Book Club Guide

The Only Good Indians

by Stephen Graham Jones · 2020 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Ten years after — the past that returns for what was done
Horror as a vehicle for Indigenous experience and generational trauma
The Blackfeet reservation as both home and the site of haunting

About this book

Ten years after four young Blackfeet men do something they shouldn't have during an elk hunt, something is coming for them — and for the families and communities around them. Jones's Bram Stoker Award-winning novel is a horror story rooted in Indigenous experience, generational trauma and the specific landscape of the Blackfeet reservation.

Published in 2020, The Only Good Indians won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel. Jones is a member of the Blackfeet Nation and has described horror as a genre particularly suited to exploring intergenerational trauma and the unresolved violence of colonisation.

Discussion questions

The four men did something during an elk hunt that the novel takes its time revealing. How does Jones build dread around this withheld act — and does the eventual revelation change how you understand what's coming for them?
The novel is explicitly horror but is also deeply about Indigenous community, family and the specific landscape of the Blackfeet reservation. How does Jones use the horror genre to carry this material?
Each of the four men's stories is handled differently — different structures, different perspectives. How does Jones vary the approach across the novel — and what does this variation achieve?
The entity pursuing the men is rooted in specific cultural material. How does Jones develop this — and what does the novel say about consequences that operate outside settler frameworks of justice?
The Only Good Indians won the Bram Stoker Award. What does it do for horror as a genre — and what does Indigenous horror specifically offer that the genre's more familiar conventions don't?