For these Indigenous writers, horror fiction offers more than a good fright

Unreserved50:44Indigenous writers bring new narratives to the horror genre

Scary stories are meant to freak you out, but they also share important truths about our lives and our planet. Rosanna catches up with three Indigenous horror writers who are bringing new narratives to the genre, from films to poems.

Shane Hawk says a good scary story can bring a room full of Indigenous people together. 

"A lot of times I've been with Native friends around the table and you're just trying to creep each other out."

"The same way you're trying to out-joke each other, you also in a way, try to out-creep each other."

Hawk, a horror writer, thinks the drive to tell scary stories might come from the same place as the urge to crack a joke. 

"I think a lot of us connect with [horror] because it's that kind of flip-side of the coin of comedy, where I think comedy and horror can make people connect just in different ways. And I think that's one of the main reasons why Indigenous people are kind of more apt to be connected to spooky stories."

"In a lot of my horror fiction, I like to scare people as much as I like to make them giggle or laugh."

Hawk is Cheyenne and Arapaho and based in San Diego, California. Last year he co-edited the best selling Indigenous horror and dark fiction anthology Never Whistle At Night.

Cathartic release

Beyond a good time, Hawk uses horror writing to deal with hardships in the hopes that other Indigenous people will relate. 

"I get to express my experiences and hope that maybe I'm not alone in this world," he said.

Some of these experiences become fictional monsters. In one story his monster took the form of a black cloud to represent depression.

But he says monsters in horror fiction can also be used to represent larger issues, like colonialism, adding that writing is a way to cathartically address issues through protagonists confronting their monsters. 

Hawk saw these real issues reflected in his peers' stories as he gathered them into Never Whistle At Night. "Racism, colourism, blood quantum, all these microaggressions and real aggressions, like actually being attacked – things that a lot of Indigenous people experience day-to-day. 

"And I think a lot of readers are connecting with it, both who are Indigenous, and then also non-Indigenous people are maybe taking steps back and realizing, 'There are horrors in this life that I don't experience, that these people are experiencing, or their families are, and maybe there's more horror in the world than I thought.'"

Horror for climate anxiety 

Tiffany Morris is a Mi'kmaq writer based in Halifax. Horror poetry and fiction are outlets for her to express anxiety brought on by issues like climate change. 

"Horror is a space that deals with urgency and the inability to refuse what's in front of you," she says. "It seemed like a natural fit for uncovering what is often denied and interrogating the urgent things that are in front of you."

Morris says learning the Mi'kmaq language has been deepening her connection to the land. 

"Mi'kmaq is a verb-based language, it's transformational and it helps me change my own understanding of land," she says.

Morris added that her deeper connection with the land has increased her anxiety as well,  as the effects of climate change could compromise that relationship. 

She says channeling her feelings through writing doesn't put all of her anxiety to rest, and self-care is an important part of her process, especially when confronting difficult psychological territory. 

But Morris says it's helpful to bring those emotions to the surface.

"There's a catharsis in it."

Re-writing stereotypes

Hawk says horror is growing more inclusive every day, with increasing publishing opportunities for writers of colour. 

"I think we're going to see a lot more horror narratives – whether they're novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories – confronting things that kind of have been swept under the rug for centuries of literature." 

Dr. Kali Simmons sees a common thread connecting these newer narratives in Indigenous horror to traditional storytelling – complex and nuanced characters who aren't simply good or evil. 

 "It's showing all these shades in between that I think are really important," she says. 

"Traditional stories have always shown nuance and shades in between."

Simmons is an Oglala Lakota professor of English and Social and Critical Inquiry at the University of Connecticut. She studies Indigenous representation in horror. 

Throughout its history horror has depicted Indigenous people through racist tropes. They appear as vengeful ghosts, ruthless killers, and wise figures whose only purpose is to guide white protagonists. Simmons cites movies like The Amityville Horror, Nightwing and Poltergeist II: The Other Side as exemplifying these tropes. 

Characters in today's Indigenous horror can be evil or morally complex in more humanizing ways. 

"It's showing a depth to Indigenous existence that I think horror has largely failed to do so," Simmons says. 

"That's what's exciting about all this new stuff, is that it's actually thinking about the lack of representation or the problematic representation from these really important critical perspectives, and giving us stories that are not only scary, gory, freaky stuff, but that it's truly challenging ideological norms."