Bad Indians, a Poem by Ryan Red Corn, Essay Example

 “Bad Indians” is a poem by Ryan Red Corn that addresses the state of Native Americans in the United States today. The poem’s main argument is that Native Americans have been exploited as a people and their language has been lost, but they are still here “alive and kicking” and have something to say. The following will taken a deeper look at that some of those statements are in an attempt to better understand the deeper concepts presented by the poem. I will provide my immediate response, as well as my personal reflection.

The poem opens with the line “I was told by those ones, that every song has a special time and a place where its sang this our song” (Red Corn, 1). The author then goes on to point out that “good Indians” in the past have been viewed as “dead Indians,” or in other words Indians have been depicted as the enemy and not worthy of existence. The poem has powerful statements in respect to the state of Native Americans in America, like, “there is no history book with my story,” and “the balls of your forefathers will be traded for whiskey to fuel the Molotov cocktails to be tossed at your cities” (Red Corn, 1). Both of these lines depict the main premise of the entire poem, which is that Native Americans have been stripped of their identity and provided a new one that has resulted in their own destruction. The poem makes this argument while simultaneously saying the culture has not been completely been destroyed, it’s consciously aware of how it has been attacked, and it’s alive and well.

There are many potent lines in the poem but the main line I feel represents the main argument of the poem is “forgive me as I cut out your tongue, forgive me as I put you in this powdered wig, forgive me when I put your body in a museum, forgive me of all my sins, for not being a good Indian” (Red Corn, 1). When Red Corn states “forgive me for not being a good Indian,” he is referring to a line he states in the opening of the poem where he states they used to say the only good Indians are dead ones. The author then makes the point that he is not a good Indian because he is alive and kicking. The response I have to this is that the poem, by making this statement, exemplifies pride in being Native American within a society that has imposed shame on its race and obscured its culture in the public eye.

As I reflect on this poem, I face the reality that I have known little about Native American culture beyond the same stereotypes that are put under fire in the poem. It is clear that the author seeks to change some opinions about the Native American community but the most important statement in my opinion is the idea that the language has been lost or forgotten. The first feeling I had when watching the video of the poem was not being able to readily identify what the topic was, or the nationalities of many of the individuals depicted in the video. At first glance, I identified two people as Native American, one person as being a white American and the rest as being of Spanish dissent. Something I found most ironic is that the individual I perceived as the white, or person from Anglo-Saxon dissent, was Ryan Red Corn, the author of the poem. The way this made me feel by the end of the poem was that the point itself was made, largely due to the fact that I realized the culture had been obscured in my eyes, and it was one present in front of me in society on a daily basis, and it was one of which I was completely unaware.

Work Cited

Red Corn, Ryan. “Bad Indians”