Nestor Wu / Staff Reporter

The Only Good Indians is a thrilling horror novel about revenge, reconciliation, and generational roles and responsibilities, as four hunters must come to terms with their past coming back to haunt them.

The Only Good Indians is a horror novel written by Steven Graham Jones released on July 14, 2020. The novel has since been nominated and won countless awards such as, The Bram Stroker Award, Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction, and many more.

Jones is an American Indigenous horror author who has written a total of 42 books as of 2024. Some of his other well known works include My Heart is a Chainsaw, and Don’t Fear the Reaper.

He grew up in West Texas as a member of the Blackfoot tribe, and now lives in Boulder, Colorado where he is a Humanities professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Steven Graham Jones has won many prestigious awards such as the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award for his work, and is well known in the Indigenous horror literature community.

The Only Good Indians begins when four Blackfeet hunters: Richard Boss Ribs, Lewis A. Clark, Gabe Cross Guns, and Cassidy Sees Elk, decide to go hunt on elder reserved property. However, their experiences quickly escalate from a hunt to a massacre as the hunters recklessly kill an entire herd of elk.

This event wouldn’t come without consequences, as an elk spirit from a killed mother elk comes back to life to gain revenge on the four hunters, starting with Ricky.

Years after the incident, Ricky mysteriously dies outside a bar. The rest of the hunters have been moving on and forgetting about their juvenile past. However, they are soon to realize that the past is catching up with them when Lewis starts to experience elk hauntings of his own in the form of an elk headed woman.

As the hauntings take more and more of a toll on Lewis, he becomes paranoid, suspecting that even his own wife could be the cause of all this. Lewis is soon to realize that cause of the hauntings is much deeper than he anticipated and if he doesn’t reconcile with the past, Gabe and Cass will become the next victims.

The Only Good Indians continues to delve into dark and gritty horror with its common themes of revenge, especially with the elk spirit stopping at nothing to slowly chip away each hunter’s sanity to the brink of death.

Some of the novel’s other themes also reflect important aspects of The First Peoples Principles of Learning: learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions, and learning involves recognizing the importance of generational roles and responsibilities.

The First Peoples Principles of Learning

The theme and principle of learning from consequences is seen within the main plot line as the four main hunters learn from their violent actions against nature. In the process, the theme of learning from generational roles and responsibilities is also played out.

When the hunters disregard prior elder knowledge of respecting the elk population, they not only turn a blind eye to generational responsibilities of hunting, but also have affected many generations of elk and people by massacring a valuable natural resource. This concept is also be taken further when Lewis kills the mother elk who has an unborn calf, who represents how future generations can suffer from thoughtless actions in the present.

The novel not only sheds light on brutal and violent horror, but also real social problems that indigenous communities face across North America. Topics such as drug abuse, alcoholism, economic divide, colonialism, gender relations, and social stigmas are all topics of discussion within The Only Good Indians.

The Only Good Indians manages to achieve something that can be very difficult in literature, that of encapsulating the feeling of suspense while providing important social commentary.

As the chapters move on, the sense of uncertainty with the main characters constantly builds as the Elk Head Woman stops at nothing to fulfill her revenge.  Jones provides a thrilling storyline while brilliantly tying together an indigenous point of view on social, cultural, and historical issues.

One example is directly in the title: The Only Good Indians. The title originates from the quote: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” from a colonialist army general  Philip Sheridan which reflects the historical and modern day prejudice against Indigenous communities.

In the book, the main characters all struggle to find what it means to be a “good Indian” especially during their hunt as teenagers. During their fateful hunting episode, their idea of what it means to be a “good Indian” appears ironically, to reflect colonialist ideals.

“Lewis, knowing that this was how you got to be a good Indian, finally remembered how to jack a round in.”

Steven Graham Jones

Essentially the hunters equated the idea of killing more elk with being a better Indian, which is oddly similar to Sheridan’s idea that killing more natives makes him a better colonial army general.

Each hunter’s chain of actions, and the subsequent consequences, stem from this mistaken sense of identity. Even though they struggle against colonial attitudes, they still think of themselves based on a white person’s definition.

Socially, the question of what it means to be a “good Indian” influences the decisions made by the main characters, consciously or not.

Denorah, Gabe’s daughter and a key character we see later in the book, remembers the quote “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” as her older athlete sister used to hear it during games against non-Indigenous basketball teams.

Unlike the four hunters, Denorah doesn’t buy into it, but instead uses the quote to motivate herself to improve her athletic skill to obtain a college scholarship.

“Bring it, Denorah says in her head, and drops another through the net. If the only good Indian is a dead one, then she’s going to be the worst Indian ever.”

Steven Graham Jones

Denorah chooses to live by her own definition of herself, rather than follow someone else’s the blatantly wrong definition of what a “good Indian” is. She instead uses the insult to propel herself to become a stronger person.

In conclusion, Jones’ The Only Good Indians,­ is a thrilling, brutal, intelligent horror novel that mixes a telling story, along with powerful themes. The detail in the many of the scenes and the plot makes for an exciting read, with the book delving into deep topics with many themes and fleshed-out characters.

However, with so many elements packed into each chapter, the book requires the reader to be able to put the pieces together. The number of metaphors and the inferences required to understand the novel might make it difficult to understand, especially during the first half. However, as the action picks up, the book is hard to put down.

For young adults into horror media, detailed themes, and social commentary, this book is absolutely recommended.

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