The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
TW: Animal Cruelty, Suicide, Gore
LLBC Rating: 8/10
Book Synopsis: 10 years ago, Ricky, Lewis, Cass, and Gabe went hunting. Since that day, they have been haunted by the guilt of what occurred out in those woods. Or are they actually being haunted by the spirit of their victim? On the ten year anniversary of that snowy day in the elders section of the Blackfeet reservation, these four men recall and regret that hunt, especially as they become the hunted.
Stephen Graham Jones takes the folklore he learned growing up on his reservation and creates an immersive story of four friends haunted by their youth and their victim. Though this book is difficult to begin, it is even harder to put down once you become familiar with the characters and their lives in the present day. The very first chapter left us with so many questions that we felt we had to learn the answers. However, after reading the last page, we learn to be content, happy even, to live without those answers and instead with the resolution that could only be described as inspiring.
We won't lie, there is a bit the reader has to struggle through in order to get to the real meat and beauty of the story. But if you can get past Lewis' consistent internal monologue of looking down a female coworkers shirt, all the talk about motorcycles and trucks, and one too many basketball metephors for my taste, the payoff of finishing this novel is incredibly worth it. Despite the slow start, the ending was so satisfying we could not give it less than an 8/10 rating.
THE FIRST MEETING: As November is Native American Heritage Month, we wanted to focus our November theme around learning more about the struggles and injustices Native Americans have experienced, and see what we could do as a small club to show our support for these communities locally. Our Co-Presidents Mary and Quin did loads of research and presented our group with a brief history of the injustices committed on Native groups, as well as an overview of the issues they are facing and causes they fight for today.
DID YOU KNOW:
More than 4 in 5 Indigenous women and Alaska Native women have been victims of violent crimes; More than 1 in 2 have been victims of sexual violence
97% of female American Indian and Alaska Native victims have experienced violence from an interracial perpetrator in their lifetime.
Native Americans are the only group of Americans who were forcibly removed en masse from the lands on which they and their ancestors had lived so that others could claim this land and its resources.
In 1868, Native Americans were denied American citizenship. They were later granted citizenship in 1924, however, this citizenship only applied those born after the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act and they were still denied the right to vote.
In Worcester v. Georgia, the Court ruled that whites could not enter tribal lands without the tribe’s permission. White Georgians, however, refused to abide by the Court’s decision, and President Andrew Jackson, a former Indian fighter, refused to enforce it.
Beyond this list, Natives face health and welfare risks due to environmental issues on their land, as well as the preservation of their sacred sites and lands throughout the country. One of note today is ongoing right here in Michigan. The Anishinaabe people of Bay Mills say life as we know it today, began in the Straights of Mackinac. They consider the waters where Lake Huron and Lake Eerie meet a sacred space on Turtle Island. NARF and Earthjustice have teamed up with the Bay Mills Indian Community to fight a proposed oil pipeline tunnel, which would impact communities, local businesses, and the environment. The proposed tunnel would encapsulate oil giant Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac, purportedly to prevent another oil spill. Enbridge continues to operate the Line 5 pipeline in defiance of a state order to cease operations and without a valid lease to submerged lands for the project. A repeat offender of U.S. environmental regulations, the Canadian oil company has incurred over $6.5 million in fines to repair and maintain existing Line 5 infrastructure. Enbridge was responsible for the largest inland oil spill in 2010 in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, which resulted in nearly 1 million gallons of oil being released into Michigan’s waterways. In November 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered Enbridge to cease operations by May 12, revoking the easement it needs to operate. To date, Enbridge has refused to comply with the order.
So, what exactly is folklore? As it is a major piece of theme for November, we felt it would be important to give a breif description. Folklore is a part of, and deeply significant to, a groups culture. It includes things like art, literature, knowledge, proverbs, jokes, and practices, largely passed down gereations through oral communication and behavioral example. Folktales were used mostly to explain the to difficult to understand, frighten children into good behavior, or provide a moral lesson.
This month, we were all meant to take a folktale from our own ancestory and create a new story with it. Perhaps you chose a vengeful spirit, a cheerful elf, or a monster that hides in the lake. Any tale is acceptable, but the assignment is to make it your own. We would be so excited to see what you came up with this month!
OUTING: This month, we chose to support a Native led, local organization called the Native Justice Coalition, which is based in Anishinaabe Aki. As a small nonprofit organization, we do our best to support causes like these as much as we can. In order to do so, we spent time in November organizing and promoting a bake sale.
All of the proceeds from this sale went directly to the Native Justice Coalition, and we were able to donate $168 as a result of our time gathering sales, baking and packaging the goodies, and hand delivering them to all of the lovely people who supported us this month. A huge thank you to everyone who bought these baked goods from us and allowed us to contribute to The Native Justoce Coalition!
THE FINAL MEETING: The final November meeting of the LLBC began with something we have never tried before, but hope to become a routine for our club in the future. The very first thing we did was connect with one of our book club in a box subscribers over Zoom! Samantha was able to join us for the entire final meeting and we had a blast chatting with her about the book and hearing her thoughts, as well as hearing her describe her response to the writing prompt this month!
As this decision was very last minute, we were not ablw to extend an invitation to all of our subscription members. Being able to talk to those of you who have subscribed to us through more than just the forum is becoming a priority for us and we hope to be able to invite all of our subscribers to the final meeting each month through a Zoom call. We would love to see your faces and hear what you have to say.
This month more than any other, we really had to talk through the parts of the story to make sure everyone understood what happened in the same way. Some of the writing choices the author settled on left us all a bit turned around, so hearing how everyone interpreted some of the more difficult scenes helped us gain a clear view of what was happening in the story. As some of the story points included some mystical elements, it makes sense that we might not grasp the scene as a whole without talking it through. For me at least, it took a few minutes to grasp that, what happened in the middle actually happened in the story. To me, it felt more like some madness that ensued on the entire group, but it also makes sense that both of these things could have been happening in tandam, which is what we eventually settled on.
Overall, we feel that this novel is worth the read. Though we are a book club centered around promoting female authors and characters, and supporting our members in learning more about women in literature, we feel that reading a piece created by those outside of this classification can be beneficial. In this case, we learned a lot from the themes of greif and guilt, and felt that we gained insight into how Native Americans see themselves in comparison to white people (Lewis and Peta), and how Native Americans see themselves in comparison to their ancestors. This book just happened to include male main characters and be written by a man. Sometimes, we're okay with that.
After we felt the book had been sufficiently covered, we moved on to presenting our writting pieces. We had a small group this week, but the few that were able to present did an excellent job and created some excellent pieces. It was fun to hear about eachothers ancestory and the folklore from those groups, and the way these tales were taken by our members and turned into something of their own was incredible cool to hear. Stay tuend for our writing feature on the month which will be posted soon!
I want to give a huge THANK YOU to everyone who joined us for book club in November! As it was our first month launching the subscription box, we had so much fun seeing your posts about the book and the box on social media, and cannot wait to see it continue as December starts. We are so happy that you decided to join us again, and cannot wait to grow together as readers and writers!
If you haven't joined us yet, don't worry! The January box is available now through December 20th so you can officially join us for the New Year. The subscription is even 10% OFF right now for a limited time! Make sure you grab you book club in a box before this deal runs out. If you already joined us for January, but cannot wait that long, you can still join our forum discussion for December. Just grab your own copy of The Wild Winter Swan and make an account here on our website. From there, you can go into the December forum thread to make comments and ask questions throughout December!
Make sure to keep up with us throughout the month on Instagram and Tiktok, and sign up for the newsletter below if you haven't already. This way, you can be notified when we post a new update and be the first to hear about deals on our Book Club in a Box. You'll also get news when we add anything new to our shop (merch coming soon!) so you can grab your before they run out! Thanks again, and see you in Decmeber!
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