The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones: Review & Analysis
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
Lives fixated on death (vs basketball), with a 2026 sequel on the way
Indigenous Horror
I read Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians (2020) for a recent book club and felt compelled to discuss it briefly here. Despite it not being a flashy new release itself, the novel does have a sequel coming later this year: Off the Reservation (2026) will pick up with one of the surviving characters a few years after the events of this first book.
Stephen Graham Jones is also the author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025), a critically acclaimed masterpiece which recently won the Bram Stoker and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. I took a close look at the book's morals and depictions of history and of vampires back in December, which you can find here.
SGJ is a truly prolific author, having published over thirty novels, novellas and short story collections since the year 2000. (As a matter of fact, he announced another new novella while I was in the process of writing this article.) He is also fiercely dedicated to this genre of Indigenous Horror, portraying genuine Indigenous experiences through the lens of supernatural terror, and pulling from traditional Indigenous storytelling to do so.
June is also National Indigenous History Month in Canada, and I'd recommend this book to anyone with the stomach for it! Even if you're not a horror fan, consider reading other books by Indigenous authors: I've written about Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves and am a big fan of Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning and Tanya Tagaq's Split Tooth. (I also just read Billy-Ray Belcourt's A Minor Chorus and enjoyed it, though it's quite a heady, philosophical experience.) I'm always looking to expand my horizons, so feel free to send any other recommendations my way!
But without further ado, let's head into spoilers for The Only Good Indians.
Cyclical Violence
Fundamentally, and as I'll discuss more in the next section, The Only Good Indians is about the inherent conflict and claustrophobic nature of Indigenous Peoples trying to navigate life on and off of reservations.
It is also essentially a slasher, with most of its characters simply trying to avoid violent ends rather than doing much learning and planning in their own right—like if King Sorrow was told from the perspective of the dragon's victims, rather than of his summoners. As a result, the plot is fairly straightforward—though its supernatural mechanics remain quite fluid and vague.
Ten years before the beginning of the story, four young Blackfeet men—Ricky, Lewis, Gabe and Cass—were hunting on the last day of the season and were impatient to make names for themselves as men and provide for their communities. Thinking no one would know the difference, they entered an area of hunting ground traditionally and legally reserved for elders and quickly stumbled upon an entire peaceful herd of elk.
Unthinkingly, the four did what they had been preparing all their lives to do and massacred the confused herd even as the weather took a severe turn to a blizzard. Against all odds, Lewis sees one young elk survived and shoots it several more times before realizing it was pregnant. He insists on burying the fetus and taking every part of the mother even as his friends realize they won't be able to carry out the vast majority of the herd if they hope to get their truck out of the quickly deepening snow. In the end, they're caught by the reservation's game warden and are only allowed to take away the elk mother.
In the present-day prologue, we see Ricky murdered by a mob outside of a bar who blame him for damaging their vehicles—though from his point of view we see a large elk was truly responsible. We see Lewis begin experiencing visions of the dead elk mother, and watch over the course of chapters as his paranoia grows and grows, suspecting both his new co-worker Shaney and his wife Peta of being manifestations of the elk come to torment him. He ultimately kills both of them and tries to run back to the reservation before being stopped and gunned down by police. (He takes an elk calf from Peta's apparently pregnant body and it escapes after he's shot, quickly growing into the Elk Head Woman who is indeed here for revenge.)
Gabe and Cass remain on the reservation, and we find them preparing a sweat ceremony for Nate, a troubled young man from their tribe. Gabe is the absentee father of Denorah, a fourteen-year-old basketball player who quickly becomes the actual protagonist of the book. A long and tense scene at the sweat lodge sees the Elk Head Woman manage to manipulate Gabe and Cass into conflict with each other. Gabe murders Cass, thinking he'd shot Denorah, then shoots himself on the Elk Head Woman's promise that doing so would stop her from going after his actual daughter.
Denorah arrives in the morning to check in on the sweat and quickly realizes the Elk Head Woman (disguised as Shaney) is more than she appears. She runs, challenges the monster to a basketball contest, and runs some more, finally arriving at the scene of the elk massacre. Her adopted father arrives—the same game warden, though I'm only realizing that now—alerted by a barely surviving Nate, and is prepared to shoot the Elk Head Woman, but Denorah stops him, and in doing so stops the cycle of generational violence that had encompassed them.
Living up to Expectations
Cycles are important to much of Indigenous storytelling, and I think Stephen Graham Jones employs them powerfully here. The four men's massacre of the elk herd was an act of instinct, but was built upon lifetimes of their society defining what a successful young man looks like—even though that definition had grown further and further from actual, respectful traditions. When the cycle turns and the Elk Head Woman comes seeking revenge, she does so following the same terms as were dealt to her: almost thoughtless death, without mercy.
Though, one of the most fascinating parts of this book to me is how the Elk Head Woman (and whatever metaphysical form she took before being birthed from Peta) manipulates the four men into violence and death, rather than getting her own hands or antlers dirty. Does she recognize that they were also (arguably) societally manipulated into massacring the herd? Thus shaping her cyclical revenge in the same way? She certainly seems intent on personally killing Denorah, perhaps reflecting Lewis personally burying her own elk fetus?
By far the most powerful motif, in my opinion, is that of imagined news headlines. Before he dies in the prologue, Ricky pictures the headline "Indian Man Killed in Dispute Outside Bar"—knowing that his subjective life and current supernatural terror will be reduced to a nameless statistic. Lewis does the same, though his imagined headlines are more focused on being seen as representative of or otherwise betraying his people—constantly seeing himself through the white/American gaze and guilt for having left the reservation.
And of course, Gabe and Cass do learn of their friends' deaths from very similar headlines, demonstrating that this isn't paranoia but simply frustration with reality. Though these two are less prone to such imaginings—generally being less interested in or exposed to those perspectives since they've always lived on the reservation—Gabe does envision all the reasons he'll be blamed for the sweat lodge massacre:
"He's the one they're going to say did it, who cares why. Because he's an Indian with a Bad Track Record. Because a Tribal Police Office Came Out. Because He Didn't Like His Other Friend's Fiancée. Because His Mind Boiled Out in a Sweat. Because His Murderer Friend Just Got Shot. Because the Great White Stepfather Stole All Their Land and Fed Them Bad Meat. Because the Game Warden Wouldn't Let Him Get His Own Meat. Because His Father Reported Him for Stealing a Rifle. Because the Rifle Was Haunted by War. Because because because. He did it for all those reasons and whatever else the newspapers can dream up." —SGJ, The Only Good Indians
Denorah once again bends and redefines the trend by imagining only sports news headlines for herself, showing her focus on both pursuing her dream and changing the narrative that has for so long followed and defined her people. Again working to break the cycle and tread new ground.
Breaking Free
The end of the novel sees (Final Girl) Denorah survive and implies she will indeed go on to become a basketball star. And thank goodness, because her fakeout death at the sweat lodge massacre was a truly brutal kick in the stomach. Her success and escape from the cycles trapping her is delivered as a deeply felt point of hope: the book's title comes from signs and chants at her basketball games—"The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian", "Off the Reservation" and more.
But, while Denorah's success is hopefully reshaping narratives towards Indigenous Peoples, it's probably not making a significant impact on the day to day lives of even her own reservation. As with so many speculative fiction tales, one person escaping is nice, but real societal change is the goal.
And I have to imagine that the sequel, Off the Reservation (2026), will be grappling with that issue to some degree. Though it's named after another of those hateful phrases thrown at Denorah, the book apparently follows Nate—very much indicating to me that the focus will indeed be on Denorah's people rather than on her individual success.
All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It's not as deep or ambitious as The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, but is still surprisingly full of heart and meaning for being a relatively short slasher novel. There's something to this Stephen Graham Jones; consider checking out his work!
Thanks for reading and until next time <3
Comments