Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living in Two Worlds

by Diana Meyers Bahr

A Native American woman who endured forced assimilation in an Indian boarding school shares her story of living between two worlds--Indian and white. (Biography)

202 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2003

Reviews

[Pessick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the life that Viola Martinez lived. This book is biography. She was raised by her elderly Aunt Mary Ann Brazonovich, also a native Paiute of the Owens Valley and the Bishop area for the first 10 years of her life. Her Aunt explained that Paiutes take care of each other like the are family, so it really was not important to know who your blood parents are. She had many uncles. She never knew her father and her mother died when she was a toddler. At 10 she was sent to the the Sherman Indian Boarding School where she had no visitors for over 5 years. She learned that getting good at the language, English, was the key to her success and she did well in school. The story follows her from getting the Sherman School to send her to college, which was a very unusual occurence to her getting jobs to support herself, returning to her beloved Paiute family/tribe in Bishop and Owens Valley, getting married, a raising a family and finally becoming a very respected teacher in Los Angeles and helping to create an Indian Church. She was truly a leader in both her native community and the mainstream community. She died at 92 with many accomplishments.

[Steve P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially, the retelling of Viola Martinez's oral history. Published in 2003, it's sobering to think that she was removed from her family to be sent away to Native Boarding School less than 100 years prior. Diana Meyers Bahr does credible work to reconstruct family and community relations amidst a systemic marginalization of the Northern Paiutes of the Owens Valley.

Martinez overcame structural and systemic racism to become a social worker, justice advocate and government manager. She passed away in 2010. Her story is inspirational and should be more widely known.

[Maria Vargas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It does hold some really good content in it and it was nice to read for my course but I don't think I'd ever reread this. It has too much intervention from the author and disrupts from Viola's life. It does have some really good information in regards to the Indian boarding schools and it sets a really nice foreground for the other stories that follow about Viola's life.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bahr argues Martinez is able to "live in two worlds" by growing up as a California Paiute Indian before becoming assimilated in a boarding school. This is a unique autobiography, because not only are stories told from Martinez's perspective, but then explained through Bahr; for better or worse. What begins as a half study on Indian assimilation becomes a hopeful story, not only for Indians, but for anyone who might feel marginalized or oppressed.