wendigo appropriation

Western appropriation has long-lasting effects on the perceptions of Native American cultures by the average consumer and even scientific communities. 246 33 This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. 3. x\o7a_h ss+yHL$eW}gfw)$/D !;n*+v}}uSU|.&-y ])yB\}OIZyY8 aA6Vo !C_D#!MYik.1>%'5ryZ*>fb=n#_dr;j5 { I have always felt a distinct emotional connection to it, in fact. The windigo is a Native American spirit belonging to the Algonquian tribes of North America and Canada. (A friend sent this screenshot to me, along with the info, because he knows how much PC-ism pisses me off. 0000004651 00000 n 278 0 obj <>stream 0000008020 00000 n Indigenous, His first novel, THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF, is available for purchase at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/734763 It may be used to justify calling. His line of questioning effectively asks what if the monstrosity we face is actually not an otherworldly presence but our all too human selves?. The windigo is a per-sonal spirit that still belongs to the Native American cultures from which it has been taken, and the appropriation of this spirit harms Native American communities by poorly representing their beliefs for a marketable gain. 0 You must be here to either learn more about social justice or answer questions from a social justice viewpoint. Smith and Fiore detail that, among the Cree and northernmost Ojibwa, it is a feared creature because it is understood as both a 'mythic character' and as a threat to humans (2010: 68). Copyright (c) 2022 Francesca Amee Johnson, https://doi.org/10.31273/reinvention.v15iS1.906, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, Accepts submissions from any undergraduate student, worldwide, including student-staff collaborations (student must be lead author), Edited by students and staff at the University of Warwick and Monash University. It can serve as a metaphor explaining any pattern of domination by which groups subjugate and dominate or violently destroy and displace. We do the same thing with a lot of mythological creatures. Im glad, because I dont believe that it is. If you do go as a specific person, avoid figures of religious or cultural significance to a particular group to which you do not belong. %PDF-1.7 By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. 0000001365 00000 n Western appropriation has long-lasting effects on the perceptions of Native American cultures by the average consumer and even scientific communities. 0000000974 00000 n symL,JyvCq;[H~! The wendigo is intended to embody hunger, particularly as refracted through the icy cold of winter and the monstrous things that people do when their appetites overwhelm 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. 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. a lot of Natives and people in general don't even like saying the word itself. Stolen Spirits: The Appropriation of the Windigo Spirit in Horror Literature. Answer (1 of 6): First and foremost, I'm not telling you this because I personally have a problem with you dressing as a wendigo for a cryptid fair, but we are living in an age of cancel culture where a costume you sported ten years ago might be used against you. 0000012532 00000 n When you comment on, Asian American and Pacific Islander History, Race and Membership in American History: Eugenics. Be supportive, this is a place for growth, not hostility. 0000003465 00000 n Film, Turning on The Wendigo happens to be part of my own (Anishiinaabe) cultural heritage. With the comments turned off on Dollightful's apology video, I thought that maybe we could have some discussion here(if anyone ever sees this, anyway). Cookie Notice One example is Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke who has called for a decisive shift away from what she has termed Wendigo Economics for the sake of the health of the natural world. As a concept, wendigo can apply to situations other than some Native American-European relations. 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 Archived post. 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. In this paper, I document the depictions of windigo in Native American mythology, those of Western literature, and the effects of appropriation and misrepresentation on Native communities. % Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge To Helheimr with it! As I mentioned during our latest episode of the NYMG podcast, I've been playing Until Dawn, and the game has got me thinking about a few different things that I'd like to spend some time parsing through, like the game's representation of things like gender and race, how it is that the idea of choice seems to influence the way we think about these representations, and the manner in which . 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. A classic example is wearing a Plains Indian war bonnet (see the 80s band The Village People). This construction is problematic in the horror genre as it presents an Indigenous antagonist that poses a threat to white culture for its otherness and indigeneity while at the same time, misappropriating, discarding and demonising the Indigenous culture the myth comes from, at whim. 0000009484 00000 n Topics: 0000001705 00000 n 0000006529 00000 n He has written, produced and directed (and occasionally acted in) over a dozen plays, most of them in the Horror and Crime genres.