More and Scarier Monsters, Always

Vanessa Evans reviews the new critical anthology “Global Indigenous Horror,” edited by Naomi Simone Borwein.

By Vanessa EvansApril 20, 2025

• Literary Criticism

• SF

• Cultural Studies

AS FANS OF THE genre know, horror is often about borders—between life and death, the human and the monstrous, the known and the unknown. The new anthology Global Indigenous Horror, edited by scholar and poet Naomi Simone Borwein, invites readers to consider how horror can become something more fluid—less about containment than about transformation and exploration. With a global focus departing from Euro-American literary borders and boundaries, Borwein and her contributors underscore a reality fundamental to Indigenous storytelling: Indigenous horror has always been global. This reality, long underscored by Indigenous storytellers and scholars such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, recognizes the ways in which Indigenous peoples and nations are internationally networked through relationships with and among human, spirit, plant, and animal nations. Centering this global reality, Borwein presents readers with a collection of essays true to the work of Indigenous literary studies in its wariness of genre and other colonial borders. In this way, Global Indigenous Horror blends criticism, film analysis, interviews, and artistic commentary to ask: what is Indigenous horror, and how does it operate outside, alongside, and in defiance of the genre’s colonial entanglements?

From the outset, Global Indigenous Horror signals its resistance to easy classification. Borwein acknowledges the impossibility of defining a singular, stable concept of Indigenous horror, positioning the book instead as an active process of inquiry intended to elicit debate. As Shane Hawk (Cheyenne and Arapaho) notes in the preface, the volume works against rigid boundaries, mixing critical and creative methodologies in ways that challenge traditional academic frameworks. The collection theorizes Indigenous horror as a narrative space where horror conventions converge and diverge, and contributors encourage readers to theorize and explore uncertain horizons.

Borwein’s introduction provides a nuanced overview of relevant trends and approaches to global Aboriginal/Indigenous horror while simultaneously sketching a methodological foundation rooted in a commitment to ongoing discussions and debates. The collection is comprised of four core parts: (i) “Indigenous Ways of Theorizing” focuses on ways of knowing in relation to examples of Indigenous horror; (ii) “Interrogating Discourse and Variations of Indigenous Horror” traces current conversations around varied manifestations of Indigenous horror; (iii) “Indigenizing Gothic-Horror Aesthetics?” considers how the genre is being Indigenized; and (iv) “Actualization-Conceptualization: h/Horror Interviews with Dark Speculative Writers Self-Identifying as Indigenous” considers the practical application of ideas presented in the previous sections. Closing the collection is an epilogue, “Dis/insp/secting Global Indigenous Horror,” wherein select settler and Indigenous contributors reflect on the affordances and limitations of the field with a view to future conversations and challenges. The volume is comprehensive in its scope but also deliberately open-ended. In this way, it thoughtfully reflects diverse methods and ways of knowing that resist colonizing approaches to textual study, embracing the tensions and contradictions inherent in cross-cultural and intertribal analysis.

Readers coming to Global Indigenous Horror will find incisive essays that make new and exciting interventions. In part one, June Scudeler’s (Métis) contribution centers on the Métis Rougarou to consider how the lupine, shape-shifting figure’s role of both terror and community regulation contributes to reframing horror as a site of kinship and responsibility in Cherie Dimaline’s (Métis) Empire of Wild (2019). Where horror traditionally isolates, Indigenous horror connects, as the Rougarou, rather than being a purely malevolent entity, teaches ethical behavior and underscores the interconnectivity of community life. This essay, like many in the volume, challenges the notion that horror must always be about rupture; instead, it suggests that horror can be a means of reinforcement, a way of reasserting Indigenous ways of knowing.

Also in part one, Krista Collier-Jarvis’s (Mi’kmaq) work on Jeff Barnaby’s (Mi’kmaq) 2019 film Blood Quantum engages Mi’kmaq ways of knowing in the Indigenous zombieverse. For Collier-Jarvis, Barnaby’s film “haunts back” against Canada’s national myths to critique the foundational fictions of Canadian identity—myths of abundance and of settler benevolence—by depicting colonialism itself as a kind of zombie plague and an infection that resists historical containment. This idea of historical contagion is one of the collection’s most compelling motifs, resurfacing in contributors’ discussions of Indigenous gothic and the spectral weight of colonial trauma. Horror, here, is not just about what is frightening but about what refuses to be forgotten.

In the final two essays of part one, Borwein develops a possible Indigenous horror lens for readers to consider. In “Ways of Theorizing and Transient Phenomena (Section I),” she offers a densely theoretical but rewarding discussion of how Indigenous horror engages with transient celestial phenomena, particularly the aurora borealis and aurora australis, as sites of cultural meaning and theorizing. Specifically, she examines how Indigenous oral traditions, cosmology, and nonlinear storytelling shape horror narratives, contrasting these with Western genre conventions that often commodify or distort Indigenous symbolism. Borwein argues for a hybrid theoretical space where Indigenous ways of knowing disrupt and expand conventional horror storytelling.

In “Ways of Theorizing in Practice (Section II),” Borwein carries this lens into her analysis of the interviews included in part four, reading for how the authors see their work navigating tensions between genre expectations and culturally specific modes of storytelling as they resist harmful tropes like the “Indian Burial Ground” or the “Magical Indian.” Ultimately, Borwein demonstrates how Indigenous horror is not just a reaction to Western horror conventions but also a powerful means of storytelling that integrates mythology, cultural identity, and contemporary issues that generate new ways of theorizing. This boundary-blurring between theory and story is a key thread that runs through the volume to remind readers of horror’s mutability.

One of the collection’s most exciting aspects is its broad geographical and formal scope, explored more fully in part two. Here, the book offers a significant discussion on the ways horror functions across different Indigenous traditions. Katrin Althans’s essay on “Blak Horror” and “Blak narratology” in Wuilli Wuilli author Lisa Fuller’s novel Ghost Bird (2019) challenges Eurocentric definitions of horror and monstrosity, situating the novel within a post-invasion framework that merges Blak ways of being with the horrors of colonialism. Similarly, Persephone Braham’s essay examines how Indigenous horror films from Latin America engage with Indigenous myths, themes, and histories, often reflecting the region’s colonial past and ongoing social struggles. For Braham, Indigenous horror is complicated by Latin America’s cultural diversity, colonial history, and the predominance of mestizaje (racial mixing) in national narratives, which often marginalize Indigenous identities while simultaneously fetishizing their myths. Her essay distinguishes between metropolitan horror films, which often appropriate Indigenous mythology, and “cine de terror andino” (Andean horror cinema), a grassroots Indigenous horror movement in Peru that presents Indigenous horror on Indigenous terms.

Part three sees the volume’s focus turn toward essays that think about the ways horror is being Indigenized. Here, Jade Jenkinson’s “From Silence to Excess: Indigenous Educational Gothic” examines how horror is used to critique settler educational institutions in Canada, the United States, and Australia; Jenkinson argues that silence and excess disrupt traditional reader expectations and unsettle narratives of reconciliation. Later in part three, visual storytelling receives its due attention as well. Sabrina Zacharias highlights how comics like Sixkiller (2018) and Will I See? (2016) deploy horror aesthetics as acts of survival. Additionally, Jayson Althofer’s discussion of Judy Watson’s (Waanyi) Aboriginal gothic arts practice underscores how Indigenous artists repurpose the gothic tradition to engage with colonial violence, the incorporation and incarceration of Indigenous art, and repatriation. This inclusion of visual media expands the collection’s reach, reinforcing the idea that Indigenous horror is not confined to a single form or tradition but is instead a multivocal, multimedia field of expression.

Arriving at part four, readers are treated to interviews with writers of dark speculative fiction, conversations that further emphasize the volume’s exploratory approach. In keeping with horror’s global reach, the authors include Hawk, Dan Rabarts (Ngāti Porou), Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet), Gregory C. Loui (Kānaka Maoli), and Gina Cole (Pasifika). Each asked a similar set of questions, the authors discuss how horror interacts with Indigenous knowledge systems, how sensory experiences shape moments of terror, and how their work engages with Indigenous metaphysics. Taken together, the interviews illuminate the multiplicity of Indigenous horror aesthetics, demonstrating that horror can be an act of reclamation, a form of storytelling, and a means of cultural survival all at once. The focus on actualization (here and elsewhere) is one of the collection’s greatest contributions—a refreshing and thought-provoking way to make this scholarly intervention more readily tangible and accessible.

The refusal to be neatly categorized carries into the book’s final section: a roundtable-style epilogue that interrogates the very foundations of the field sketched across the collection. Here, Borwein, Scudeler, Collier-Jarvis, and Althans consider urgent questions about relevant problems and debates, the beneficial aspects of a new field, reconciling literary theorizing with ways of knowing, and important aspects of research in Indigenous horror. Many of the answers offer meaningful provocations rather than prescriptions, reinforcing the collection’s commitment to exploration rather than authority—the respect for practice remaining very much central.

Perhaps Global Indigenous Horror’s most significant strength is its willingness to embrace complexity. Not only does the book’s structure model the method outlined by Borwein in the introduction, but the collection also resists the pressure to offer singular definitions and refuses to smooth over the frictions between different Indigenous traditions and creative approaches. Instead, Global Indigenous Horror offers its readers a field in motion—a site of ongoing dialogue, contestation, and creation. In doing so, it expands the possibilities of the genre and challenges readers to rethink what horror can do, who it serves, and whose stories it has yet to tell.