that all indians were dirty, lazy, and ignorant. she has failed to transcend this narrative and in some cases is just passing it along. it's clear we have to heal these wounds before we can talk about them in ways that are instructive or illuminating. we need more than horror stories. we need to reveal how we have survived and thrived. i realize there are few such examples (because the campaign of genocide was so successful), but is it helpful to always retell the story of the victim? it's useful as a tool of therapy, but historical scholarship must offer more than that.
i say this knowing all too well that many americans just don't know the story and it is our responsibility to reveal it. but so far, over the course of the 30 or so years of native scholarship that i have undertaken, the books that have stayed with me, the books that have inspired, are the ones that balance the celebration of native accomplishments with narratives of oppression.
March 19, 2021
This book, a potpourri of history, personal essay, poetry, old news reports, photos, and diaries is INTENSE. It absolutely shreds official histories (still taught in grade schools!) that downplay the California Missions' role as agents of genocide, providing graphic and heartrending descriptions of the Missionaries' brutality. It also shows how that brutality still echoes within indigenous society today, most disturbingly in the person of the author's alcoholic, abusive, rapist father. The issue of why such toxic masculinity flourishes among the dispossessed is somewhat glossed over with the observation that they have to be tough to survive. How and why that toughness mutates into self-sabotage and sadism is unexplored. Miranda goes on a bit too long about her upbringing (which was horrific, but not particularly different from many other horrific childhoods I've read about), but more than makes up for it with a multitude of interesting thoughts about anthropology, mythology, and spirituality, a lovely short story involving indigenous peoples' acceptance of what we now call queerness, and a good bit about indigenous languages. (P.S. If Bad Indians leaves you wanting to learn more about California Indians, you might try "The Ohlone Way" by Malcolm Margolin.)
January 16, 2021
Found this through Powell's Books, created a list to celebrate Native American Heritage Month. Really really loved the mixed media approach. The combination of narrative, news articles, personal memoir, poetry, history, thought experiments...it was a fascinating way to compile a book. Important and powerful and heartbreaking and rage-inducing. I wish it had a deeper bibliography and a suggestion of further resources. A lot of this information (historical and her family's history) is devastating. That's a place where the mixed format was a true blessing and really made this easier to read and finish. By breaking things up in both format and subject, it was more digestible chunks, allowing you to stop reading at relatively steady intervals, taking a break to think, to cry, to plan, to research, to make resolutions. I also was impressed at how Miranda found ways to offer hope. Some clear eyed appreciation of reality, but recognizing how broken things can sometimes be recreated into something new. Powerful.
June 6, 2024
Wonderfully written and researched. I loved all the extras such as poems and pictures. It gave a real sense of history entwined with personal background. Thanks to goodreads for the chance to review!
January 27, 2015
In various memoir writings that I've read, there's rarely a straightforward, chronological narrative and this is certainly true here. The author mixes her poetry with stories told by various female elders, that sometimes have tantalizing interjections from her own story. It also includes a personalized accounting of historical abuse perpetrated upon native peoples by those involved in the California missions. The author purposes this memoir as a "correction" of the sanitation of mission history taught to 4th graders in California public school curricula. This is a worthy goal, but the way it is presented in the book borders on proselytizing the opposite, and therefore weakens the goal. I would have preferred more citations from the author's research rather than what I got, which was an accounting of the history that reads like historical fiction.
Her own narrative is exceptional and heartbreaking, describing a family dynamic at times loving and at other times, abusive. The author blames her father's manipulative and abusive behavior on the historical oppression and abuse by Europeans of Native Americans. People of all cultures learn abuse by being abused, and this is surely a strong and powerful factor, but blaming the behavior exclusively on oppression is a simplification. Not all victims become abusers. This quote, from a 1998 Native American Circle examination of the complex aspects of abuse concurs: "...those persons who have rejected violent behavior despite the impact of historically difficult life situations bear testimony to the fact that violent behavior is indeed a choice, not an ultimate, unavoidable consequence of negative circumstances." Dismissing an abuser's personal culpability does a disservice to the victims, as well as dismissing the courage of those that do not become abusers.
For another very interesting perspective from a Native American author, try this short story collection by Sherman Alexie, Blasphemy, intended for an adult audience. The nuanced stories portray the complex multicultural histories of a wide array of modern Native Americans.
Her own narrative is exceptional and heartbreaking, describing a family dynamic at times loving and at other times, abusive. The author blames her father's manipulative and abusive behavior on the historical oppression and abuse by Europeans of Native Americans. People of all cultures learn abuse by being abused, and this is surely a strong and powerful factor, but blaming the behavior exclusively on oppression is a simplification. Not all victims become abusers. This quote, from a 1998 Native American Circle examination of the complex aspects of abuse concurs: "...those persons who have rejected violent behavior despite the impact of historically difficult life situations bear testimony to the fact that violent behavior is indeed a choice, not an ultimate, unavoidable consequence of negative circumstances." Dismissing an abuser's personal culpability does a disservice to the victims, as well as dismissing the courage of those that do not become abusers.
For another very interesting perspective from a Native American author, try this short story collection by Sherman Alexie, Blasphemy, intended for an adult audience. The nuanced stories portray the complex multicultural histories of a wide array of modern Native Americans.
December 12, 2016
Really well done. Miranda is an Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen (Monterey Bay) who can trace her family through her father's line to enslavement in the California missions. This story reads part memoir/part history of California Indians told through letters, diaries, poems, newspaper articles, tape recording etc. Miranda does not shy away from the brutalness and horror her family experiences from not only the Spanish missionaries but also from the government. Sometimes it's hard to read, the stories and memories she shares but I think this is an important book to read just for that reason alone. One should be knowledgeable of things, even brutal and horrific things, instead of being kept in the dark. As Miranda points out in regards to the mandatory mission report that many fourth graders in California had to write (myself included):
"Fourth graders, their parents, their teachers, tourists to the missions, even historians, often learn and perpetuate only one story about California Indians: conquest, subjugation, defeat, disappearance. Somehow, this story manages to get told without any real mention of the violence and violations that accompanied colonization....In short this story is one-dimensional, flat, and worst of all, untrue."
This book tells the other side of the California Indians -their culture, their language, their religion, their families, their hopes and dreams and the way today's surviving generations are fighting back to reclaim what they can of their family's past. It's a much needed story and one I am so glad Miranda wrote.
"Fourth graders, their parents, their teachers, tourists to the missions, even historians, often learn and perpetuate only one story about California Indians: conquest, subjugation, defeat, disappearance. Somehow, this story manages to get told without any real mention of the violence and violations that accompanied colonization....In short this story is one-dimensional, flat, and worst of all, untrue."
This book tells the other side of the California Indians -their culture, their language, their religion, their families, their hopes and dreams and the way today's surviving generations are fighting back to reclaim what they can of their family's past. It's a much needed story and one I am so glad Miranda wrote.
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October 16, 2022"Those who will not change do not survive; but who are we, when we have survived?" (xiv).
In BAD INDIANS, Miranda tells her family history and digs through the archives as a way to rewrite the colonizer's story of California Indians, brazenly on display in the statewide fourth-grade Mission project. Her collage approach serves her purpose well. How can BAD INDIANS reshape the way we tell the story in California—and across the country?
In BAD INDIANS, Miranda tells her family history and digs through the archives as a way to rewrite the colonizer's story of California Indians, brazenly on display in the statewide fourth-grade Mission project. Her collage approach serves her purpose well. How can BAD INDIANS reshape the way we tell the story in California—and across the country?
September 14, 2024
Very eye-opening to the atrocities committed against the California Indians by the missions and subsequently the US government. I had trouble following it at points due to the mixed formats (poems, lists, essays, etc.) but the emotions and message came through all the same.
May 4, 2017
An incredible read that grabs and doesn't let go. I'll say first off that you should block off time for this book--it's not something you should read in multiple sittings, and you honestly won't want to read it that way. Miranda defies genre as she mashes together archival sourced-history with personal memoir with tribal history with poetry with essay with visual work. Her rich writing--and oh my GOD is it rich, it's so beautiful--really makes the story she's telling all the more rich and vivid. It's also incredibly accessible, and really important for people to read. I'd strongly recommend this to anyone looking to learn more about the ongoing effects of settler colonialism and the logics of elimination that accompany it.
January 2, 2025
Incredible work that left me wanting to know more about the true indigenous experience in California and also appalled that I had to wait until my mid-50s to learn this history. This book needs to be required reading nationwide. Deborah Miranda brought the generational trauma of the Native Americans in our nation to life, made it real and I felt it in my bones. I will never look at California history the same way - the way things are named and portrayed, and if I already despised the Catholic Church enough for their misogynistic agendas and hiding pedophiles, then Padre Serra just nailed the coffin shut. The book counters the narrative that he was a man of his time with the truth - that he was a vile and violent man that knew better. Excellent book.
November 17, 2024
This should be required reading if you live in the United States. To think that school projects were to make places of hate and torture that were billed as educational institutions. Still there is a measure of hope the author communicates and it is hauntingly beautiful. This book will break you but then make you again.
March 31, 2021
This is a 3.5 star book for me. I have been wanting to get more California history from the perspective of indigenous California people and this book certainly gave that to me. It was sad to learn more fully just how awful the Missions were. We should definitely take a hard look at our history curriculum - especially 4th grade. I know I was taught about the Missions in a very innocuous way. One of the most effective parts of this memoir was how the author published directions for the 4th grade mission project, and then published the same directions but swapped out mission for plantation and concentration camp. It definitely hammers home the point of how we need to be honest and real about the history of the Missions.
November 27, 2023
I wish I could have given this book more care and attention. Miranda tells such an important story. The persistence of Native Americans amazes me time and time again. I loved the way she highlighted the underlying historical trauma caused by European missionaries and Settler Colonialism. I also liked how she used different mediums to tell her story, especially the poems. If I had more time to take in this book I probably would have given it 5 stars.
October 8, 2019
I loved this beautiful, tragic, elegiac, historical book. It’s the memoir of the author, but not just of her life, but the life of her ancestors - the native peoples of California. She goes all the way back to before the Missions, dispelling the myths about their founding and work, through the dispersal of her people, and up to her own life, including her personal histories, myths and tragedies, especially those relating to her father. It’s all presented in a way I don’t usually enjoy - with prose, poetry, transcriptions - but in this case it actually drew me in. I want to find more memoirs like this now.
February 11, 2015
I think I might buy this one. <3 <3 <3
January 11, 2025
Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation (OCEN) is historically known as the Monterey Band of Monterey County as the results of the Congressional Homeless Indian Acts. These people are also often referenced as Mission San Carlos Indigenous. Currently, the tribe has completed all requirements to be reinstated as a Federally Recognized Tribe, and I sincerely hope they achieve that. There are over 600 people enrolled in this Tribe today. The author of this book is a member of this tribe, and discusses the history of genocide against them from the 1800s up to present day. Missions were built throughout the Western part of the country, and Indigenous people were used to construct them in what was basically slave labor. Children were snatched and sent to these schools to "Christianize" them. The story of the missions and the stories of the later residential schools are very similar. Forced labor, forcing them to only speak Spanish or English, ridding them of their customs, clothing, and beliefs, rape, beatings, deaths... The population of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen declined to appalling levels, thanks to death, low birth rate, and high mortality due to disease and living conditions. The systematic eradication of a people is disgusting to me. If you read this book and do not find yourself disgusted and outraged at the treatment of these people, you have serious problems.
I have the Audible version of this book. It was approximately six hours of listening time. If you are interested in the physical copy, it is just over 200 pages. I had never heard of this particular tribe on Indigenous people, though I am sure there are hundreds more I could say the same about. I learned a great deal about the culture, which I loved. I think it is wonderful that the author was able to research her family so extensively and discuss the truth about what happened in the Missions. This was a very moving, and very enraging, book. The atrocities that Indigenous people in the Americas have faced are disgraceful, and they are ongoing. This book mentions the legacy of violence and various types of physical, mental, emotional, and substance abuse that many Indigenous still struggle with today. This is generational. The stripping away of a peoples' identity and culture is abhorrent. It is tragic. If you would like to learn more about the tribe the author belongs to, please visit ohlonecostanoanesselennation.org
I have the Audible version of this book. It was approximately six hours of listening time. If you are interested in the physical copy, it is just over 200 pages. I had never heard of this particular tribe on Indigenous people, though I am sure there are hundreds more I could say the same about. I learned a great deal about the culture, which I loved. I think it is wonderful that the author was able to research her family so extensively and discuss the truth about what happened in the Missions. This was a very moving, and very enraging, book. The atrocities that Indigenous people in the Americas have faced are disgraceful, and they are ongoing. This book mentions the legacy of violence and various types of physical, mental, emotional, and substance abuse that many Indigenous still struggle with today. This is generational. The stripping away of a peoples' identity and culture is abhorrent. It is tragic. If you would like to learn more about the tribe the author belongs to, please visit ohlonecostanoanesselennation.org
December 6, 2024
This was a long read in part because the content is so thick with deep description. Miranda sets out to tell her story her way and with that in mind I’d say she is very successful.
To quote the author: “we must use the colonizer's languages-English, Spanish, French—to speak and be heard. But, the two poets add, we don't just "use" those languages: we reinvent them. And the mixed-genre, hybrid structure of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir became my way of "reinventing the enemy's language" in order to tell our story with the truth that has been missing from the colonizer's version.”
My sense is this book will resonate more with some people than others, but there was a lot about this text that I truly loved. When Miranda discussed her personal experiences reclaiming her sense of self it left me speechless. So many of the poetic passages were beautifully done. And “the girl without a mother” was powerful in ways that are hard to articulate and that brought me to tears.
In terms of a personal story this is 5 stars. Where it falls short for me is how Miranda infused the history of California Indians and her familial ties. Those passages felt like a completely different book to me. More often than not I found myself confused about where we were situated or less engaged in who was doing what. Overall this was all incredibly well done and anyone with any desire to learn more about the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay Area should do themselves a favor and read this.
To quote the author: “we must use the colonizer's languages-English, Spanish, French—to speak and be heard. But, the two poets add, we don't just "use" those languages: we reinvent them. And the mixed-genre, hybrid structure of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir became my way of "reinventing the enemy's language" in order to tell our story with the truth that has been missing from the colonizer's version.”
My sense is this book will resonate more with some people than others, but there was a lot about this text that I truly loved. When Miranda discussed her personal experiences reclaiming her sense of self it left me speechless. So many of the poetic passages were beautifully done. And “the girl without a mother” was powerful in ways that are hard to articulate and that brought me to tears.
In terms of a personal story this is 5 stars. Where it falls short for me is how Miranda infused the history of California Indians and her familial ties. Those passages felt like a completely different book to me. More often than not I found myself confused about where we were situated or less engaged in who was doing what. Overall this was all incredibly well done and anyone with any desire to learn more about the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay Area should do themselves a favor and read this.
May 3, 2023
A contribution to the genre of tribal history/storytelling/memoir that includes Leslie Silko's Storyteller, N. Scott Momday's The Way to Rainy Mountain, and Chris Teuton's Stories of the Turtle Island Liar's Club. Miranda's most important contribution is to illuminate the destruction and survival of the small California tribes that have been largely ignored even in Native-centered histories. The word "genocide" is frequently overused, serving as a shorthand for "something truly awful inflicted on a group." But it's an accurate description of the California history, which reduced a Native population estimated at over a million to about 20,000. Miranda writes a damning history of the "missions" celebrated in California's official versions of its own history while weaving in the stories of her ancestors. I found the earlier sections more compelling than the final fifty pages or so, but Bad Indians clearly deserves a place in conversations on contemporary Native life.
March 31, 2024
This is such an artful weaving together of historical research, memoir, autobiography, poetry, narrative, first person accounts, storytelling… Miranda humanizes and personalizes the concept of generational trauma through the story of her ancestors, her father, and her own life, all in the context of missionization and genocide. This could be a textbook for a history class, English literature class or a psychology class. Another Heyday Books classic.
November 12, 2023
Bad Indians is flooring.
I have a very distinct childhood memory of visiting a Mission, creating a Mission model, and never actually learning what a Mission was. Like, we had textbook definitions and brief lessons but even then I could always tell that there was a lot of importance being placed on this thing for it to be so...lacking in actual context.
This book is the definition of context.
I have a very distinct childhood memory of visiting a Mission, creating a Mission model, and never actually learning what a Mission was. Like, we had textbook definitions and brief lessons but even then I could always tell that there was a lot of importance being placed on this thing for it to be so...lacking in actual context.
This book is the definition of context.
July 29, 2024
this was a hard read but a good read. there was so much joy, so much recovery, so much of a vision towards the future that aren't always present, or present so strongly, in the most popular-est Native books (get wreckt Tommy Orange), but it was a welcome diversion from the usual.
dig up junipero serra so i can knock his ass back to europe where he belongs myself.
dig up junipero serra so i can knock his ass back to europe where he belongs myself.
September 5, 2022
3.5. One of those rare books where the first half is hard to get through and the last half is wonderful. Some boring slogs and meh writing, but also some beautiful imagined legends, retellings of historical wrongs, and personal anecdotes.
July 25, 2024
Quintessential reading for understanding trauma in Native communities today. Miranda traces her own family’s genealogy to follow the path of colonialism in California. Her personal touches, such as diary entries, poems, and stories, make this easily readable for a non-academic audience.
January 21, 2025
A really sad read but a really good one. So much love and hate at the same time contained by Miranda. Such a beautiful and artistic writer!!! She writes really articulately and honestly of colonial cycles of abuse and how they perpetuate themselves today.
August 10, 2023
Memoir/history book that was a bit disjointed - deliberately, I think, but this sometimes made it hard to focus. I enjoyed overall.
September 13, 2024
Had to read for class but it was really good. Not my fav style of book but the story is so important
March 24, 2021
This should be required reading for anyone who grew up in California and learned the sanitized history of the Missions in fourth grade.
November 16, 2024
read for my cluster + writing paper on it
still enjoyable. interesting format. feels. mildly repetitive but some parts hit really hard
still enjoyable. interesting format. feels. mildly repetitive but some parts hit really hard
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