Indian Killer

“The best place for this child is with a white family. This child will be saved a lot of pain by growing up in a white family.” 

Although they are liberal and accepting and do their best to raise John with love and kindness, Olivia and Daniel still accept the racist assumption that an Indian child will have a far better life, a life free of pain, if he is raised by a white family. In many respects, John’s—and Olivia and Daniel’s—whole journey is a refutation of this presumptuous attitude.  

“‘John,’ Duncan said after a long silence. ‘You see these windows? You see all of this? It’s what is happening inside me right now.’” 

When Father Duncan shows John the stained-glass scenes of Jesuits being martyred by Indians, he reveals his own inner conflicts. A Jesuit and a Spokane Indian, Duncan is rent by the same confusions and identity issues that John will later face. When John begins hallucinating and dreaming of Duncan, the old priest comes to represent the search for identity and belonging. 

“White people no longer feared Indians. Somehow, near the end of the twentieth century, Indians had become invisible, docile. John wanted to change that. He wanted to see fear in every pair of blue eyes.” 

John’s desire to kill a white man comes in part from a perceived need to “cure” himself, to find the white man he believes to be responsible for the difficulties in his life. However, it is also motivated by larger concerns: He wants to avenge all Indians, from the moment Europeans first landed on the land that would become known as America, and to strike fear throughout the white people who continue to occupy that land. 

“They’re stealing from us, son. This is our land. My land. Your land. Your brother’s land. This land has been in our family for over a hundred years. And those Indians are stealing from us. They’re trying to steal our land.” 

Alexie’s novel is often darkly comic and is scattered with satirical irony. Buck Rogers telling his young sons that it is right for them to shoot at Indians who are trying to gather sacred roots on the Rogers’ farm is a particularly sharp example. Buck’s claim that the Indians are trying to “steal our land” so they deserve what they get runs as an ironic parallel to Indian characters suggesting that white people deserve what they get for colonizing America and committing genocide against Indians. 

“Don’t you understand what I’m trying to teach? I’m trying to present a positive portrait of Indian peoples, or your people. Of you. I simply cannot do that if you insist on this kind of confrontational relationship.” 

Mather cannot accept Marie’s challenge to his authority and his self-proclaimed status as a friend and ally to Indians. Not only does he genuinely believe that he is doing something noble and honorable, he also believes that Indians should be grateful to him, meekly and adoringly accepting his authority as an expert. 

“Duncan, wanting to be heard by every version of God, prayed in English, Latin, and Spokane, a confusing and painful mix of syntax, grammar, and meaning.” 

As well as representing internal conflict and the tension between the Indian and white aspects of John’s identity, the dream-version of Father Duncan also represents the possibility of reconciling these conflicts. After Duncan disappears into the desert, his footsteps simply stopping with any sign of a corpse, John begins to see him as having taken a quest to bring together all parts of himself, no matter how difficult, in order to find true belonging and reconciliation. 

“Though fairly intelligent and physically attractive, she was rude and arrogant, thought Mather, hardly the qualities of a true Spokane. As if it ran in the family like some disease, Reggie Polatkin had also failed to behave like a true Spokane. Mather knew he could teach both them a thing or two about being Indian if they would listen to him, but it seemed all of the Spokanes were destined to misunderstand his intentions.” 

Mather’s arrogant assumption that he can be an expert on Indians despite a total absence of lived experience as an Indian finds perhaps its most extreme and entitled expression when he begins criticizing Marie and Reggie for not acting Spokane enough to meet his standards. He finds no fault in his assumption that he, a white man, could teach Spokane Indians how to be Spokane Indians, placing the blame for the situation on the Indians themselves for not recognizing his kindness and wisdom.  

“Indians have become super citizens, enjoying all the advantages of being Americans while reveling in the special privileges they receive just for being Indians.” 

Central to Truck Shultz’s arguments against Indian casinos is the assumption that Indians are somehow receiving preferential treatment that is depriving white people of things that they deserve. This opinion, whether Truck truly believes it or simply adopts it for shock value, relies on overlooking both the historical and the contemporary abuse and mistreatment of Indians by mainstream society and the fact that treaties offer very few real benefits compared to the ongoing harm suffered by American Indians. 

“I’m not an Indian warrior chief. I’m not some demure little Indian woman healer talking about spider this, spider that, am I? I’m not babbling about the four directions. Or the two-legged, four-legged, and winged. I’m talking like a twentieth-century Indian woman. Hell, a twenty-first-century Indian, and you can’t handle it, you wimp.” 

Mather’s understanding of Indians is based on a view of Indian cultures as static, historical communities to be dissected, analyzed, and interpreted by white anthropologists and experts. Enraged by his views, Marie points out that she does not fit this patronizing, limiting view of Indian culture and that she is a reflection of a living culture, a contemporary Indian who cannot be trapped and studied by people like Mather.  

“‘Why isn’t an Indian teaching the class?’

‘Why would you ask that?’ asked Faulkner.

‘Well, when I take a chemistry course, I certainly hope the teacher is a chemist.’” 

Neither Mather nor Faulkner can understand why Marie objects so strongly to Mather’s authority and his role as course leader. Blinded by their own racial privilege and entitlement, they assume that a white man could be an expert on Indians and so be qualified to teach Indians. However, Marie, in another example of the novel’s sharp humor, suggests that one cannot be an expert on Indians without being an Indian. 

“So maybe this Indian Killer is a product of the Ghost Dance. Maybe ten Indians are Ghost Dancing. Maybe a hundred. It’s just a theory. How many Indians would have to dance to create the Indian Killer? A thousand? Ten thousand? Maybe this how the Ghost Dance works.” 

Alexie leaves the question of the killer’s identity intentionally ambiguous, implying that it might be John but also leaving several hints that undermine this interpretation. At the same time, through Marie, he introduces the idea that the Indian Killer might be the product of the Ghost Dance, almost a spiritual manifestation of Indian rage and desire to reclaim their land. This idea is given credence by the way the killer appears to different characters, and in the narration, in mysterious, nonhuman forms. 

“Dr. Mather, if the Ghost Dance worked, there would be no exceptions. All you white people would disappear. All of you. If those dead Indians came back to life, they wouldn’t crawl into a sweathouse with you. They wouldn’t smoke the pipe with you. They wouldn’t go to the movies and munch popcorn with you. They’d kill you. They’d gut you and eat your heart.” 

Mather’s idea of himself as a “good” white man, almost an honorary Indian, extends to the idea that he is exempt from white guilt or responsibility and that he should be spared the righteous anger of Indians. He loves this fantasy so much that he imagines that the historical Indians he reveres would accept him and value him as a wise and generous ally. Marie disagrees strongly, challenging Mather’s patronizing and exploitative relationship with modern Indians by imagining how historical warriors might respond to him.  

“Reggie, thinking of Dr. Mather’s precious tapes of traditional stories, had listened to the recording a number of times. Who can say which story is more traditional than any other?” 

Part of Reggie’s objection to Mather claiming a right to play and analyze the tapes of traditional stories is that he himself does not feel a right to them because he does not feel “Indian enough,” so, he reasons, Mather certainly should not. Unable to find the connection to traditional tales that he desires, Reggie sets out to make new tapes with new Indian stories by recording his attack on the white man on the football field, reasoning that his contemporary story of revenge is as much a traditional tale as any other. 

“Other people, Indians and not, could run around on the weekends pretending to be what they thought was Indian, dancing half-naked and pounding drums, but Marie knew there were hungry people waiting to be fed.” 

A key part of Marie’s objection to white people adopting Indian identities or insisting on their right to define what it means to be Indian is that it is selective: It focuses on the aspects of the identity that the people find glamorous or appealing and ignores anything that is difficult or painful to deal with. Marie, in contrast, puts her energy into the hard, unglamorous tasks of ensuring that there is at least some food available in the poverty-stricken, homeless reality many Indians occupy.

“You’re writing a novel, champ. That’s fiction. You get to make up shit. Besides, you know how this will turn out in real life. In the third act, they’ll find some white guy in eagle feathers is doing the killing. White guys are always the serial killers. Think about it. Bundy, Gacy, Gilmore. Where’s the drama in that? It’s been done. You get to tell a new story. You’re the Indian writer. This belongs to you.” 

Wilson’s agent is callous about the Indian Killer’s attacks and their real-life ramifications. Suggesting that, in reality, the killer will likely turn out to be a white man, he jumps on Wilson’s idea to present the case with an Indian Killer who is actually Indian, thinking only of how much this will boost sales because white media versions of Indians are popular selling points. Here, then, the idea of Indians is being commodified to be sold by white people to white people, for the benefit of white people.  

“This Indian Killer is merely the distillation of their rage. He is pure evil, pure violence, pure rage. He has come to kill us because we have tried to help him.” 

Truck continues to insist that Indians are bitter “savages” who can only respond to white kindness through acts of violence. He presents this nature as an inherent aspect of a fixed Indian identity and suggests that the Indian Killer is an inevitable manifestation of it. Interestingly, this is effectively a reflection of Marie’s framing of the Indian Killer as the manifestation of the Ghost Dance, seen from the opposing perspective and shaped by racist stereotypes. 

“John saw the bruises and blood. And wanted to talk, to finally speak. To tell them about Father Duncan and the desert, the dreams he had of his life on a reservation, and those rare moments when he had stood on tall buildings and seen clearly. But there no language in which he could express himself.” 

John is feeling abandoned by Indians when he wanders the streets alone and is attacked by Aaron and his friend. When Marie and the homeless Indians save him, he is amazed by their sense of solidarity and community and desperately wants to connect with them. However, his paranoia and mental health problems and, ironically, his acute belief that he is not Indian enough to be accepted prevent him from finding the connections that might bring him peace and community. 

“John needed to be saved and John knew exactly which white man had to die for him.” 

Although the vision of Father Duncan on his spirit quest in the desert often reflects and inspires John’s search for belonging, his own means of salvation is very different from Duncan’s. Duncan appears to John to have ascended through uniting the warring parts of himself and finally knowing God in His many aspects. John, however, does not seek to end his conflict but to externalize it—to find salvation in punishing a scapegoat for white crimes against Indians and himself. 

“He had done so much for his fellow Indians. He had made the ultimate sacrifice. He wanted them to love him.” 

Because he believes that all one needs to be an Indian is a distant Indian relative, Wilson is more secure in his identity than any of the Indian characters, despite having a far more dubious claim. Accordingly, he simply cannot understand why Indians do not accept him, love him, or recognize his worth. What exactly Wilson’s “ultimate sacrifice” is remains ambiguous, although, like several of his thoughts and statements, it can be seen as potentially referring to him being the Indian Killer, risking himself for Indians.  

“Well, she always seems so impulsive, so emotional. What’s the word I’m searching for? So individualistic. Not tribal at all.” 

Mather’s response to learning that Marie delivers sandwiches to homeless people leads to another of his presumptuous misunderstandings of Indian identity. Again arrogantly assuming that he knows Indians better than they know themselves and that, by his standards, Marie fails to qualify as an authentically “traditional” Indian, he cannot believe that she would do something so community-focused. Once again, Marie defies his narrow, ill-informed assessment of Indians and his need for them to be passive and respectful of his assumed authority in order to be “authentic.” 

“John reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife. A thin blade. John didn’t know if the blade would even cut Wilson. But if it worked, Wilson would bleed out all of his Indian blood, a few drops scattering in the cold wind. Then the rest of his blood, the white blood, would come in great bursts, one for each heartbeat, until there were no more heartbeats.” 

John does not contest the idea that Wilson has some Indian blood, but he does not consider this to be sufficient to make Wilson an Indian. Indeed, he fantasizes about bleeding the tiny amount of Indian blood out of Wilson along with the vast amount of white blood while punishing him specifically for being white. Significantly, the knife John carries during his assault on Wilson is thin, and he does not even know if it will cut Wilson’s skin, suggesting that he may not be the killer, who uses a large knife and is certain of its ability to cut flesh.  

“‘Please,’ John whispered. ‘Let me, let us have our own pain.’” 

John chooses Wilson as the white man who is responsible for his suffering precisely because Wilson adopted an Indian identity and told stories about Indians despite having no lived experience as an Indian. In his final statement to Wilson, John makes it clear that he sees this as an exploitation of Indian suffering, a theft of a culture to which Wilson is not entitled. 

“He had no chance. I don’t care how nice his white parents were. John was dead from the start. And now you’re killing him all over again. Can’t you just leave him alone?” 

In Marie’s statement to the police, she highlights the wider social patterns of racism and suffering that shaped John’s life and made his untimely death, in her view, inevitable. She highlights that individual white people like John’s parents may be kind, socially conscious, and ostensibly opposed to racism but are part of a racist society that is responsible for John’s pain and, ultimately, his death.