The Loss of Culture and the Pursuit of the Past in 'Bad Indians' Anonymous College

In Bad Indians, Miranda argues that, “Culture is ultimately lost when we stop telling the stories of who we are, where we have been, how we arrived here, what we once knew, what we wish we knew; when we stop our retelling of the past, our imagining of our future, and the long, long task of inventing an identity every single second of our lives” (5). The California Indians were thought to be non-existent since their culture and language were destroyed after the missions failed and since their language was gone, white people and even other Indians believed that their culture was also gone. This is the proposition that Miranda argues against in her memoir. The California Indians didn’t write literature because education and literacy was kept painful and undesirable by the way it was forced upon the California Indians and their stories were considered unacceptable.

Miranda argues that ‘California is a story’, saying that depending on the story that you hear, you can have a different view of the state and of California Indians in particular. She has heard only bad stories about her people for years and that affected the way that she grew up, similarly to how hearing only good things would have had a different but equally powerful...