[1] It combines different media and genres including oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, poems, and personal reflection to narrate the stories of Miranda's family, who were members of the Ohlone/Costanoan – Esselen Nation (a non-profit organization that self-identifies as a Native American tribe), along with the experiences of California Indigenous people from the time of the Spanish missions into the present.

And they were the same thing.”[5] In an interview Miranda expresses her inspiration with bringing together the pieces of her story: “Eventually, I remembered Gloria Anzaldua talking about how a mosaic is what you make out of broken pieces, and suddenly, it made sense: I couldn’t ‘reconstruct’ our culture, but I could gather what pieces I could find and try to create something new out of it.”[4] According to Lisa Udel, “Miranda works to counter pre-vailing narratives about Native people still evident in contemporary American culture—such as the California school curriculum’s fourth-grade ‘mission project’”[6] Miranda demonstrates how “the Mission Unit” promotes imperialist and racist ideologies, rather than portray an accurate history of California Missions.

[10] Miranda focuses on the daughter, recounting that, “Her face drained, her body went stiff, and she stared at me as if I had risen, an Indigenous skeleton clad in decrepit rags, from beneath the clay bricks of the courtyard.”[10] Regarding this story, Shanae A. Martinez notes that, “Miranda's living presence intervenes in the Mission Mythology, which denies the existence of any living Mission Indians and in effect denies their claims to land...she [] epitomizes the process by which settler-colonial metanarratives are institutionally authorized and internalized.”[8] As several critics note, the memoir demonstrates the power of stories and storytelling as vehicles for Indigenous people's histories and resistance.

[8] As Lisa J. Udel states, “Miranda reads Meadows’s use of Vicenta’s story as a form of community activism against ‘silence and lies.’”[6] It works and reworks the functions and expectations of storytelling, for as Furlan elaborates, “we are engaged in a very Indigenous practice: that of storytelling as education, as thought-experiment, as community action to right a wrong, as resistance to representation as victim.”[11] Through a variety of media, Bad Indians embodies both a fragmented and non-linear structure.

Kirkus Reviews called it “A searing indictment of the ravages of the past and a hopeful look at the courage to confront and overcome them.”[12] For her memoir Miranda won a 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal in the Autobiography/Memoir category.

Linda Hogan states that “...this book is groundbreaking not only as literature but as history” and Leslie Marmon Silko says “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.”[2] Beverly Slapin also states that “Miranda has created an achingly beautiful mosaic out of the broken shards of her people and herself.”[18]