Wikipedia

The Only Good Indians

This article is about the 2020 horror novel. For 2009 American independent Western film, see The Only Good Indian. For the American aphorism, see Philip Sheridan § Indian Wars.

The Only Good Indians is a 2020 horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones.[1] It was first published on July 14, 2020, through Saga Press and Titan Books.[2] This novel follows four members of the Blackfeet Nation as they come to terms with events that happened ten years prior.[3]

The Only Good Indians
First edition
AuthorStephen Graham Jones
PublisherSaga Press
Publication date
July 14, 2020
Media typePrint (hardback), ebook, audiobook
Pages320 pages
ISBN1982136456 First edition hardcover
OCLC1196827160
Preceded byMapping the Interior 
Followed byMy Heart is a Chainsaw 

Plot

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A Blackfeet man named Ricky leaves a bar and finds an elk stumbling into several cars in the parking lot, damaging them. Ricky is caught outside with the damaged cars by the white bar-goers, and chased by them into a field, where he sees the reflections of the eyes of a herd of elk. Ricky is beaten to death.

Lewis, one of Ricky's childhood friends, has likewise since moved off their reservation and married a white woman named Peta. One night, while fixing a malfunctioning overhead fan light, Lewis sees the image of a dead elk on the floor below and almost falls to his death, saved by Peta at the last moment. To Peta and his coworker Shaney, a Crow woman, Lewis shamefully recounts an incident in his adolescence, where Lewis, Ricky, and their friends Gabe and Cass pursued a herd of elk into the elders' section of the reservation, where they were not legally or traditionally allowed to hunt, and shoot a large number of unsuspecting elk. Lewis is disturbed that one of the shot elk, a young female, has not died, and shoots her several more times before discovering that she is pregnant. After burying the fetus, he commits to using every portion of the mother elk and giving her meat away to the elders, but the four are stopped at their truck by the game warden and forced to dispose of the elk.

Lewis and Peta's dog is found hanged by its rope in their backyard in an apparent accident, still alive. They attempt to nurse the dog back to health, but Lewis finds the dog brutally stomped to death one morning with a pair of boots he and Peta keep in their garage. Plagued by paranoia that the elk from his adolescence has returned for revenge, Lewis becomes suspicious of Shaney's behavior, and is convinced she is the embodiment of the elk spirit. He invites her over and engineers an accident with his motorcycle that brutally kills her. When Peta returns home, Lewis startles her while she is working on the ceiling fan light, causing her to fall and fatally hit her head. He removes both Shaney and Peta's teeth to look for ivory as proof that they are elk, and noticing that Peta appears to be pregnant, cuts an elk calf out of her body. With the calf, he flees towards the reservation through the wilderness, before being shot to death in the ensuing manhunt. The elk spirit, Po'noka, is revealed to be real, and seeking to kill all of the friends to avenge her herd and her calf. She is rapidly growing into a human woman's appearance, and hitchhikes back to the reservation.

Cass and Gabe, who still live on the reservation, are preparing for a sweat lodge ceremony hosted by Cass. Gabe, now an alcoholic absentee father, stops to see his daughter Denorah before her basketball game later that day. They make a bet over Denorah's free throws, which she wins. Cass and Gabe begin the sweat with Nathan Yellow Tail, the troubled son of local cop Victor Yellow Tail. While they are in the sweat lodge, Victor is attacked by the elk spirit. Gabe leaves the lodge to pee and finds Cass' dogs badly bludgeoned; he mercy-kills the final dog with a rock, and decides not to tell Cass until they are done. Returning to the lodge, he brings an old thermos he finds for a water scoop, which Cass recognizes as the hiding place where he keeps his money and an engagement ring he bought for his girlfriend Jo. Believing that Gabe stole the money and engagement ring, and finding his dogs dead outside, Cass starts a violent fight with Gabe. Gabe rocks Cass' fixer-upper truck off its cinderblocks, unaware that Cass' girlfriend Jo is hiding underneath, crushing and killing her. Cass attempts to shoot Gabe, but instead hits what appears to be Denorah, and in his guilt allows Gabe to beat him to death. Gabe discovers that Cass had actually shot Nathan, and they are approached by the elk spirit, who agrees to spare Denorah if Gabe kills himself. However, once Gabe does so, she acknowledges that she plans to kill Denorah regardless, as Denorah is Gabe's calf.

Denorah arrives to collect her winnings from the bet, and meets the elk headed woman disguised as Shaney. The elk spirit tells Denorah the men are out on the horses, and challenges her to an intense game of basketball. Eventually the elk spirit is unable to hide her nature anymore due to her injuries, and transforms into an elk-headed figure with the body of a woman, beginning a long pursuit of Denorah through the snowy reservation. Denorah encounters Nathan, extremely wounded on one of the horses, and sends him back to town to alert her stepfather. At the end of her endurance, Denorah stumbles into the site of the elk massacre from her father's youth. The elk headed woman catches up to her but becomes preoccupied with the site where Lewis buried her calf fetus, and from the ground births a living calf. Denorah's stepfather, the same game warden that interrupted her father's hunt, arrives to save her, but Denorah stops him from killing the elk headed woman and her calf, ending the cycle. The elk spirit sheds her humanity, and retreats into the wilderness as an elk again with her calf.

Themes

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Blackfeet Culture

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Stephen Graham Jones, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, uses his characters and his novel to pay tribute to Blackfeet culture, practices, and life on the reservation all while tackling themes such as leaving the reservation, marriage to a white woman, representation in sports, and addiction. Two of the largest themes are directly displayed on the novel cover; the title and the elk.[4]

Title

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The title of the novel references a significant theme of the novel, that being a recurring reference to the malicious invective “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” This hateful proverb has been in circulation within the United States since General Philip Sheridan’s first use of it in the 1860s. The phrase has been used across media and literature since, and through The Only Good Indians, Jones continues to address the use of such slurs against Native populations.[5]

Elk

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Another major theme is that of the elk. Many Native American Tribes, such as Shawnee, Cree, and Lakota, hold the elk in very high esteem. The elk is seen as a survivor and also a protector, playing key roles in stories of oral tradition, typically roles that present teaching opportunities.[6] In this novel, the elk is not only a teacher, but an avenger; an entity that lives to make the characters atone for their wrongdoings.

Environmental fears

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Carlos Tkacz asserts that this novel is a form of ecohorror: a genre of horror that contends with and responds to fears about Earth’s climate and environment. He writes that the novel deals with fears of environmental destruction and that Jones combines awareness of modern ecological issues with the history of violence against indigenous peoples.[7]

Violence and Womanhood

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The novel also contends with the theme of womanhood and violence against indigenous women. The elk head woman loses her calf in the elk death scene and inhabits a human woman’s body for the second half of the novel. The scene where her calf is cut out of her body after her original death is similar to the scene where Lewis kills Peta and cuts the elk calf out of her corpse.

Denorah also follows a path that is similar to the “final girl” horror trope in the novel.[8]

In this novel, the elk also occupies a similar role to the mythical figure of the Deer Woman that is present in many Indigenous cultures, who commonly acts as a symbol of fertility or a creature that leads men to their death by seducing them.[9][10]

Development

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Jones stated that the idea for The Only Good Indians likely began to develop while he and his wife were renting a home in Gunbarrel, Colorado. He also believes that the genesis of the book may have been from an event in his childhood, where his uncle stopped him from hunting a mother grizzly bear.[11]

The plot of The Only Good Indians revolves around the tragic events of a hunt years prior. Having participated in elk hunts on reservation lands since the age of 12, Jones drew from his personal experience to illustrate such an accurate and haunting situation. The core of the novel, however, comes from a time in which Jones moved from West Texas to Colorado. Jones could not transport the frozen elk meat he had leftover from previous hunts, leaving him no option but to go door-to-door giving the elk meat away. Jones stated that he felt so poorly not knowing exactly what happened to the elk, thus not fulfilling his promise to himself or his wife to use the whole elk after the hunt.[12]

Jones has noted that the novel was somewhat of a departure from his normal writings, a process that he enjoyed, and that the book "came in three parts". He found writing on hunting to be the biggest challenge as he can "fake it on cars and fake it on people, but I have to get it right for the hunters.”[13]

Release

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The Only Good Indians was published in hardback and e-book formats on July 14, 2020, through Saga Press.[2] An audiobook adaptation narrated by Shaun Taylor-Corbett was released simultaneously through Simon & Schuster Audio.[14] The novel was also released in the United Kingdom through Titan Books on July 21, 2020.[15][16]

Reception

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The novel received reviews from outlets such as The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, the latter of which wrote that the novel "strains to weave a horror story with robust character studies. In the end, there is enough in each strand to appeal to both the genre fan and the literary reader, even if neither is fully reconciled to the other."[17][18] NPR praised Jones as "one of the best writers working today regardless of genre" and stating that "Besides the creeping horror and gory poetry, The Only Good Indians does a lot in terms of illuminating Native American life from the inside, offering insights into how old traditions and modern living collide in contemporary life."[19]

Accolades

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Year Award Result Ref
2020 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense Shortlisted [20]
Bram Stoker Award Novel Won [21]
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Ray Bradbury Prize Won [22]
Goodreads Choice Award Horror Nominated—5th [23]
Shirley Jackson Award Novel Won [24]
2021 Alex Award — Won [25]
Locus Award Horror Novel Nominated—2nd [26]
World Fantasy Award Novel Shortlisted [27]

References

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  1. ^ "Get a first look at 'The Only Good Indians,' one of 2020's buzziest horror novels". EW.com. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  2. ^ a b Jones, Stephen Graham (2020). The only good Indians : a novel. New York, New York: Gallery / Saga Press. ISBN 978-1-9821-3645-1. OCLC 1105935531.
  3. ^ Iglesias, Gabino (July 16, 2020). "Grief And Guilt Spawn Horrors In 'The Only Good Indians'". npr.org. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
  4. ^ Iglesias, Gabino (July 16, 2020). "Grief And Guilt Spawns Horrors In 'The Only Good Indians'". NPR.
  5. ^ Mieder, Wolfgang (Winter 1993). ""The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian": History and Meaning of a Proverbial Stereotype". The Journal of American Folklore. 106 (419): 38–60. doi:10.2307/541345. JSTOR 541345.
  6. ^ Hope, Native. "Native American Animals: the Elk, a Protector and Relative". blog.nativehope.org. Retrieved 2024-05-01.
  7. ^ Tkacz, Carlos (2023-08-30). ""Not the End of the Trail:" Violence, MMIW, and Environment in Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians". ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. doi:10.1093/isle/isad056. ISSN 1076-0962.
  8. ^ Clover, Carol J. (2015-01-31). Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6611-3.
  9. ^ Allen, Paula Gunn (1993). Grandmothers of the light: a medicine woman's sourcebook. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-8103-7.
  10. ^ Tkacz, Carlos (2023-08-30). ""Not the End of the Trail:" Violence, MMIW, and Environment in Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians". ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. doi:10.1093/isle/isad056. ISSN 1076-0962.
  11. ^ Miller, Max (2020-05-18). "On Being A Good Indian: An Interview With Stephen Graham Jones". Columbia Journal. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  12. ^ Press, Montana (2021-04-20). "Rez Gothic: Stephen Graham Jones". Montana Press. Retrieved 2024-05-01.
  13. ^ "Stephen Graham Jones On Book 'The Only Good Indians': 'I Want To Show The World The American Indians They Don't Expect'". Denver CBS. 2020-07-16. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  14. ^ The only good Indians, 2020, ISBN 978-1-7971-0556-7, OCLC 1156344931, retrieved 2020-10-09
  15. ^ Graham Jones, Stephen. (2020). The Only Good Indians. La Vergne: Titan Books. ISBN 978-1-78909-530-2. OCLC 1181840786.
  16. ^ Graham Jones, Stephen (2020). ONLY GOOD INDIANS. [Place of publication not identified]: TITAN Books LTD. ISBN 978-1-78909-529-6. OCLC 1139891314.
  17. ^ González, Rigoberto (2020-07-15). "A Native horror story re-appropriates a racist trope: the 'Indian curse'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  18. ^ Toll, Martha Anne (July 16, 2020). "'The Only Good Indians,' by Stephen Graham Jones book review". The Washington Post.
  19. ^ Iglesias, Gabino (July 16, 2020). "Grief And Guilt Spawn Horrors In 'The Only Good Indians'". NPR. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  20. ^ "Announcing the Goodreads Choice Winner in Best Horror!". Goodreads. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
  21. ^ Templeton, Molly (2021-06-01). "Announcing the 2020 Bram Stoker Awards Winners". Tor.com.
  22. ^ Pineda, Dorany (2021-04-17). "Winners of the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prizes announced". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2021-04-17.
  23. ^ "Announcing the Goodreads Choice Winner in Best Horror!". Goodreads. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
  24. ^ "The Shirley Jackson Awards". Retrieved 2021-09-15.
  25. ^ Young Adult Library Services Association (2012-02-27). "Alex Awards". American Library Association. Retrieved 2021-05-04.
  26. ^ "2021 Locus Awards Winners". Locus Online. 2021-06-26. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
  27. ^ Community (2021-07-22). "2021 World Fantasy Awards Finalists Announced". BOOK RIOT. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
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