The Only Good Indians

Part 2 of the book, “Sweat Lodge Massacre,” begins with a second-person narration of Elk Head Woman’s reincarnation as the 14-year-old Indigenous girl walking away from the wrecked truck, a form she will keep for much of the rest of the book. She is picked up by a family who take pity on her. While driving, she thinks of her rebirth through taking the place of the child that Peta and Lewis conceived and her manipulation of Lewis. Elk Head Woman struggles to exist in human form; she is uncomfortable using language and does not understand her body.

She recalls an ancestral memory of a herd of elk grazing in the grass. Hunters spy them and creep close, but the herd knows it can run if it needs to. Suddenly, though, a train crosses in front of them, pinning them between the train cars and the hunters. The knowledge the elk learned that day was passed down through generations: “You run when you first taste hunters on the air” (136).

Elk Head Woman is dropped in town. She steals clothing from a car and is harassed by stray dogs who can sense what she is. She is headed toward the middle school to find Gabe’s daughter,