2025/069: The Only Good Indians — Stephen Graham Jones

[tamaranth]

2025/069: The Only Good Indians — Stephen Graham Jones

“Why are you doing all this?” If you tell him, he would get to die knowing it was all for a reason, that this has been a circle, closing. Which would be more than you ever got, that day in the snow. [p. 247]

Four young Blackfeet men once went hunting in winter on restricted ground, breaking an important tribal code. Ten years later, Ricky dies in a brawl outside a bar; Gabe is an alcoholic who seldom sees his daughter Denorah; Cass is planning to propose to his girlfriend Jo; and Lewis is married to a white woman. But Lewis starts to hallucinate a dead elk, and then his dog dies horribly.

It's a novel of three parts: Lewis' descent into madness and paranoia; the story of a young woman who becomes interested in a sweat lodge ritual that Gabe and Cass are planning; and Gabe's daughter Denorah, star basketball player, fleeing something terrible. The characterisation is subtle, and the events of a decade ago are revealed only gradually. Themes of family, cultural heritage, alcoholism, racism, the environment...

... and, oh yes: violence against women (and other females). It all starts with that hunting trip, and the age-old prohibition against killing a pregnant animal. The vengeance enacted on those who slew her is one matter, but they aren't the only victims: the women close to them, uninvolved in the original slaughter, also meet horrific fates. It's not really fridging: it's not a motivation for the male protagonists. It's just ... collateral damage.

This, I suppose, is folk horror in an American context, or a Native American context: Jones, like his protagonists, is a Blackfeet Native American -- and an elk hunter, apparently, which might be why that scene is so very vivid. I loved the prose, and the dialogue, and the little details: I hated the deaths of the innocent. And I'd like to read more of Jones' work, but I shall be wary of collateral damage.

Comments

A Thought on Collateral Damage

[tuesdayritual]

I loved this book! So happy to see it reviewed here and can cosign it as an excellent piece of indigi-horror.

Here be (potential) spoilers...

I wonder if the collateral damage that the antagonist inflicts on the women (and children) of the boys-cum-elk killers is not even considered because of the way that her own child was treated.

Perhaps in the vein of an eye for an eye, yes, but I also think of it as a kind of commentary on the way that both Native Americans had violence inflicted on them by the colonialists and then the way that violence is now both self-inflicted and often domestically inflicted as well. Very “hurt people hurt people.”

The American federal government has often tried to erase Native Americans through the historic reservation programs, where nations were frog-marched out West under the authority of Andrew Jackson; use of “blood quantum,” suggesting that any indigenous persons under (I believe) two-thirds blood could now be considered white; and the relocation program of the ’40s through ’60s, where Native Americans were moved off the rez and into the cities. This was all done in the name of capturing “pristine wilderness,” natural resources. As Vine Deloria Jr. says in Custer Died for Your Sins, by assimilating Native Americans and turning them “white,” it becomes much easier to help yourself to their land.

And what were these boys doing at the start? Capturing natural resources in the form of an irresponsible elk hunt. They ignored the traditional ways and innocent bystanders were harmed — first on the side of the elks and then on the side of the boys. To one who has lost the most meaningful thing — legacy, a descendant, and a way of life — there is no such thing as an innocent bystander, no such thing as a life collateral damage. It becomes vengeance, all the way down. It also becomes a way to stop your enemies from doing further irreparable harm to your people.

One of the things I love the most about Stephen Graham Jones is that his horror works on so many levels, each more beautiful and cunning than the last. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on his work in the future (if you can stomach the deaths)!