Why is the wendigo not my monster?
Why is the wendigo not my monster?
Driving down a dark, quiet road in southern Manitoba, a man sees someone leaning on one side of the road. Turning on its high lights, it slows down and rolls through the window on the passenger side. His pick-up truck crawls by what looks like a man, hunched over. About to call this stranger on the side of the road, that Look again at the truck.
The driver, in shock, looked into the eyes of the creature. Empty baseboards filled with darkness met his gaze. The face was inhuman. Dead. It rose to seven or eight feet in height. Long, thin limbs, ungainly and dark. He was not a defenseless stranger on the side of the road. It was something else. Something bad. A second passed, maybe two. He turned to the truck and moved toward it. The driver, perhaps motivated by adrenaline or some innate knowledge, was milliseconds faster and hit the accelerator. The engine roared as it accelerated away. Looking in the rearview mirror, he could see nothing but darkness behind him. As far as he could tell, he ran away.
This witness is one of many. Something lurks in the desert of all Canada, and according to the various mythologies and cosmologies of the indigenous peoples that have existed in Canada since time immemorial, that something is very real.
Normally it is believed that the winds resemble a corpse (image: mythology.net).
However, there is a common problem when it comes to these stories. Most of us who discuss such things are trapped in a precarious situation. We tell stories that are strange to us. They are not from our language. It is no secret that the vast majority of paranormal and UFO researchers, cryptozoologists, ghost hunters, esoteric writers and filmmakers are not indigenous. To be frank, the vast majority of us, myself included, are Caucasians. However, there we are, telling stories of Windigos and Skinwalkers, Sasquatch and Sky People. We speak of haunted hotels built on "old indigenous cemeteries" or ranches that settle on sacred or cursed lands of the tribes. We use tropes and stereotypes. We culturally appropriate the stories of people whose language we do not speak, we can not even begin to understand ideologically.
We, as a community of researchers interested in these issues, must be cautious. We do not have rights over these stories, nor are ours. We borrow them and, sometimes, we try to take advantage of them. We translate them to make them ours. With each translation and appropriation, something is lost and broken in the process. When we express these ideas, the words we use do not translate into the words from which the stories come. We mythologize and bastardize the stories, as well as the people who speak them. To be frank, and only speak for myself, although I'm not alone in this, those stories are not mine to tell.
I live in a land that is not mine. The monsters and spirits that wander in it are not mine either. These are things of a language and a universe far removed from mine, but they exist close to me. I am only a mile away from that dark road, which was a temporary shelter for a monster, and that leaves me amazed; Even though that creature is not part of my inheritance, can you still hunt me?
The narrator of that story told me that the creature witnessed was a Windigo, the evil spirit and the beast of Algonquian mythology. I decided to go deeper. I got in touch with Dr. Grace Dillon, professor of Indigenous Nations Studies, at Portland State University. Not only is she an expert in Windigo, but she is also Anishinaabe, which is the specific cultural and linguistic group of Ojibway, the original peoples who lived in the land where this sighting occurred.
Windigo - Unknown source
There is a general simplification of Windigo among non-indigenous peoples. In general, it is considered, like the Skinwalker, as a person or beast that has been corrupted by an evil spirit or force. It consumes human flesh and is never satisfied. However, there are many more nuances, and many of them cultural. Dr. Dillon explained that
"For us, the wiindigo (version" Nish ") and / or whetiko (Cree version), is an entity with enough caution and has proved too real for many of us, whether we have direct personal experience with it. ... It is not a mythology for us, although many natives, first nations and indigenous peoples have creatively brought this entity as an allegory in works of art to exemplify many forms of greed, such as environmental degradation, sexual assault, experiences in the boarding school, and similar. "
He went on to explain that several groups had their own interpretations of the Windigo, and that it is a mistake to think that the Windigo is simply a physical creature or a possessed person. I asked Dr. Dillon if the Windigo was an entity or if there were many of them. She answered,
"A difficult question to answer, since it is both an 'it' and a 'them' once the human persons are possessed and become Windigo in themselves."
He expressed that Windigo's stories are only told at certain times of the year and only during certain seasons. These stories remain within the specific tribal or family group and are only counted to external people if invited by the group itself. He even said that there are stories that he would not publish because they are reserved only for specific moments, such as the melting and breaking of the ice in his traditional lake, Lake Superior.
In one of his documents on Windigo, he quotes the scholar of the University of Alberta Nathan Carlson. In your paper"Reviving Witiko", Carlson states that Western academics are not properly equipped to interact adequately with Windigo. She writes,
"Indigenous scholars emphasize that Western perspectives are unable to explain the Windigo phenomenon, which can only be" analyzed from within the Algonquian cosmologies of the North rather than the Western perspectives if it has to be accounted for properly "(Carlson 355). In Western hegemonic discourse, Windigo is rejected as a form of madness, and Windigo's stories are relegated to the status of myth or legends born of harsh winters throughout the North. America, where food was scarce, and people sometimes resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. The reality of Windigo for indigenous peoples is much more complex. "
Dillon goes on to say that non-indigenous people tend to fit Windigo into a "monster analogy," and warns,
"... against misunderstanding and appropriation that has worried the exchange between indigenous and Western thought ..."
In other words, Windigo is not simply a monster or evil spirit, nor is it simply a psychological disorder that leads its host to cannibalism. It is beyond all that. While there are reports of Windigo's possession and even sightings of a physical entity that is perceived as Windigo, it is something that is infinitely more complex. Since I do not speak any Algonquin language, Windigo is, literally and figuratively, unknown to me. It is lost in translation, and in more ways than one.
Dr. Dillon did not let me wallow in my ignorance. She explained that the best way to understand Windigo was to go back in time,
"By checking with the elders ... who speak a much older version of our anishina language in a foreign language, this entity is pre-contact and is known to be uniquely" GREED ", an unbalanced quality that our peoples know as quite contrary to our virtues, to share in a kind of 'common pot' ".
I have left to imagine how intense greed would manifest itself. Can an intense and terrible human defect take shape that consumes everything? In fact, a formidable thought, and one without solution. That said, it raises a much bigger question; Does Windigo need us as much as we do, perhaps inadvertently, do we need it? Do we feed it and do it real? Is it a force that is inalienable to our minds and spirits? Do we all have a little Windigo inside of us?
I do not know what that driver saw that night on the side of the road. Was it real or did you imagine it? Does that question make sense in the Windigo context?
I do not know, nor do I. My tongue and my brain do not speak the correct language. I do not have the required cultural or social knowledge. As researchers, most of us are lost in a desert filled with Windigo, Skinwalkers and various other indigenous cosmological entities, and we must recognize that we have no idea what we are talking about. In other words, we do not know anything. All I know is that the Windigo is not my monster and, terribly, I live in the land where it wanders.
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