Government

After reading “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire” and “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie, I noticed that they both mentioned BIA at the beginning. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was a federal agency that did not have a great relationship with the Native Americans back then. I think the two characteristics that would best describe the BIA are hostile and discriminative. The criminal justice system treatment towards Thomas is the same as the BIA’s treatment towards Thomas, because they both have bias against Native Americans. When the BIA officers where talking about Thomas, they already started coming up with ideas of why he was on trail, “What charges should we bring him up on? Inciting a riot? Kidnapping? Extortion? Maybe murder?”(p.140). The BIA officers also said some discriminatory things towards Thomas, “Well,” they all agreed. “It has to be a felony charge. We don’t need his kind around here anymore”(p.140-141). During court I think that Judge already labeled Thomas as guilty even though the judge didn’t know what exactly happened and why Thomas did what he did. The Judge also got defensive when Thomas questioned the court’s administration of justice, “…Is that real justice or the idea of justice?” Thomas asked him, and the judge flew back into anger. “Defense testimony is over, he said. “Mr. Builds-the-Fire, you will now be cross-examined” (p.147).