Speculative
Possibilities: Indigenous Futurity, Horror Fiction, and The Only Good Indians
NICOLE R. RIKARD
A
decade ago when Grace L. Dillon's Walking on the Clouds: An Anthology of
Indigenous Science Fiction was published, the term 'Indigenous futurisms'
began to describe the vast body of work that had already been and would
continue to be crafted by Indigenous storiers to create representations in
visions of futurity. The term pays homage to Mark Dery's coinage of
'Afrofuturism' in his work, "Black to the Future," from Flame Wars:
Discourse of Cyberculture (1993). In the 1990s, Dery sought to answer
urgent questions surrounding speculative fiction, including why so few African
American authors were composing in the genre, despite it being "seeming[ly]
uniquely suited to the concerns of African-American novelists" who are "in a
very real sense... the descendants of alien abductees" (179-180). Dery posed the
question, "Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and
whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces
of history, imagine possible futures?" (180). Since Dery's inquiry, scholars
like Alondra Nelson, Ytasha L. Womack, and Greg Tate, just to name a few, have
contributed to the growing body of scholarship on Afrofuturism and the immense
possibilities it affords. It is not difficult to discern Dillon's
inspiration—Afrofuturism is a vital critical movement that continues to
influence Black activists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, scholars, artists,
designers, and more, and it seeks to create spaces and futures "void of white
supremacist thought and structure that violently oppress[es] Black communities"
and to "evaluat[e] the past and future to create better conditions for the
present generation of Black people through use of technology" (Crumpton par.
1).
Indigenous
futurisms, like Afrofuturism, seek to explore the possibilities of alternate
pasts, presents, and futures by decentering Western perspectives. The
decentering of Western aesthetics and ideologies is essential and enables
Indigenous futurisms to "offer a vision of the world from an Indigenous (or
Native American) perspective," helping to address and explore difficult topics
like "conquest, colonialism, and imperialism; ideas about the frontier and
Manifest Destiny; about the role of women within a community; and about the
perception of time" (Fricke 109). As we continue to address and advocate for
change regarding the histories and atrocities of conquest, colonialism, and
imperialism worldwide, decentering the Western narrative of these
events—and therefore the narratives of how these events continue to
impact individuals and communities—is crucial.
Decolonizing
ideals and aesthetics is a theoretical and political process essential to decentering
Western-normative notions and, for Indigenous studies, recentering Indigenous
knowledges, cultural practices, and identities. Indigenous futurisms enable
Indigenous activists, authors, musicians, and more to decolonize the narratives
of the past, present, and future, and because the "Native American novel has
been experimental, attracting and modifying subgenres to seek Native cultural
survival and development... Native writers have made the novel their place of
both formal and social innovation" (Teuton 98). To qualify, I am not suggesting
that all Indigenous authors have or must use their works in the same
ways or to achieve the same goals; to do so would be a gross misstep and
extreme miscalculation of the literary and artistic possibilities afforded when
literature by individuals spanning 570+ federally recognized and unique Indigenous
tribal nations in the contiguous United States alone are often combined into
the category of Indigenous or Native American literature. Unfortunately,
though, there is often a misconception about these possibilities. As Indigenous
Literature scholar Billy J. Stratton states in a recorded interview with
Stephen Graham Jones, prolific novelist, short-story and essay-writer and
member of the Blackfeet Nation, "the notion of engaged readers and writers and
the recognition of good art has a strong bearing on Native literature because
it is not really allowed to be just entertainment. Gerald Vizenor has long been
advocating the production of literature as a function of what he calls
"surviv[ance], as a means to both persist and resist colonialism and its
legacy" (34). Jones responds:
When you're an American
Indian writer, it's like you have all this political burden put on
you—that you have to stand up for your people. You have to fight for
this, and you can't depict people this way or that way... my big goal, one of the
things I've been trying to do is to complicate the issue... (qtd. in Stratton
34)
The Only Good Indians (2020), a recent novel by Jones, exemplifies many strategies
and characteristics of Indigenous futurisms while also functioning as an
inventive work of horror fiction, a genre that has long been associated with
popular culture and stigmatized by literary studies' establishments. Jones is a
prolific author of many works of horror fiction including his most recent, Don't
Fear the Reaper (2023), The Babysitter Lives (2022), The Backbone
of the World (2022), "Attack of the 50 Foot Indian" (2021), "How to Break
into a Hotel Room" (2021), My Heart is a Chainsaw (2021), "Wait for the
Night" (2020), Night of the Mannequins (2020), and "The Guy with the
Name" (2020), and scholars like Billy J. Stratton, Rebecca Lush, Cathy Covell
Waegner, and John Gamber have contributed fruitful conversations concerning
Jones and his work. Similarly, scholarship on Indigenous futurisms continues to
grow, with artists, scholars, and authors like Lou Catherine Cornum (Navajo),
Suzanne Newman Fricke, Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe and Métis), Jason Lewis,
Darcie Little Badger (Lipan Apache), Danika Medak-Saltzman (Turtle Mountain
Chippewa), and Skawennati (Mohawk) cultivating the movement. This article seeks
to further both conversations—on Jones and The Only Good
Indians, as well as on Indigenous futurisms—by exploring the novel as
a work of Indigenous futurism, specifically as it relates to
rewriting the past, present, and future through various methods of Native
slipstream. Jones combines fictional newspaper headlines and articles, a
concentrated insistence on rationalization coupled with the inability to
achieve such measures, and various points of view in this novel. The result is
a depiction of resiliency and possibility for an alternative future in which
Indigenous worldviews replace the damaging cycles created and perpetuated by
Western ideologies. The Only Good Indians is an exceptional contribution
to the field of Indigenous futurisms, and it substantiates that both horror and
futuristic fiction can serve as an effective medium of decolonization.
Science
Fiction, Horror, and Possibilities for Futurity
Indigenous
futurisms are largely prominent in the speculative fiction subgenres of science
fiction and fantasy, but they are certainly not mutually exclusive with these
genres; in previous work, I have illustrated how even
poetry is an effective and insightful genre being utilized by Indigenous poets
to reflect futurity (Rikard). Science fiction is the literary
genre that has received the most attention within the movement, though, and
this is due to several factors. First, like other subgenres of speculative
fiction, science fiction allows for considerable imagining with technology and worldbuilding.
In our innovative, technology-dependent contemporary moment, there is no
question that science fiction enables authors to bridge our everyday obsession
with and reliance upon technology with fictional world building. Additionally,
science fiction has always been and continues to be a medium of alternate
perceptions regarding our contemporary moment. In Scraps of the Untainted
Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, and Dystopia (2000), Thomas Moylan acknowledges
that the genre is often misunderstood in two primary ways: many people
understand it as a medium for depicting an inevitable and undesirable future
caused by our contemporary flaws and damaging behaviors (usually classified as
'dystopian' or '(post)apocalyptic' fiction), or that it is simply a
metaphorical retelling of the present moment. Moylan argues that the purpose of
the genre is actually to "re-create the empirical present of its author and
implied readers as an "elsewhere," an alternative spacetime that is the
empirical moment but not that moment as it is ideologically produced by way of
everyday common sense" (5). For Indigenous futurists, science fiction is used
for more than just recreating the current moment in new spaces. Indigenous
futurists craft new futures and spaces for Indigenous lives and communities by
critiquing and modifying both the contemporary moment and the past. They illustrate
how Western knowledge systems and values control the present and how history
has been omitted and reconstructed to construe false narratives of Indigenous
histories and lives.
Given
considerably less attention than science fiction is how Indigenous storiers are
using the horror genre to explore Indigenous futurity, especially in literature
and literary studies. In recent decades, many works of horror have been
acknowledged as critical formations (literary and experimental horror) instead
of mere mediums of entertainment (genre horror), though the genre still
struggles for legitimacy in many literary spheres. Compare, for example, Toni
Morrison's 'L'iterary Beloved (1987), Mark Z. Danielewski's experimental
House of Leaves (2000), and Stephen King's highly popularized The
Shining (1977) and the ways in which these novels have been received by
popular culture and scholarly discourse. My intention is not to define literary
horror and/or genre horror or sort titles into these categories; this is a
fraught debate in literary circles that often leads to the blurring of lines
between the two forms and an overall dispute to be settled elsewhere. What I
argue, instead, is that genre horror fiction, literary or otherwise, often gets
overlooked as a well-suited method of exploring contemporary issues and
decolonizing Western modes of thinking and knowledge.
Horror
fiction has become seemingly easier to define over time, though as already
mentioned, it can be difficult to assess and agree upon which novels/stories
bend genre conventions and still function as part of the genre. Despite a few
misconceptions, horror fiction does not necessarily have to be concerned with
the supernatural, but "rather with forces, psychological, material, spiritual,
or scientific, that can be 'supernaturalized' and made into a force that
threatens the living with annihilation" (Herbert par. 1). Spanning centuries,
horror fiction has evolved to be categorized into two types of tales: those
determined by an external threat or force, either supernatural or logically
scientific, and those determined by an internal, psychological threat. There
are, of course, times when stories blend these two types of horrors, such as in
the case of The Only Good Indians. Whether internal or external threats
abound, horror fiction:
asks us to step back from
any straightforward historical realism and read at the very core of what
literature and the arts are about, that is, representation and interpretation,
the symbolic, and the use of strategies of estrangement and engagement to
explore and challenge cultural, social, psychological, and personal issues. (Wisker
404)
Horror
fiction, like other speculative fiction genres, allows for a revisioning of
recognized knowledge and the very Western normative ways in which this knowledge
has been enforced and proliferated. This work is not intending to claim that
Indigenous horror is new, but instead, that it is overlooked, especially within
the literary arts and scholarship in Indigenous studies. And, like Dillon, this
work advocates for the continuing use of horror fiction by Indigenous authors
and works to subvert Western notions of normalcy regarding knowledge, history,
time, and identity. As Blaire Topash-Caldwell
states:
Counter to
research on the negative effects of Native American stereotypes on youth,
positive representations of Native peoples observed in Indigenous SF portray
alternative futurisms to those represented in mainstream SF and celebrate Indigeneity
knowledge while making space for Indigenous agency in the future. (87)
As
the Indigenous futurisms movement continues,
Indigenous authors can use horror fiction to achieve similar possibilities
afforded by science fiction and Indigenous futurisms.
Indigenous
Horror and The Elk Head Woman
A
discussion about The Only Good Indians is not possible without
recognizing that the novel is a telling of the Elk Head Woman. Known by other Indigenous storiers as Deer Woman, Deer Lady, and
in Jones's novel, "Ponokaotokaanaakii," Elk Head Woman is a figure present in
many Indigenous tales across North America, including (but certainly not
limited to) those from the Muscogee, Cherokee, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee,
Choctaw, and Pawnee nations. These tales vary from one culture to another, but
according to Carolyn Dunn and Carol Comfort in Through the Eye of the Deer (1999),
"the traditional Deer Woman spirit... bewitches those who are susceptible to her
sexual favors and who can be enticed away from family and clan into misuse of
sexual energy" (xi). Though not always sexual in nature (Evers 41), these
stories are usually didactic and intended to warn youth of the consequences of
"losing social identity" through "promiscuity, excessive longing for one
person, adultery, and jealousy," ultimately underscoring their responsibilities
within the tribe (Rice 21, 28-29).
More
recently, Indigenous storiers have been revisioning Elk Head Woman to represent
female strength, sexual agency, and the fight for the thousands of Missing and
Murdered Indigenous Women across North America. Deer Woman: An Anthology (2017)
showcases various Indigenous authors' and artists' renderings of the figure.
Despite
the many variations of this figure in tellings and retellings, the blending of
the animal and human forms is consistent. This is unsurprising, because as Vine
Deloria Jr. states in God is Red (1973):
Very important in some of
the tribal religions is the idea that humans can change into animals and birds
and that other species can change into human beings. In this way species can
communicate and learn from each other. Some of these tribal ideas have been
classified as witchcraft by anthropologists, primarily because such
phenomena occurring within the Western tradition would naturally be interpreted
as evil and satanic. What Westerners miss is the rather logical implication of
the unity of life... Other living things are not regarded as insensitive species.
Rather they are 'people' in the same manner as the various tribes of human
beings are people... Equality is thus not simply a human attribute but a
recognition of the creatureness of all creation. (88-89)
Jones
adds to the revisioning of the Elk Head Woman in The Only Good Indians, depicting
Ponokaotokaanaakii as a figure seeking
retribution for a violent attack that took her life. Ten years before the novel
begins, the four narrators—Ricky, Lewis, Gabe, and Cass—decide to
break the rules of the
reservation and drive their truck through to the section preserved for elders,
where they come across a herd of nine elk. Lewis recounts that he "remember[s]
Cass standing behind his opened door, his rifle stabbed through the rolled-down
window... just shooting, and shooting, and shooting..." (62). Realizing that the
smallest elk (still just a calf) is still alive, they shoot her again—and
again after she still does not fall. The entire scene is horrific and haunts
the men for the rest of their short lives. The game warden finds the men
shortly after the slaughter and gives them an ultimatum: throw the entirety of
the meat down the hill and pay a high fine for breaking the rules of the
reservation or consent to never hunt on the reservation again. The men agree to
the second option, apart from entreating to take the body of the calf, which
Lewis silently swears to make complete use of so that her horrific death is not
in vain. The intended plan is successful for ten years—until Gabe throws
out a package of her meat that was stored in his father's freezer, initiating Ponokaotokaanaakii's vengeance.
Rewriting and Reclaiming
History and Narratives in The Only Good Indians
Native
Slipstream
Jones's
tale of the Elk Head Woman exemplifies many characteristics of Indigenous
futurisms. The Only Good Indians insists on rewriting histories, current
realities, and crafting a better future, and it does so by introducing elements
of what Dillon terms Native slipstream. This is an area of speculative
fiction that "infuses stories with time travel, alternative realities and multiverses,
and alternative histories" (3), a captivating tactic in Indigenous futurisms.
In Native slipstream, characters are seen as "living in the past, future, and
present simultaneously" (Cornum par. 2); time flows together, as Dillon notes,
"like currents in a navigable stream... [replicating] nonlinear thinking about
space-time" (3). In the first few narratives, the reader comes to understand
that its temporality is not stable or linear; it is distorted because of how
much the past influences the present, and ultimately the future, of each
character. In short, Jones utilizes narrative techniques to create temporal
distortion which allows him to jump around in the timeline of many years,
sometimes neatly and with elaborate transitions, and sometimes unexpectedly and
suddenly.
Native slipstream is not entirely synonymous with slipstream,
a term used to describe all speculative writing that simply defies neat categorization
and timelines. Coined by Bruce Sterling and Richard Dorsett in 1989:
slipstream is an attitude
of peculiar aggression against 'reality.' These are fantasies of a kind, but
not fantasies which are 'futuristic' or 'beyond the fields we know.' [Slipstream]
tend[s] to sarcastically tear at the structure of 'everyday life...' Quite
commonly these works don't make a lot of common sense, and what's more they
often somehow imply that nothing we know makes 'a lot of sense' and perhaps
even that nothing ever could... Slipstream tends, not to 'create' new worlds, but
to quote them, chop them up out of context, and turn them against themselves.
(78)
Native
slipstream in Indigenous futurisms is a way to reorient Indigenous ways of
thinking and assessing the world; it is the act of decolonizing time as a
linear, progressive model and understanding it as a myriad of possibilities.
This concept has been around since time immemorial and integrating it into
speculative literary genres such as horror and science fiction creates the
potential not to disorient the reader and create distrust in the timeline of
events, but to exemplify that Western ideology of time is arbitrarily
formulated and perpetuated. Indigenous storiers had been crafting slipstream
narratives far before a term was created to categorize it, with authors like
Gerald Vizenor (Anishinaabe), Sherman Alexie (Coeur d'Alene), Joseph Bruchac
(Abenaki), Louise Erdrich (Ojibwe), N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Leslie Marmon
Silko (Laguna Pueblo), and of course, Stephen Graham Jones (Piegan Blackfeet),
contributing.
In The Only Good Indians, Jones uses Native
slipstream to contradict 'official' narratives and the ways in which they are
retold, warping interpretations of time and events. He begins by integrating
extra-textual materials, specifically news headlines and articles. The reader
does not have to wait long to realize this will be a reoccurring and important
tactic, as the novel briskly opens with one such headline: "The headline for
Ricky Boss Ribs would be INDIAN MAN KILLED IN DISPUTE OUTSIDE BAR" (1). Then,
immediately following the headline, the narrator tells the reader, "That's one
way to say it" (1). In these first two sentences, Jones is outlining his
approach not only to use headlines to explain situations, but also his
insistence on using them to tell an important truth: no one, except the
person(s) living in the moment and experiencing the situation—and
sometimes not even then, completely—truly knows how situations unfold.
Throughout the novel, we realize these headlines are often
misconstrued, written by someone who has perceived the situation or would
potentially perceive it from a different angle without all
the details. For example, in Ricky's case, there is much more that happens
outside of the bar that night than a simple news article can explain. Ricky's
chapter is a short one, and the ending of the narrative sees Ricky witnessing
an elk running full speed in his direction, demolishing cars in the parking lot
outside the bar where Ricky stands. He seems to know that this must be some
sort of delusion or supernatural occurrence, reminding himself that "elk don't do
this" (8), but he nonetheless tries to flee from the terrifying animal.
Jones weaves perceived realities and delusions here, presenting Ricky as a
narrator who might not be the most reliable source for the truth of the
situation. Ricky remains self-aware, however, able to understand the bizarre
nature of what he is perceiving versus what other bystanders perceive. As the
men from inside and outside the bar move to the parking lot and see the damage
done to the cars, Ricky "saw it too, saw them seeing it: this Indian had
gotten hisself mistreated in the bar, didn't know who drove what, so he was
taking it out on every truck in the parking lot. Typical" (9). Jones employs
temporal distortion throughout this scene, leaving readers unsure whether what
Ricky is experiencing with the elk is real or a fabrication of his mind, and
this is left ambiguous as Ricky's story ends. (This reliability is examined in
more detail later.) After running as far as he can, Ricky sees "a great herd of
elk, waiting, blocking him in, and there was a great herd pressing in behind
him, too, a herd of men already on the blacktop themselves, their voices
rising, hands balled into fists, eyes flashing white" (12). Ricky realizes then
that he is not going to survive this encounter, and Jones integrates the news
headline that tells only part of the truth, here. This headline will forever
depict Ricky's futurity—whenever people speak of him or his death outside
that bar—as a different story from the reality he actually perceived and
experienced.
In
the next section of the novel, titled "The House Ran Red" and centering Lewis,
Jones more elaborately lays emphasis on the importance of perception. Most of
the headlines occur in this section; in fact, besides the headline on the first
page that has already been mentioned and the two full-length news articles
introduced later, this section introduces the only other extra-textual
materials, totaling ten headlines in all (16, 22, 36, 39, 45, 88, 121,
127) that compile Lewis's "mental newspaper" (16). He constantly rewrites his situations as they unfold in front
of him, giving each situation a headline that would break if anyone else were
to find out about his predicament. For example, when explaining why he and his wife
Peta will not have any children, the reader learns that Peta doesn't want her
children to have to "pay the tab" from the chemicals she put into her body
before she met Lewis (38). Lewis thinks to himself that, instead of the
headline reading, "FULLBLOOD TO DILUTE
BLOODLINE," like he initially thought it would when he married a white woman,
the headline would now read, "FULLBLOOD BETRAYS EVERY DEAD INDIAN BEFORE HIM"
(39). The truth of the matter is obviously more complex than a single-line
newspaper heading could ever convey. With these short newspaper headlines
seemingly redefining and limiting the scope of Lewis's everyday situations and
realities—and therefore his future (as he will be remembered by
others)—Jones is exemplifying the complexity of perception and how simple
the process of disseminating inaccurate realities and histories is. When
readers realize that Lewis's full name is Lewis A.
Clarke and he is the character mostly responsible for crafting these
inaccuracies, it becomes even more obvious that his narration is unreliable: a
nod to the many inaccuracies in Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William
Clark's recording of their nineteenth century expedition.
As
mentioned, Jones also weaves two full-length news articles into the narrative.
One occurs at the end of Lewis's section, after he has brutally murdered a
co-worker named Shaney, who is also of Indigenous, Crow, identity, along with
his loving wife. The headline reads, "THREE DEAD, ONE INJURED IN MANHUNT"
(129). There are many inconsistencies in Lewis's and the newspaper reporter's
accounts, leaving the reader unsure whether to trust Lewis's narrative or the
article. Leading up to the news article, the third-person narrator reveals that
Lewis is found by four men with rifles; the news article reports that these men
were the ones to find Lewis are unconfirmed. It is then stated in the news
article that Lewis was apprehended by police, but later chapters reveal he was
actually killed. Lewis's chapter ends with him focusing on the elk calf before
being shot, though in his account it is unclear whether it is by the hunters or
someone else. Additionally, there is no mention of a teenage girl—the form Ponokaotokaanaakii
has taken on—though in the news article it suggests the men were attacked
by this teenage girl while Lewis and the calf were in the back of their moving
truck. Discrepancies such as these highlight how unreliable news articles can
be when reporting on complex situations, in addition to reflecting how
misinformation and lies are common in the creation of written history, or, as
termed by Gerald Vizenor in Manifest Manners (1999), the literature,
language, and narrative of dominance. Jones uses these 'official' articles, in
essence, to rewrite the characters' histories from a dominant ideological point
of view; everything must be rationalized through Western norms and presented to
the public in easily understandable ways, but often times, this information is
inaccurate. These news headlines and articles effectively integrate elements of
Native slipstream into the novel, as they outline the truth, or rather, the
lack thereof, about how histories are told and information is disseminated.
(Un)Reliability: The Splitting
of the Westernized Mind
Jones's
use of newspaper headlines positions the present as a space and time that also
exists in the future, as Lewis (presently) predicts how the situation will be
perceived by others (in the future). This usage also exemplifies how the past
can be recorded imperfectly due to incomplete information, differing perspectives,
and intentional falsehoods at play in colonial discourses. As such, Jones
challenges notions of Western, scientific thought. Lewis represents this
ideology and continually tries to rationalize events that unfold before him.
Everything in the novel is centered around that day in the clearing when they
killed the elk. These men cannot go back and erase what they have done in their
past, and consequently, Ponokaotokaanaakii returns to rewrite their present and
futures, reclaiming her own history she never had the chance to experience.
Ricky and Lewis spend most of their narratives thinking about this past that
cannot be undone, and Jones introduces elements of implausibility in each of
their stories. For example, Lewis continuously diminishes the abilities and
possibilities of Ponokaotokaanaakii, explaining
that the elk shouldn't have been able to conceive that young and at that
point in the hunting season; how even if she didn't encounter the hunters that
day, she couldn't have carried full term (73); that he couldn't have
seen her in his home (20), that she wouldn't even have fit in his living
room (37); that "of course and elk can't inhabit a person..." it had to
have been "a shadow he probably saw wrong" (82). Gabe also exemplifies this
type of perception where, if logic cannot explain it away, it cannot be true.
For example, when Gabe and Lewis are discussing the possibility that the elk
herd could remember them from that fateful day ten years ago, Gabe laughs it
off and tells him, "they're fucking elk, man. They don't really have campfires"
(27). And when Gabe is about to enter the sweat lodge with Cass and Nate, he
thinks he sees a glimpse of black hair in the mirror of Cass's truck, "[e]xcept
that couldn't have been" (195). Lewis, Gabe, Ricky, and Cass obsessively
rationalize their every encounter and almost always from a Western perspective,
trying to explain what could not and should not have been
possible, yet there are obviously things they are not able to explain or fully
rationalize. As such, an uneasy tension of unreliability builds between these
narrators and readers, challenging the latter to assess the truth with all of
the information available from the omniscient narration.
To
complicate this process, Jones weaves elements of internal and external threats
together throughout the novel, challenging the reader to decide if the real
antagonist in the novel is an external threat (Ponokaotokaanaakii) or internal ones (the men's
psychologies, internalized colonial ideologies, and emotional distress). This
is exemplified from beginning to end, with Ricky's narrative indicating that
there is indeed an elk responsible for the destruction of the vehicles outside
of the bar (as already explored); to Lewis's paranoia, ostensible unraveling,
and double homicide of Shaney and Peta; to Gabe's and Cass's gruesome
murder-suicide outside of the sweat lodge. Jones's masterful use of indirect
characterization—most fruitfully, each character's internal dialogue and
external dialogue with others—engages readers and challenges them to
determine the truth of the narratives. Toward the end of Lewis's section, this
type of characterization reveals that Lewis's mental state has deteriorated
significantly and his paranoia is controlling his emotions and actions. Leading
up to and after the murder of Shaney, his thoughts become jumbled and panicked,
filled with questions and desperate rationalizations for his thoughts and
actions:
She didn't know about the
books, he repeats in his head.
Meaning?
Meaning she was Elk Head
Woman.
Because?
Because she was lying.
That means she's a
monster?
...no, he finally admits to
himself. It doesn't mean for sure she's that monster, but added together
with the basketball being so alien to her, and her knowing where to stand in
the living room, and to turn the fan off, and, and: What about how she wouldn't
touch her own hide on the kitchen table?
Lewis stands nodding.
That, yeah.
She could have been
lying..." (118-119)
Lewis
can't stop himself from calculating the logic in his and Shaney's actions,
breaking it down to modus ponens (If A, then B; B; therefore A) and modus
tollens (If A, then B; not B; therefore not A) arguments. By the end, he
estimates that "[h]e's not even really a killer, since she wasn't even really a
person, right? She was just an elk he shot ten years ago Saturday. One who
didn't know she was already dead" (117-118). Lewis's paranoia engages a sort of
distortion where it is difficult for the reader to assess if he is losing his
ability to accurately assess and engage reality, or if there really is a
supernatural, external force manipulating him and the people around him and he
is beginning to see the world as it truly is—that is, from an
Indigenous worldview. His thoughts do become frantic, but in later chapters, it
is revealed that at least some of Lewis's assumptions and explanations are
true, such as when Gabe confirms that he did indeed throw out the elk
meat stored in his father's freezer.
In
Lewis's, Gabe's, and Ricky's chapters, they struggle with what is real and
what simply cannot be, and they use Western notions of regularity to do so.
When confronted with the unexplainable, their minds seem to crack down the
middle. One side confirms that it is indeed impossible for Ponokaotokaanaakii
to exist and be responsible, because Western notions of science cannot explain
such an entity and its reign on the real world. The other side reinforces
Blackfeet ideology, insisting on a clear, supernatural connection. Blackfeet
ideology has always emphasized strong ties with the supernatural and unique
ways of seeing the world in relation to it. William Farr asserts, "the
Blackfeet world possesse[s] an extra dimension, for amid the visible world,
[is] an invisible one, another magnitude, a spiritual one that is more
powerful, more meaningful, more lasting. It [is] a universe alive'" (qtd in
LaPier xxxi). The invisible dimension is, according to many Blackfeet histories
and stories, the real world—and the visible dimension is a mere partial
experience of that world (LaPier 25). If these characters' brains have indeed
split between Western and Blackfeet ideologies, the 'distortion' of sorts is a
battle of principles regarding the supernatural, space and time, and the
classification of the 'real.'
Indeed,
"this
confounding of divisions... between the animal and human—challenges western
ways of thinking" (Dunn and Comfort xiii); as such, Lewis, Gabe, Ricky, and
Cass cannot accept the events occurring around them as they exercise Western notions of science, nature,
and the perception of the Elk Head Woman. "While the non-Native cultural
product makes Deer Woman a monster, thus evincing the colonial(ist) impulse of
consuming the Indigenous... Native works... interpret Deer Woman as symbolic of the
Indigenous worldviews" (Vlaicu 3; Dunn and Comfort xiii). Jones exemplifies the unreliability of Lewis's,
Gabe's, Ricky's, and Cass's thoughts as they depend on limiting notions of
Western thought to try and understand the Blackfeet world around them. Western
ideologies simply cannot account for the strange circumstances that befall the
characters throughout the novel, insisting on a more traditional explanation
and one that allows a space for supernatural events. If we attempt to understand
the world using Blackfeet cosmology, what does Ponokaotokaanaakii truly
symbolize, as the partial experience of the real, invisible world?
Point
of View: Perspectives and the Construct of Time
Another
tactic Jones utilizes to build upon Native slipstream principles is point of
view. The novel begins in third-person narration following Ricky, then
Lewis—and then there is an abrupt shift in the point of view to second
person. In the second section, "Sweat Lodge Massacre," the
first chapter inserts readers into the mind of Ponokaotokaanaakii. The
narration reveals the elk's short life and horrendous death, outlining the
events of the day she was killed in her own perspective. In horror fiction, it
is unsurprising to see through the eyes of the antagonist. However, in Jones's
novel, this perspective shift occurs nearly halfway through the entire
novel, surprising readers with a fresh, new perspective on the incident that
took place ten years ago, the progression of time, and the deaths of the main
characters. Beginning in that second section, Jones begins weaving instances of
second person into Gabe's and Cass's chapters, reminding readers that there is
always more than one perspective of every situation. Ponokaotokaanaakii is
always watching and assessing these men, stalking them like prey to attain
vengeance. While Lewis becomes obsessed with figuring out why, ten years later Ponokaotokaanaakii
has chosen to come after them, she asserts, "for them, ten years ago, that's
another lifetime. For [Ponokaotokaanaakii] it's yesterday" (137).
Additionally, the ways in which Ponokaotokaanaakii transforms illustrates that
she is beyond the understanding of Western notions of time. She recounts:
Just a few hours ago you [Ponokaotokaanaakii]
are pretty sure you were what would have been called twelve. An hour before
that you were an elk calf being cradled by a killer, running for the
reservation, before that you were just an awareness spread out through the
herd, memory cycling from brown body to brown body, there in every flick of the
tail, every snort, every long probing glared down a grassy slope. (134)
The
way in which Ponokaotokaanaakii perceives time indicates
that time is an arbitrary construct, at least as the four men perceive
it—indeed, the entire construction of time as a linear ideal is deconstructed
as their views on time are juxtaposed. In interviews, Jones has described
himself as a "Blackfeet physicist," creating timelines that reflect "a
Blackfoot framework of loops, glitches, and the constant experience of
Indigenous time travel: living in the past, future, and the present simultaneously"
(Cornum qtd. in Fricke 118). This is exemplified throughout the novel with the
revisioning of the past, present, and the future (with news headlines and
articles); the merging of past and present with each character hyperfixated on
that fateful Saturday ten years gone, which ultimately defines their futures;
and the past and present becoming intertwined as dead characters interact with
those that are still alive—Ponokaotokaanaakii throughout, and Ricky and
Lewis in the sweat lodge. These revisionings fashion space and time as
interconnected and non-linear, a direct contradiction to notions of Western
knowledge regarding time. Such a pushback against dominant modes of thinking
offers an alternative reorientation of Indigenous knowledge and perception.
Decentering Western Ideologies and Crafting Indigenous
Futurity
Ultimately,
Denorah, Gabe's daughter, ends the destructive, murderous cycle that has
defined and controlled the lives of her father, Lewis, Cass, Ricky, Ponokaotokaanaakii, and more symbolically, everyone controlled by
Western perceptions of knowledge, history, time, and identity that has been
engrossed in this same cycle. Although it might appear that this cycle began
with the slaughtering of those elk in the clearing ten years ago, it is indeed
more complex. Lewis clarifies this when he reflects:
That craziness, that heat of the moment, the
blood in his temples, the smoke in the air, it was like—he hates himself
the most for this—it was probably what it was like a century or more ago,
when soldiers gathered up on ridges above Blackfeet encampments to turn the
cranks on their big guns, terraform this new land for their occupation.
Fertilize it with blood. (75)
Lewis
explains that he has contributed to a centuries-old cycle with the slaughtering
of those elk—one that continues to control him and others because of the
hands they continue to play within it. However, Denorah
refuses to let the destruction of the past define her present and future, and
she takes a courageous stand,
ending the long cycle of murder and retribution. Denorah chooses a new path
where she, Ponokaotokaanaakii, and everyone else can move on from the
atrocities of the past into a new future of possibilities. In this way, Denorah
represents and practices an Indigenous worldview. She accepts
Ponokaotokaanaakii's existence and, by doing so, the possibilities for a
better, alternative future for her generations and the ones to follow, which is
illuminated in the final lines of the novel: "It's not the end of the trail,
the headlines will all say, it never was the end of the trail. It's the
beginning" (305).
Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians is a
powerful and timely contribution to the Indigenous futurisms movement. Jones
experiments with various forms of Native slipstream tactics, weaving a
narrative that attempts to rewrite the past, resituate the present, and create
possibilities for the future. Newspaper headlines and articles, an intense
focus on rationalization coupled with the inability to achieve such measures,
and varying points of view combine to illustrate futurity and possibilities
created by breaking the cycle of Western perceptions and dominant ideologies.
According to Danika Medak-Saltzman, Indigenous futurist imaginings "create
blueprints of the possible and [provide] a place where we can explore the
potential pitfalls of certain paths," enabling us to "transcend the confines of
time and accepted "truths"—so often hegemonically configured
and reinforced—that effectively limit what we can see and experience as
possible in the present, let alone imagine into the future" (143). With The
Only Good Indians, Jones uses the horror genre to decenter dominant
ideologies and to offer potential futures in which Indigenous knowledge systems
and practices are centered in Indigenous lives. As Sean Teuton posits, "[t]he Native American novel has become
increasingly aware of itself as an art with real world consequences for Native
lives" (99), and further, The Only Good Indians and other fiction by
Jones supports horror fiction, specifically, as an effective medium for
subverting Western notions of normalcy regarding knowledge, history, time, and
identity. As the
Indigenous futurisms movement continues to develop and Indigenous creators
continue crafting new spaces and possibilities for representing Indigeneity,
scholarship must recognize and address how horror fiction is being used to imbue
Native sensibilities and knowledge.
Works Cited
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