no actual cases of windigo psychosis have ever been studied, and Lou Marano's scathing critique in 1985 should have killed off the cannibal monster within the psychiatric annals. It turned its hunger on the Americas, a wendigo so hungry that it consumes its own lips if there is nothing else for it to eat. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. (A friend sent this screenshot to me, along with the info, because he knows how much PC-ism pisses me off. [44], Contemporary Indigenous works that explore the legend include the 1995 novel Solar Storms by author and poet Linda K. Hogan (Chickasaw), which explores the stories of the wendigo and incorporates the creatures as a device to interrogate issues of independence, spirituality, politics, an individual's relationship to the family, and as a metaphor for corporate voracity, exploitation, and power - all viewed as a form of cannibalism. [21] The last known wendigo ceremony conducted in the United States was at Lake Windigo of Star Island of Cass Lake, within the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.[when? without permission.1 I think it's okay because you're not trying to rewrite actual history or actual legend. You dont have to be of Afro-Caribbean descent to talk about, write about, or make movies about zombies. That borrowing and exchanging of cultural elements is what makes America the melting pot of the world. "This isn't going to be the last time a story like this emerges about cultural appropriation, and what it emphasises is how much we need more diversity, in all components of the fashion industry," says Lewis. The book's cul-tural importance granted it not one, but two movie adaptations, the first in 1989 and the second in 2019. And FWIW, I've read stories that disturbed me & even disgusted me but the author has the right to tell their story whether I like it or don't. Mexicans: Cultural Appropriation PragerU 3.01M subscribers Subscribe 85K Share 2.2M views 4 years ago What is cultural appropriation? Sacred creatures? As researchers, most of us are lost in a wilderness filled with Windigo, Skinwalkers and various other indigenous cosmological entities, and we need to recognize we have no idea what we are talking about. Europeans may well have behaved like Wendigos when they invaded the Americasthey didbut they didnt bring the Wendigo with them. Though these misrepresentations of the wendigo beg for critical interrogation, the wendigo stories of Algonquian peoples offer a window into the endurance of cultural resources used to transmit significant moral values, and underscore the power of Native people using these stories to engage in social critique. Most sensible thing said ever. As much as I would love to tell everyone to just read her sources and then be able to understand everything better, I just don't think that's realistic for most people(because they are not easily accessible to most, and I don't think that was her intention by including these in her description. As a concept, wendigo can apply to situations other than some Native American-European relations. Idiots have just made a religion out of being racist about culture and only allowing genetic descendants to participate in cultures. Certainly Navajo "skin walkers" are one of the more common Native American legends that non-native writers reference (the only other example I can think of that comes close is the Algonquin Wendigo), but like I said, it would be presumptuous of me to guess at Rowling's research style. Send them to Marvel. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. I would not care much about what a statistically likely personally unrelated "woke" thinks about what Algonquin descendants may think about it, but only what Algonquin descendants. to tell a new tale. and our The boy told the Indians that the Windigo was near them, and showed them his hand where the Windigo cut him to see if he was fat enough to eat. I can't even think about bank without getting mad, why did she need to make them like that..EVERY name is filled with stereotypes , well every name from minority .I don't even want to talk about Fantastic Beasts problems. "Today, many believe the crows to be . The legend of the Wendigo stems from Native American folklore, primarily in Algonquian-speaking tribes located in south and southeastern Canada, the Great Lakes Region, and northeastern United States. arent cryptids thing. I think she knew that her decision would be challenged and she wanted to let people know that she had valid reasons for doing what she did. Rowling tries (and fails) to mitigate these implications by saying "although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality." But its none of your concern what turns someone on! In addition, for many Indigenous peoples and local communities, making traditional clothes is a source of income; as such, cultural appropriation can . Dollightful's Wendigo Doll - Cultural Appreciation or Appropriation? He has written, produced and directed (and occasionally acted in) over a dozen plays, most of them in the Horror and Crime genres. Their visitations speak to the inseparability of human experience National identity is irrelevant to this borderless horror. 17spaz 2 yr. ago The deaths of tens of millions of Jews, Slavs, etc., at the hands of the Nazis, the deaths of tens of millions of blacks in slavery days, the deaths of up to 30 million or more Indians in the 1500s, the terribly short life spans of Mexican Indian farm workers in the US, and of Native Americans generally today, the high death rates in the early industrial centers among factory workers, and so on, all clearly attest to the fact that the wealthy and exploitative literally consume the lives of those that they exploit. Cooper and del Toro made the conscious decision to tell the story of the wendigo in a way that is respectful to its Native American roots, which in turn helps make Antlers a more authentic horror film. The Indians asked the Windigo if there was any fat on them. So for some woke culture types it's considered a form of disrespectful cultural appropriation to make your own Halloween monster or character based on a wendigo. I'm just struggling to understand the significance of it. No one said it were exceptional that way. Mythologynote my use of the capital M to convey that it is far more than just some made-up stories; it is stories containing deeper spiritual truthsbelongs to all of humanity. The novel describes its primary antagonist, a rapist whose violent crimes desecrate a sacred site, as a wendigo who must be killed because he threatens the reservation's safety. There's nothing wrong with drawing the popular concept of a wendigo monster, or drawing any monster with antlers, and calling it a wendigo. [56], Various characters inspired by the legend, or named for it, appear in Role-playing video games, such as 2018's Fallout 76 by Bethesda Game Studios, where wendigos are featured as one of the cryptid enemies found in the area of Appalachia, mutated from people who consumed human flesh in isolation. There's too much variety of opinion on the question to obtain a consensus. Marvel Comics pay tribute to classic Monsters. Now time to go back and make some changes. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. [30], Fascination with Wendigo psychosis among Western ethnographers, psychologists, and anthropologists led to a hotly debated controversy in the 1980s over the historicity of this phenomenon. LOL. Native Americans, Our headquarters are located at: 89 South Street, Suite 401, Boston, MA 02111. The Witherell House and the Cult of Weird, Movie Review: BIRDS OF PREY (And the Fantabulous Inclusion of Victor Zsasz and a Hyena). No, I read your comment. Cultural appropriation takes place when members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way. What makes the wendigo any different from other culturally important mythological creatures like unicorns? Differing thinking is one of the cherished assets of democratic cultural pluralism. and our This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. Here's some links:Website - https://thesierramistify.wixsite.com/thesierramistifyEtsy - https://www.etsy.com/shop/thesierramistify?ref=simple-shop-header-name\u0026listing_id=736195213Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thesierramistify/Art Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thesierramistify.art/- Music used in this video -Prime Beatz - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkG3r3-ODOw It only becomes cultural appropriation when an element of culture is adopted from a marginalized group without respect for its cultural meaning or significance or with the purpose of exploiting the culture Topics: It's fine for colonized Indians to incorporate European fitness . It springs from the well of the collective human unconscious, the communal soul. As it so happens, I am currently working on a project involving a Wendigo, so this is personal to me. And unfortunately for them, this isn't the first time. 12. [49][50] In the 2021 film The Inhuman (L'Inhumain) the arrival of a wendigo symbolizes inner turmoil after a character turns his back on his Indigenous heritage in the pursuit of material success. Payals, or anklets, are meant to symbolize the arrival of a wife into her husband's house. What is cultural appropriation vs. cultural appreciation? Cultural appropriation by a dominant culture is harmful to underrepresented cultures because it reduces cultural significance and reinforces double standards. appropriation, or - as I argue - misappropriation, of the Wendigo as a And that's exactly the problem. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Halloween is literally a holiday (most Americans see it as a good excuse to dress as a sexy cat or whatever, but there are actually still people left who believe it's sacred and who perform rituals etc for the holiday). No they fucking aren't. What I do think is not so great was it could have been something that was corrected for the films, where they do have access to people and the internet was more developed in the mid 2000s. Some of this critique was rightly directed at literal cultural theft . hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(443401, 'c61f3219-a9f3-4b0c-95ea-f614a80c184b', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Pictured above: A portion of the poster for the film Antlers (Fox Searchlight, 2021). If I don't, I'll never know what it is I'm so angry about! This makes them so ravenous for human flesh that they pounce upon women, children, and even upon men, like veritable werewolves, and devour them voraciously, without being able to appease or glut their appetiteever seeking fresh prey, and the more greedily the more they eat. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Learn how your comment data is processed. The use of the creature in horror stories . Until Dawn logo. It really depends who you talk to. My intentions were pure, as were Rowling's, I imagine. This was the end of this Giant Windigo. We feed it because we don't know how else to live, and so we live disconnected lives watching the seasons change through windows . Basically, the word wendigo can also function as a symbol for gluttony and the image of excess. Its incredibly validating to know that other people have heard about it and enjoy the story enough to make reference to the name and concept. They went back again to see if he was dead. It sounds like you did research which is more that J. K. Rowling so I think yes? Is it Cultural Appropriation if I have a Wendigo character. If Hello Kitty and the Minions from Dispicable Me being considered acceptable Halloween costumes wasn't the exact point I stopped taking Halloween seriously as a holiday, Wendigos being considered a form of disrespectful "cultural appropriation" was. But Native Americans shouldn't be a "niche," and neither should women, LGBT people, or people of color. With teepees, Im not sure I get it. I am so offended! The idea of getting down to the nitty-gritty came from the 18th century English slave trade, when nitty-gritty referred to the worthless debris left at the ship's bottom compartment after slaves had been evacuatedand evolved to include the slaves themselves. J.K. Rowling, author of the absurdly-popular Harry Potter series (of which I'm a massive fan), recently waded into controversy with her four-part "Magic in North America" series, which outlines the Potterverse's American history. Key elements of culture include: language art,. For example, dressing up as a Native American while using redface and using the gaudiest, most elaborate costume you can think of (using the stereotypical feathered headress, tribal print tan clothing, holding a spear, etc.). Part of HuffPost Entertainment. And besides that, it never hurts to include your sources. We have to stop guarding cultures and subcultures in efforts to preserve them.. I really just want to learn about how to appreciate aspects of cultures that I am not included in respectfully. They travelled too much. WAYNE MILLER is the owner and creative director of EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS (www.evilcheezproductions.blogspot.com, www.facebook.com/evilcheezproductions), specializing in theatrical performances and haunted attractions. Cookie Notice According to Professor Chris Schedler, the figure of the wendigo represents "consuming forms of exclusion and assimilation" through which groups dominate other groups. I believe that the Wendigo is far older than that, far more primal. It was created by Mayuki . Wendigo) from its cultural context and its movement by non-Indigenous creators (a large majority being white) into a space of the horror genre that displays negative or antagonistic qualities. Windigo psychosis may well be the most perfect example of the construction of an Aboriginal mental disorder by the scholarly professions, and its persistence dramatically underscores how constructions of the Aboriginal by these professions have, like Frankenstein's monster, taken on a life of their own. It first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #162 (April 1973), and again in the October 1974 issue. Doing so is an honorable endeavorbut only if we actually do our homework first. I just posted a new video talking about cultural appropriation and art! I have not always done so, and it appears that in this case, J.K. Rowling did not either. The Windigo also has the power to turn humans into cannibals who suffer the same . Writer, musician, activist, single father from Chicago. In my blind quest to represent everyone, all I did was reinforce the problem. In most traditions, the wendigo is human in origin and becomes a monster through a process that results either from acts of starvation-induced cannibalism or from possession by a spirit. When you comment on, Asian American and Pacific Islander History, Race and Membership in American History: Eugenics. If it's so vulgar and offensive that many hate it, well they can just not look at it lmao - it clearly wasn't made for them. The Wendigo (Also known as windigo, weendigo, windago, waindigo, windiga, witiko, wihtikow, and various other names including manaha) originates from Native-American legend, and is said to be a demonic half-beast as told by the Algonquian peoples along the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada. I always thought these are what cannibals are turning into. And some natives don't care at all. [28] Given that he resorted to cannibalism so near to food supplies, and that he killed and consumed the remains of all those present, it was revealed that Swift Runner's was not a case of pure cannibalism as a last resort to avoid starvation, but rather of a man with Wendigo psychosis. A classic example is wearing a Plains Indian war bonnet (see the 80s band The Village People). 8.1.2014. (1961). Aye, I love wendigos. I would advise anyone, however, who feels that way about my choice to create art or literature based on a wendigo, to simply avoid my gallery and writing. That, I would affirm, is truly and literally cannibalism, and it is cannibalism accompanied by no spiritually meaningful ceremony or ritual., More than a commentary on the life of wendigo stories amongst his own people, Forbes deploys the metaphor of the wendigo to advance nothing less than a critique of civilization at large and describes the violence that he argues lies at its foundation as one driven by a kind of wendigo psychosis. "[39] Lockhard's ideas explain that wendigos are an expression of a dark aspect of human nature: the drive toward greed, consumption, and disregard for other life in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement. 1. Have you encountered wendigo stories in films, television shows, or books? C'est la maladie dont ces dputez furent atteints; et comme la mort est l'vnique remede parmy ces bonnes gens, pour arrester ces meurtres, ils ont est massacrez pour arrester le cours de leur manie. In 1661, The Jesuit Relations reported: Since the concept of a wendigo stems from First Nations folklore, maybe someone making a cute little doll of this evil spirit figure was seen as inappropriate or making fun of their culture? A specimen of folk story collected in the early 20th century by Lottie Chicogquaw Marsden, an ethnographer of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, in which a wendigo also exhibits tool use, an ability to survive partial dismemberment, and autocannibalism, reads:[19]. Posted by As long as theyre not shoving their porn in your face let them be as Paul McCartney sung. Climbing the totem pole. Archived post. Some controversial new studies question the syndrome's legitimacy, claiming cases were actually a product of hostile accusations invented to justify the victim's ostracism or execution."[35]. In Algonquian traditions, the wendigo monster emerges not randomly or in violent response to colonialism as it often does in popular media but through a specific set of circumstances that are unique to different tribal groupings. So, thanks, Dave! It just looks like a human that may be bigger than normal. By the mid-1990s, it had gained a solid place in academic discourse, particularly in the field of sociology. J.K. Rowling's Cultural Appropriation Should Be A Lesson To White Writers Native Americans shouldn't be a "niche," and neither should women, LGBT people, or people of color. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. The latest addition to this lineup of wendigo tales is Scott Cooper and Guillermo del Toros horror film Antlers (2021) in which a Native American character provides some brief exposition before the story centered around a white community contending with the monster begins in earnest. In some artistic depictions, it looks similar to the pop-culture wendigo and even makes an appearance in The Witcher games but instead it's called a Leshen. Jack committed suicide, but Joseph was tried and sentenced to life in prison. Facing History and Ourselves invites educators to explore our case study Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools, particularly our reading "Culture, Stereotypes, and Identity" which features reflection questions surrounding some of the stereotypical media representations that we touch upon at the beginning of this essay. Those things, the predation on the Indians by Europeans, most certainly happened. "** 40. Even in the face of ongoing cultural appropriation and erasure, wendigo stories are but one reflection of the survivance, wisdom, and brilliance of Native peoples. An uncontrollable craving for consuming human flesh, even if a plenty of other food is available. Learn how your comment data is processed. And how many would have known that in the past - and even now - the originators of the cornrows, the headdresses, the bindis, would have been persecuted for wearing them? [42] In an early short story by Thomas Pynchon, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" (first published in 1959), the plot centers around a character developing Wendigo syndrome and going on a killing spree. The protection of minorities from the materialization of the majority's different thoughts is an asset of democratic constitutionalism. Character can be mean, evil or complete asshole but you still should be respectful while writing said character. One recurring theme across these storytelling mediums is the use of the wendigoalso spelled wtikoa monstrous figure from Algonquian mythology who exhibits an insatiable greed along with a desire for human flesh. In addition to denoting a cannibalistic monster from certain traditional folklore, some Native Americans also understand the wendigo conceptually. My tongue and my brain do not speak the right language. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Not only is it not offensive, I LOVE seeing references to wendigos in popular culture! Return to Article Details Culturally Conceptualizing Trauma: The Windigo in Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road We do the same thing with a lot of mythological creatures. You're just making up a story. Ten years later, "cultural appropriation" is no longer an obscure academic term . Strictly speaking, cultural appropriation is the adoption of some element of another culture -- food, language, practices, fashion, etc. Don't tell lies to those Indians." It's a term for what happens to people who for one reason or another turn to eating other people. It's a really cool beast that I personally would like to see more in fiction. Historically, deciding exactly what culture is hasn't been easy. DeSanti points to the 1999 horror film Ravenous as an illustration of this argument equating "the cannibal monster" to "American colonialism and manifest destiny". I am just reacting to what I read in this ridiculous PSA journal out there on Deviantart. The idea that diversity and representation can be addressed simply through a "balance between four guys and four girls" or through the removal of "traditional phallic stabbing" troubles me. The horror film Antlers adopts an old monster for its story, which serves as both a benefit and a hindrance. Cultural appropriation is perhaps the stupidest example of the stupidest concept , political correctness , that has ever been argued. MORTUI VELOCES SUNT! I do not know, nor can I. Oh yeah, Marvel. The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation; its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. In a report from the Contemporary Folklore conference covered in issue 388 of FORTEAN TIMES, the go-to magazine for all things paranormal, weird, or unexplained, a complaint is voiced about the "cultural appropriation" of the Wendigo, likening it to the "sexualization" of the Mothman statue in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The line between what differentiates cultural appropriation from cultural appreciation can be razor-thin, not to mention highly . Native Americans shouldn't be a "niche," and neither should women, LGBT people, or people of color. [45] Wrist, the 2016 debut novel by First Nations horror fiction writer Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler (Lac Des Milles Lacs Anishinaabe),[46] combines the traditional Ojibwe legend with the author's ideas inspired by non-Indigenous writers like Anne Rice and Tim Powers. I hate that I am defending JKR but I think a lot of people don't really think about how the internet was in in the late 90s and what kind of content was on the internet. Maybe ask a person of Chinese heritage. You dont have to be French to love the Phantom of the Opera. After thinking about it some more, I understand that its a kind of It was okay for these kids to pretend to be Indians but not for these kids to actually be Indians thing but I saw someone claim that it was contributing to colonisation and the death of death of their culture and that felt a bit strong. New replies are no longer allowed. This country is seeking to be whole Stretching out its arms and consuming all it can. I agree with some of it to a point, but disagree with most of it.