Bad NDNs: 10/4/09

Deborah A. Miranda is the author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (HeyDay Press January 2013). Her collection of essays, The Hidden Stories of Isabel Meadows and Other California Indian Lacunae is under contract with U of Nebraska Press.

“Essential for all of us who were taught in school that the ‘Mission Indians’ no longer existed in California, Bad Indians combines tribal and family histories, tape recordings, and the writings of a white ethnologist who spoke with Miranda’s family, together with photographs, old reports from the mission priests to their bishops, and newspaper articles concerning Indians from the nearby white settlements. Miranda takes us on a journey to locate herself by way of the stories of her ancestors and others who come alive through her writing. It’s such a fine book that a few words can’t do it justice.”

—Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony and The Turquoise Ledge

“Bad Indians brings the human story of California’s indigenous community sharply into focus. It’s a narrative long obscured and distorted by celebrations of Christian missionaries and phony stories about ‘civilization’ coming to a golden land. No other history of California’s indigenous communities that I know of presents such a moving, personal account of loss and survival.”

—Frederick E. Hoxie, Swanlund Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“For so long, Native writers and readers open books of our tribal history, archaeology, or anthropology and find that it is not the story we know. It does not include the people we know. It does not tell the stories of the heart or the relationships that were, and are, significant in any time. When we write our own books, they do not fit the ‘record,’ as created by and confirmed by outside views. From the voice of the silenced, the written about and not written by, this book is groundbreaking not only as literature but as history.” —Linda Hogan, author of the Pulitzer Prize–nominated Rounding the Human Corners and a faculty member for the Indigenous Education Institute

As Associate Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, Deborah teaches Creative Writing (poetry and memoir), composition, and literature.

Bad Indians Links

Monday, October 5, 2009

Four Things You Can Do With Your Chart for Calculating Quantum of Indian Blood

The Geneaology of Violence

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