The Only Good Indians

“The foreman interviewing him had been thick and windburned and sort of blond, with a beard like a Brillo pad. When he’d reached across the table to shake Ricky’s hand and look him in the eye while he did it, the modern world had fallen away for a long blink and the two of them were standing in a canvas tent, the foreman in a cavalry jacket, and Ricky already had designs on the jacket’s brass buttons, wasn’t thinking at all of the paper on the table between them that he’d just made his mark on.”

Often, the adult men in the story put themselves in the context of tribal history, particularly when dealing with the white people around them. Ricky navigates the complicated racial politics of his present-day acceptance of a job while thinking about the long history of white people taking advantage of Indigenous people and how that informs his desire to take back what he believes he deserves in return.

“White girls know the names of everything.”

Lewis says this about his wife Peta for calling the fireplace a hearth. Like Ricky, Lewis has an awareness of himself that is built in part on his difference from white people, even his wife. Lewis doesn’t think of the world with the kind of specificity that the people around him do, choosing instead to leave most things uninvestigated.

“Jerry says Lewis shouldn’t hold it against Harley. He didn’t know what he was doing. When the whole world hurts, you bite it, don’t you?”

This description of Harley’s attack on Silas serves as foreshadowing for the actions of Elk Head Woman and her motivation in the novel. It furthers the novel’s look at Indigenous culture and its view of nature as well—that when nature lashes out, there’s usually a man-made reason for the reaction.