The Only Good Indians Commentary
SPOILERS AHEAD!
“What if every great once in a while an elk is special, right? What if there are wheels within wheels up there on the mountain, where ceremony used to take place? Was that unborn elk supposed to, Lewis doesn’t know, grow some monstrous rack, be a trophy for some twelve-year-old’s first kill? Was it supposed to be the big elk an old man chooses not to shoot on his last hunt? Was it supposed to clamber up onto a certain stretch of blacktop, wait for headlights to crunch into it? Was it supposed to find new and safer grass for the herd? Was it not even about the calf, but the mother?”
Stephen Graham Jones’s heart wrenching novel The Only Good Indians follows a group of Blackfeet friends, haunted by a past elk hunting trip. Lewis, Ricky, Cass, and Gabe sneak onto the elders’ land and discover a herd of elk, positioned perfectly for an ambush. In the fury of gunfire, they accidentally kill a pregnant elk— a mistake that will be their downfall. Jones’s horror story rips at your soul, reminding us that mistakes can be deadly and that our forebears’ mistakes return to us. And an animal’s bloodthirsty vengeance— a mother animal’s bloodthirsty vengeance— is a different beast than a human’s.
The depth of this book cannot be fully articulated by me. I haven’t the depth in me to even scratch the surface. But I’ll share with you a pine shaving of insight from my reading experience: the profound horror of being hunted. The Blackfeet hunters hunt the elk, then the elk hunts them. All within the context of white supremacy hunting them daily.
One excerpt stands out,
“It’s a good day to die.
I will fight no more forever.
The only good Indian is a dead Indian.
Kill the Indian, save the man.
Bury the hatchet.
Off the reservation.
Indian go home.
No Indians or dogs allowed.”
The author pieces together infamous quotes about American Indians Alaska Natives (AIAN). “I will fight no more forever,” was said by Nez Perce Chief Joseph in 1877 as he surrendered to Colonel Nelson Miles and General O. O. Howard after the Battle of the Bear Paw Mountains. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” (what the title is based on) comes from General Philip Sheridan in 1869 but proliferated widely in American media after that. And “Kill the Indian, save the man,” was R.H Pratt, the superintendent at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he focused on forcibly assimilating AIAN students to prepare them for mainstream, white, American life. Each line has its own history and connotations, most of which are associated with violence.
In the book, Denorah, a Blackfeet high school basketball prodigy and Gabe’s daughter, recites this like a poem in her mind, imagining what the other team’s fans will chant at an her Indian basketball team during their next game. This “steels” her against what she knows is coming. She determines,
“If the only good Indian is a dead one, then she’s going to be the worst Indian ever.”
This defiance in the face of violent white supremacy— hunting her and her people for centuries— is deeply satisfying to read and sets up a stance for our young character that helps her survive when her father’s mistakes are passed on to her, as Elk Head Woman hunts her down. And Elk Head Woman’s very existence is that same defiance. The mother elk fought against her killing.
We relive Elk Head Woman’s trauma from her death, as well as her baby’s death. The instinctual terror of not being able to protect your baby. Something sacred was broken when the hunters shot so indiscriminately, a light went dark. Just like when white invaders— the settlers and soldiers— targeted and hunted AIAN people, their families, their cultures, their tribes, their languages and religions, all of it. Nothing is sacred. The horror of the apocalypse spanning generations mirrors the horror of the elk hunt.
For readers who want a revenge-horror story that explores human-animal relationships, the ethics of hunting, and Blackfeet culture, this novel will satisfy and not leave you alone. You’ll be gnawing on its profoundness for weeks after reading.