Bad Indians: An Auto-Ethnographic Memoir of Survival

Year 2025, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 121 - 134, 27.02.2025

Esra Öztarhan

Abstract

Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir portrays the story of her life and the history of Californian Indians who had survived the literal and cultural genocide. It can be regarded as an auto-ethnographic text as she engaged in the narration as a witness and a researcher of her community. The paper aims to analyze her memoir using terminology created by Native American writer and critic Gerald Vizenor. He explains Native American literature with terms like survivance, postindian, and storying. Firstly, Miranda uses the memoir genre to construct a story about her people and family. In Vizenor’s terms, the storying is her tool for deconstructing the stories told by mainstream culture for centuries. Secondly, she is a postindian, someone who defies the established norms expected from Native Americans. She wants to correct the racist stereotypes about Native Americans as primitive, lazy, godless, and ugly people. Moreover, she resists the notion that their people were considered an extinct race. Lastly, the text unites her own experiences with the survival story of her tribe. This is the core of Vizenor’s concept of survivance, a word that combines the words survival and defiance as a continuation of existence and perseverance.

Keywords

Autoethnography, Indian American literature, memoir, hybrid text, Gerald Vizenor

Bad Indians: Oto-Etnografik bir Hayatta Kalma Hatırası

Abstract

Deborah Miranda’nın Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir kitabı kültürel ve fiziki soykırımlara rağmen hayatta kalan Kaliforniya Yerlilerinin ve yazarın yaşam öykülerini anlatır. Bu oto-etnografik bir metindi çünkü Miranda anlatıda hem yazar hem de araştırmacı olarak kendi toplumunu anlatır. Makalenin amacı bu anı kitabını Amerikan Yerlisi yazar ve kuramcı Gerald Vizenor’un yarattığı terminoloji ile analiz etmektir. Vizenor yazdığı çeşitli kurmaca ve kuram kitaplarında direnerek hayatta kalma (survivance), Amerikan Yerlisi sonrası (postindian), öykü anlatma (storyin) gibi terimler kullanmıştır. Öncelikle Miranda, kendisi ve kabilesi için bir öykü yaratmak istemiştir. Vizenor’un terimi ile bu öykü anlatma durumunun amacı yüzyıllardır baskın kültürün yarattığı öyküleri yapı bozuma uğratmaktır. İkinci olarak Miranda Amerikan yerlisi sonrası durumun bir temsilcisidir. Bu Amerikan yerlilerinden beklenen davranış ve inançlara uymama durumudur. Dolayısıyla yarattığı anı kitabıyla Miranda onlar için kullanılan ırkçı söylemleri eleştirir. Amerikan yerlilerinin ilkel, tembel, tanrısız ve çirkin insanlar oldukları görüşünü düzeltmek ister. Ayrıca soyları tükenmiş bir ırk olmadıklarını, hayatta kaldıklarını bu kitap ile açıklamak ister. Son olarak da bu kabile anısı olarak adlandırılan eser ile hem kendi topluluğunun hem de kendisinin yaşadığı anı ve travmalarla başa çıkmaya çalışır. Bu da Vizenor’un bahsettiği survivance teriminin gerçekleşmesidir. Bu terim hayatta kalma, karşı gelme ve azim kelimelerinden oluşur.

Keywords

Oto-etnografi, Amerikan Yerli edebiyatı, hatıra, melez metin, Gerald Vizenor

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