Wendigo psychosis is a fascinating condition with a storied history. Nitty gritty. Privacy Policy. and our Created by the writer Steve Englehart and artist Herb Trimpe, the monster is the result of a curse that afflicts those who commit acts of cannibalism. 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. 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. 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. According to Professor Chris Schedler, the figure of the wendigo represents "consuming forms of exclusion and assimilation" through which groups dominate other groups. I won't pretend I know everything about NA culture, but I believe that headresses and that kind of finery is only used on special occasions and was not how ordinary NAs dressed all the time. Cultural appropriation definition, the adoption, usually without acknowledgment, of cultural identity markers from subcultures or minority communities into mainstream culture by people with a relatively privileged status. No it isn't cultural appropriation, as long as it is researched and accurately presented in the story. The legend of the wendigo has long been associated with real-life problems like insatiable greed, selfishness, and violence. arent cryptids thing. This form of cultural appropriation is deeply intertwined with systemic and institutionalized racism rooted in capitalism. 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. minority cultures deserve a higher level of protection from being put on display than mainstream cultures," Nah, https://forum.deviantart.com/community/complaints/2612415/, https://www.deviantart.com/comments/18/2611618/4878314665, (, literally "goat-sucker") is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas, with the first sightings reported in Puerto Rico. 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. The line between what differentiates cultural appropriation from cultural appreciation can be razor-thin, not to mention highly . It will survive on it's own. For other uses, see, Graham, John Russell; John Coates; Barbara Swartzentruber; Brian Ouellette; ", harvcoltxt error: no target: CITEREFSchwarz1969 (, International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, descriptive template for the Indian savage, corporate voracity, exploitation, and power, "Windigo: The Flesh-Eating Monster of Native American Legend", International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, "Windigo, the Ice Cannibal (Wendigo, Wiindigoo, Windgo, Windego)", "Relations des Jsuites contenant ce qui s'est pass de plus remarquable dans les missions des Pres de la Compagnie de Jsus dans la Nouvelle-France", "The Jesuit Relations: Travels and Expectations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 16101791", "Love, and Death in Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary', "The In Character Interview with Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler", "Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler on writing an Indigenous horror story", "ANTLERS: GUILLERMO DEL TORO E SCOTT COOPER SVELANO IL SIGNIFICATO DEL WENDIGO", "Supernatural - Season 1, Episode 2: Wendigo", "Fallout 76 Creatures: Bethesda Tells Tales of the Wendigo", "The Wiitiko Psychosis in the Context of Ojibwa Personality and Culture", Seeing Wetiko: on Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wendigo&oldid=1139431905, Legendary creatures of the indigenous peoples of North America, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, Articles with text in Algonquian languages, Articles containing Proto-Algonquian-language text, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from March 2022, All articles with vague or ambiguous time, Articles with failed verification from August 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Teicher, Morton I. 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. [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. 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). But Native Americans shouldn't be a "niche," and neither should women, LGBT people, or people of color. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. He said, "You bet there is, I have eaten lots of Indians, no wonder they are fat." Cultural appropriation is a huge red flag that the brand has minimal diversity or representation behind the scenes," she explains. Basically, the word wendigo can also function as a symbol for gluttony and the image of excess. First, he gives definitions of the key concepts of "appropriation" and "arts," and delimits his investigation as one concerned with "cultural" appropriation. I wouldn't be offended if someone dressed up as a stereotypical native american even though my great grandma was half blackfoot native american. Cultural appropriation consists of borrowing something from another culture in mockery or thoughtless misuse. You're absolutively spot on! If an idea has merit, it doesn't need protecting. I mentioned above that I was guilty of doing the same thing. They got Thor and Loki all wrong and what the hell? Facing History and Ourselves combats racism and antisemitism by using history to teach tolerance in classrooms around the globe. I dont know who originally posted it, or where. They are afflicted with neither lunacy, hypochondria, nor frenzy; but have a combination of all these species of disease, which affects their imaginations and causes them a more than canine hunger. What is cultural appropriation vs. cultural appreciation? In some cases, this entailed killing people with Wendigo psychosis. Archived post. DeSanti points to the 1999 horror film Ravenous as an illustration of this argument equating "the cannibal monster" to "American colonialism and manifest destiny". 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. . The moral lessons contained in wendigo stories are also used to support the task of social critique in the late Native American scholar Dr. Jack D. Forbes book Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wtiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism (1978). LOL. The Wendigo is by far one of the most mysterious and feared monsters in not only in the Algonquian folklore which it is attributed to, but also other . [40][41] Joe Nazare wrote that Blackwood's "subtly-demonizing rhetoric transforms the Wendigo from a native myth into a descriptive template for the Indian savage."[42]. Okay, dont anybody get me wrong. Contents 1 History 2 Gallery 3 Trivia 4 Navigation History We should talk about how Thor and Loki are cultural appropriation of Norwegian mythology. I don't don't value cultural pluralism. I would refuse to be shackled by political correctness. I'm just glad I learned this lesson from her before actually getting my book published. Historically, deciding exactly what culture is hasn't been easy. Topics: When first hearing this criticism, I, as a wannabe author of fiction (by the way, you can buy my debut novella here) rolled my eyes and whitesplained to myself why Rowling wasn't doing anything wrong. In addition, for many Indigenous peoples and local communities, making traditional clothes is a source of income; as such, cultural appropriation can . Lipsitz, writing in the the 1990s, argued that cultural appreciation becomes cultural appropriation "when an element of culture is adopted from a marginalized group without respect for its . Chippewa author Louise Erdrich's novel The Round House, winner of the National Book Award, depicts a situation where an individual person becomes a wendigo. That's an easy solution and I still keep my freedom to create. The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation; its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. Cookie Notice The Wendigo may be a figure from American Indian mythology, but it belongs to all of humankind. PSA: These 11 Halloween "Costumes" Will Always Be Offensive. I am ashamed I watched all the movies. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets; the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. In, This page was last edited on 15 February 2023, at 02:58. What makes the wendigo any different from other culturally important mythological creatures like unicorns? Windigo is a malevolent manitou or spirit whose insatiable appetite for human flesh can never be satisfied. Monsters like Wendigos often represent, in the imprecise language of emotion, a common cultural fear. Don't tell lies to those Indians." Cultural appropriation is a bullshit term made up by people who feel some bizarre psychological need to make up reasons to punish themselves. Some of this critique was rightly directed at literal cultural theft . They went back again to see if he was dead. Truly insensitive cultural appropriation is when you're taking a part of another culture and portraying it in a deliberately insensitive or disrespectful manner. Lots of stories have aped Native American folklore before her, including some of mine. Only assholes think thats offensive. "** 40. In Ojibwe, Eastern Cree, Westmain Swampy Cree, Naskapi, and Innu lore, wendigos are often described as giants that are many times larger than human beings, a characteristic absent from myths in other Algonquian cultures. (A friend sent this screenshot to me, along with the info, because he knows how much PC-ism pisses me off. The cultural appropriation police answer the yoga and banh mi objections with a familiar counter-argument: it's about power. Not only is it not offensive, I LOVE seeing references to wendigos in popular culture! In 1661, The Jesuit Relations reported: As a creator, I believe it is my responsibility, the responsibility of any creator, if using characters that belong to a culture other than mine and exploring themes from that culture, to be accurate. To Helheimr with it! They heard the Windigo calling the boy. 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. [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. On the other hand, "The Wendigo" is one of the first representations of the windigo by a 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. The Indians asked the Windigo if there was any fat on them. The book's cul-tural importance granted it not one, but two movie adaptations, the first in 1989 and the second in 2019. We enjoy liberties today that aren't even a freckle on the face of human history, and yet some individuals would go so far as to throw them all away because something offends them. A nice summary is found here: The concept of cultural appropriation emerged in academia in the late 1970s and 1980s as part of the scholarly critique of colonialism. Return to Article Details Culturally Conceptualizing Trauma: The Windigo in Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road 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. [26][27] During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. Sentences like "The Native American wizarding community was particularly gifted in animal and plant magic" are cringe-worthy if you give them a little thought, and the notion that only European wizards were clever enough to invent wands, which make magic "more precise and more powerful" borders on horrific levels of cluelessness. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. 12. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. [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. The game I will be going over in this is Until Dawn, a horror game made by Supermassive Games, made . It can serve as a metaphor explaining any pattern of domination by which groups subjugate and dominate or violently destroy and displace. He has written, produced and directed (and occasionally acted in) over a dozen plays, most of them in the Horror and Crime genres. That borrowing and exchanging of cultural elements is what makes America the melting pot of the world.
Where Did Scott Morrison Go To Primary School,
West Haven Vision Appraisal,
Articles W