My Heart Is a Chainsaw

The theme of Indigenous identity and its history in the American West is threaded throughout the narrative, exploring the impact of colonial violence and the legacy of racial stereotyping and discrimination against Indigenous Americans. The landscape around Proofrock is filled with reminders of its Indigenous history. Sven and Lotte ask one another when they see that the lake is called Indian Lake, “Does that mean there’s Indians in the lake, or does it mean that Indians made it?” (1), equating the burial grounds of Indigenous peoples with their legacy upon the landscape and flippantly acknowledging the history of white atrocity against Indigenous American ancestral sites. Sheriff Hardy eventually reveals another story of how the lake got its name, recounting:

[M]y dad says when it was filling, all these bow and arrow Indians stepped out of the trees on the other side of the valley on their painted ponies, feathers braided into their manes. The horses AND the half-naked bucks. They’d come to see the creek they’d always known turn into something bigger. That’s when everybody started calling it INDIAN Lake, not Glen Lake like it was supposed to have been (126).

According to Hardy’s version of the story, the survival of the Indigenous population over the landscape’s history has defined the lake, superseding the European name.

Colonial violence is not consigned to the past, but an active force in contemporary Proofrock, symbolized by the Founder’s development, Terra Nova. The name of the development means “New World,” referencing the term that European colonizers used to refer to North America. The Founders claim to admire Proofrock and Western history. Letha Mondragon’s wealthy family even drives a boat with an Indigenous name—the Umiak being a term for an Inuit whaling boat. However, this admiration for the narrative of Western expansion covers up the colonial violence that accompanied this history. Jade records that “what one of the incoming residents said, kind of famously was that when there are no more frontiers you have to make then yourself, don’t you?” (18). By treating Proofrock as a “frontier” in the same way that Europeans did during the colonization of America, the Founders reenact colonial violence—depleting the town’s natural resources and displacing burial grounds, carelessly unleashing the murderous Stacey Graves, just as European settlers intentionally spread the disease smallpox. Similarly, when the Dutch tourist Lotte playfully claims that the lights they see around the lake might be from Indigenous tribes planning a revolt, her boyfriend Sven jokes “until John Wayne Gacy hears about it” (6). Sven confuses American actor John Wayne, whose cowboy characters often killed Indigenous people in Western films, with serial killer John Wayne Gacy. The humorous slippage between these two people hints that the cowboys that films valorize as heroes can also be seen as violent serial killers from an Indigenous perspective. By upholding the image of the West as a frontier and considering the colonizers who killed Indigenous tribes to be heroes, Jones suggests that colonial violence continues to perpetuate its ideals onto contemporary Indigenous communities.

Jones suggests throughout the novel that contemporary Indigenous people often see themselves as part of a dead or past culture who are inevitably the victims of violence. One of the major reasons that Jade does not want to admit that her father sexually abused her as a child is because she does not want to play into a racist stereotype. She snaps at Hardy: “Fathers don’t do that to daughters, not even fathers as sucky as mine, as Indian as mine” (174). Tab Daniels often plays into negative stereotypes about Indigenous communities. He claims that he was born too late and that if he had been alive 100 years ago, he would have been able to fight back against colonization. However, Jade doubts his story and believes he still would have had an alcohol addiction. At the July 4 movie, Tab Daniels paints his face like Tonto from The Lone Ranger and has his friend Rexall wear a war bonnet. Jade does not see this as an authentic way of connecting with their cultural identity, but a sign that her father has internalized and embraced racist stereotypes.

Gender informs Jade’s perspective on her own cultural identity. When Shooting Glasses tells her that the Indigenous construction worker Cody also liked to claim that he was born too late, Jade counters that she wishes she was alive in the 1980s, not 100 years ago when “some boys from town would play a trick on me […] they’d throw me out on the water, and I’d run away into legend” (205). Jade references the urban legends about Stacey Graves, associating the history of Indigenous girlhood with being the victim of violence. While Indigenous men can fantasize about fighting back against colonizers, the only figure that Jade must identify with in the past is a girl who experienced neglect, abuse, and violence. When Jade believes she is about to die underneath the pile of dead elk, she sees Cody’s body beside her. She thinks:

[N]ow him and Jade are just two more Indians at the bottom of the pile of massacred Indians. They’re circling the drain of history together, while Letha and Shooting Glasses and Mismatched Gloves are over at some other drain, with harps and angel food cake (335).

Jade and Cody’s Indigenous identity affiliates them with the dead animals, dehumanizing them and making their death as inevitable as water going down a drain. While Jade imagines Letha and Shooting Glasses going to a heavenly afterlife, Jade’s perspective on her own Indigenous identity suggests that she sees her death not as a tragedy, but as a historical inevitability. Jade’s survival at the end of the novel defies this stereotype, suggesting that Indigenous girlhood can represent heroism and survival rather than only victimhood and tragedy.