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 …show more content…
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” …show more content…
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