Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir
Miranda is a poet and English professor whose father was a member of the Ohlone Castanoan Esselen tribe of California Indians. She realized early on that the history traditionally taught to California fourth-graders, the “California mission mythology and gold rush fantasy,” described California Indians only through their conquest, subjugation, defeat, and disappearance. This clarifying compilation of old government documents, BIA forms, field notes like those written by Smithsonian ethnologist J. P. Harrington in the 1930s, diaries of explorers and priests, family stories, photos, and newspaper articles, all tied together with Miranda’s own poems, is her attempt to correct that one-dimensional, untrue depiction of what her ancestors experienced. She begins with the missionization years, 1770 to 1836, the “great holocaust,” when the indigenous population in California dropped from one million to 20,000. The years 1836 to 1900 bring reports of slavery and bounty hunters; then, throughout the twentieth century, California Indians gradually lost their language, culture, and identity. Miranda’s is an emotional, powerfully told story that contributes greatly to her goal of “killing the lies” about her people. --Deborah Donovan