User:Silevrenniel/The Only Good Indians

Blackfeet Culture
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.

Title
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.

Elk
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. 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
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.

Violence and Womanhood
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.

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.