UC Santa Cruz

Haunting often refers critically to the presence of a repressed past with its lost futures and has especially been used in critical theory to call attention to colonial violence. What function, then, might haunting serve when it emerges in the narratives of colonized subjects who have been victims of such historical violence? This thesis examines two instances of Indigenous hauntings in the work of Indigenous authors Stephen Graham Jones and Mona Susan Power. Published three years apart, the proximity and similarities of The Only Good Indians (2020) and A Council of Dolls (2023) elicit a literary and critical grounded analysis that effectively responds to past and contemporary struggles within Indigenous communities, including issues of identity, sovereignty, environment, and politics.Transcending simply telling fictional stories, The Only Good Indians and A Council of Dolls provide sources of healing as they disrupt dominant narratives and instead prioritize Indigenous voices while confronting the haunting consequences of cultural erasure, generational trauma, and the fragility of identity during the Indigenous fight for survival. While most discussions of haunting and hauntology are oriented towards mourning, nostalgia, repression, and confronting remnants of the past that indicate futures that could not be, this thesis reconceptualizes haunting as a site of healing. In doing this, I am reframing haunting within Indigenous literature, foregrounding its healing potential in a context of coloniality. As both novels are historically grounded and distinctly contemporary, the haunting inherited traumas of colonialism are transformed into narratives of survivance, resistance, and healing for Indigenous people.Through close readings of the ways in which haunting and ghosting “return to bear witness” and linger across generations, this project analyzes the intertwined literary techniques of language, temporality, memory, and narrative structure. Examined through the frameworks of haunting and ghosting, these techniques collectively allow for the speculation of reclaiming lost identities through the disruption and healing of cyclic trauma. Although haunting and ghosting operate differently within each text, haunting often manifests the physical and embodied dimensions of trauma, while ghosting reflects its psychological and generational effects that ultimately lead towards healing.As the ghosts of the past and present continue to shape the lives of the living, both haunting and ghosting become essential frameworks for understanding and mending Indigenous identities across past, current, and future generations. Ultimately, this thesis argues that a critical and literary analysis of the haunting and ghosting in both novels open possibilities for imagining alternative realities that challenge and proliferate colonial narratives through their emphasis on Indigenous sovereignty, survivance, and the reclamation of identity on both individual and collective levels.