If you need to flag this entry as abusive. 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. Ten years later, "cultural appropriation" is no longer an obscure academic term . [29], Another well-known case involving Wendigo psychosis was that of Jack Fiddler, an Oji-Cree chief and medicine man known for his powers at defeating wendigos. Not only is it not offensive, I LOVE seeing references to wendigos in popular culture! There, he uses the cannibalistic wendigo as a metaphor for the behaviors and attitudes central to patterns of social domination visited upon his own people in the Americas and subjugated peoples everywhere. It really depends who you talk to. Is it okay for a white person to celebrate the culture. Wendigo psychosis is a fascinating condition with a storied history. The book's cul-tural importance granted it not one, but two movie adaptations, the first in 1989 and the second in 2019. As a concept, wendigo can apply to situations other than some Native American-European relations. The wendigo is seen as the embodiment of gluttony, greed, and excess: never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they are constantly searching for new victims. wendigos originate from spiritual beliefs held by Algonquian Indigenous peoples, whom are from the north eastern part of north america. 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? We should show proper respect to our Cryptids at all times, and Im rightfully righteously indignant at the thought of anyone doing otherwise with Mothman. His first novel, THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF, is available for purchase at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/734763 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. My intentions were pure, as were Rowling's, I imagine. But overall I can't stand JKR. Ojibwe scholar Dr. Brady Santi has developed this guide for teachers who would like to teach students about her communitys unique belief systems with an emphasis on the wendigo as it appears in popular films. See more. According to Professor Chris Schedler, the figure of the wendigo represents "consuming forms of exclusion and assimilation" through which groups dominate other groups. An uncontrollable craving for consuming human flesh, even if a plenty of other food is available. (A friend sent this screenshot to me, along with the info, because he knows how much PC-ism pisses me off. 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. 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. Some researchers argued that, essentially, Wendigo psychosis was a fabrication, the result of nave anthropologists taking stories related to them at face value without observation. That's just pulling a potential explanation out of my ass, though, I have no idea if its accurate or not. BTW, I love rainbow farting unicorns! The Cambridge Dictionary, defines it as "the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture."And a lot of times, it is marked by a dominant culture taking from one that has been colonized and oppressed . The windigo, however, continues to seek revenge for this attempted scholarly execution by periodically duping unsuspecting passers-by, like psychiatrists, into believing that windigo psychosis not only exists but that a psychiatrist could conceivably encounter a patient suffering from this disorder in his or her practice today! Only those entitled to them should wear them. 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. Political correctness started out as one thing, a good thing. It will survive on it's own. Romantic scholar and documentarian Emily Zarka, also a professor at Arizona State University, observes that two commonalities among the indigenous cultures of Algonquian language family speakers are that they are situated in climes where harsh winters are frequent and may be accompanied by starvation. ". arent cryptids thing. And we merely follow".[38]. You dont have to be French to love the Phantom of the Opera. [18], A wendigo need not lose the human's powers of cognition or speech and in some depictions may clearly communicate with its prospective victims or even threaten or taunt them. Their visitations speak to the inseparability of human experience National identity is irrelevant to this borderless horror. [23], What caused us greater concern was the news that met us upon entering the Lake, namely, that the men deputed by our Conductor for the purpose of summoning the Nations to the North Sea, and assigning them a rendezvous, where they were to await our coming, had met their death the previous Winter in a very strange manner. They are seen as malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural beings of great spiritual power . One day they came to an Indian village and the Windigo sent the boy to the Indian village to get some things for him to eat. Shock factor aside, it's especially eye-catching in that it isn't necessarily a result of being desperate for food. These things feel formulaic, quantitative, mathematicbalancing equations and subtraction. Whether you understand it fully or not, cultural appropriation is a real thing and a real problem. The wendigo -- a creature from Native American myth -- carries powerful symbolism and is presumably sufficiently mysterious to keep enough audience members guessing at its motives and abilities. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. And unfortunately for them, this isn't the first time. Wendigo is a part of MCU, too. Ces pauures gens furent saisis, ce qu'on nous a dit, d'vn mal qui nous est inconnu, mais qui n'est pas bien extraordinaire parmy les peuples que nous cherchons: ils ne sont ny lunatiques, ny hypocondriaques, ny phrenetiques; mais ils ont vn mlange de toutes ces sortes de maladies, qui, leur blessant l'imagination, leur cause vne faim plus que canine, et les rend si affamez de chair humaine, qu'ils se iettent sur les femmes, sur les enfans, mesme sur les hommes, comme de vrais loups-garous, et les deuorent belles dents, sans se pouuoir rassasier ny saouler, cherchans tousiours nouuelle proye, et plus auidement que plus ils en ont mang. Why is indigenous culture suddenly more sacred than any other culture? are not cryptids, and don't even traditionally have deer skulls for heads. 8.1.2014. And they are worth considering including in ones classroom teaching. Oh yeah, Marvel. Further, cultural appropriation often occurs as the backwash of colonization, and contributes to widening existing divisions and perpetuating patterns of historic dispossession and oppression. 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. Wendigos/Windigos/etc. https://www.deviantart.com/forum/community/complaints/2611618/. His first novel, THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF, is available for purchase at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/734763 [26][27] During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. 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. 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. Those poor men (according to the report given us) were seized with an ailment unknown to us, but not very unusual among the people we were seeking. You're just making up a story. (1961). The legend of the wendigo has long been associated with real-life problems like insatiable greed, selfishness, and violence. First, he gives definitions of the key concepts of "appropriation" and "arts," and delimits his investigation as one concerned with "cultural" appropriation. Film, This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. [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. 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. America is the symbol of inclusion, so as part of the American culture we embrace foreign influences in our society. Copyright 2022 Facing History & Ourselves. Monsters like Wendigos often represent, in the imprecise language of emotion, a common cultural fear. I mean yeah I see what your saying, personally I do research on what its about even if I don't use it in it's entirety. Archived post. Contents 1 History 2 Gallery 3 Trivia 4 Navigation History Mistgod Edited Oct 11, 2020 Hobbyist Traditional Artist Apparently, wendigos are sacred creatures from several indigenous cultures. 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. 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. Cookie Notice Cho isn't even only problematic character, Lavander changed her race (in movies, i'm not sure about books but still, Rowling could of said something). It was forbidden to resort to this practice, even out of desperation. It never occurred to me that what I was doing might be offensive, because I've never even met a Native American person in real life. Thus I support Scott Cooper, the director of the forthcoming (hopefully by next spring) ANTLERS, in his efforts to seek out consultation from Indian advisors when making his movie, which features a Wendigo. But I do know the actual description of it. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Topics: 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. [16] Whenever a wendigo ate another person, it would grow in proportion to the meal it had just eaten, so it could never be full. I can write whatever fiction I want, and draw whatever I want. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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. 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. without permission. 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. 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. 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 . [17] Therefore, wendigos are portrayed as simultaneously gluttonous and extremely thin due to starvation. That will depend on who you ask. 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. [10], The Wechuge is a similar being that appears in the legends of the Athabaskan people of the Northwest Pacific Coast. Mythical being in Native American folklore, "Windigo" redirects here. I have to look! 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. In another unaware move made by a YG artist, mega girl group BLACKPINK, were recently called out for cultural appropriation. However, when reading Magic in North America, it's hard not to get the sense that Rowling did not understand the thin ice she was treading on when it came to representation of Native Americans, nor did she make any effort to treat these themes with the weight they deserve. 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. You dont have to be of Afro-Caribbean descent to talk about, write about, or make movies about zombies. 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. 12. It springs from the well of the collective human unconscious, the communal soul. 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. Seems to me a great deal of what people write about in fantasy stories is borrowing from other cultures & nations & communities. It's a really cool beast that I personally would like to see more in fiction. "[36] Out of equilibrium and estranged by their communities, individuals thought to be afflicted by the wendigo spirit unravel and destroy the ecological balance around them. Differing thinking is one of the cherished assets of democratic cultural pluralism. Im glad, because I dont believe that it is. 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. I can't say for sure how much research Rowling did when writing her series, but others have pointed out that it doesn't seem like much. So it seems to me like the objection might have something to do with an inappropriate mixing of religious contexts from two different belief systems. spellings (see Colombo 2) but is most commonly rendered as Windigo, Wendigo, or Witiko. The Wendigo may be a figure from American Indian mythology, but it belongs to all of humankind. 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. "Windigo Psychosis: A Study of Relationship between Belief and Behaviour among the Indians of Northeastern Canada." Eat what you want to eat, tattoo yourself with whatever you want to tattoo yourself with, wear what you want to wear, and let those ove Continue Reading More answers below Blackwood's work has influenced many of the subsequent portrayals in mainstream horror fiction,[42][43] such as August Derleth's "The Thing that Walked on the Wind" and "Ithaqua" (1933 and 1941),[41] which in turn inspired the character in Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary,[42] where it is a personification of evil, an ugly grinning creature with yellow-grey eyes, ears replaced by ram's horns, white vapor coming from its nostrils, and a pointed, decaying yellow tongue. Mexicans: Cultural Appropriation PragerU 3.01M subscribers Subscribe 85K Share 2.2M views 4 years ago What is cultural appropriation? MORTUI VELOCES SUNT! My tongue and my brain do not speak the right language. Cultural appropriation is perhaps the stupidest example of the stupidest concept , political correctness , that has ever been argued. Not so for anyone who isn't a straight, white male, and this trend in entertainment forces many people to seek out "niche" markets to find characters who look like them and are portrayed honestly and realistically. I do know some natives believe you should not say or write its name because that may make it come or you may be infected and become it. The Windigo also has the power to turn humans into cannibals who suffer the same . For this screenshot controversy, I am actually going to go over a video game for this. He said, "You bet there is, I have eaten lots of Indians, no wonder they are fat." Lurking in the deep woods of the Northern United States and Southern Canada lies a mysterious and fearsome Native American monster, the Wendigo. Pet Sematary is an important cultural artifact thanks to King's widespread popularity and recognition as a horror writer. Wendigo Cannibalism in Native American Folklore. Basically, the word wendigo can also function as a symbol for gluttony and the image of excess. No one can try to stake a singular claim to it. Appreciation is honoring and respecting another culture and its practices, as a way to gain knowledge and understanding. In the 21st century, cultural appropriationlike globalizationisn't just inevitable; it's potentially positive. I am just reacting to what I read in this ridiculous PSA journal out there on Deviantart. In 1661, The Jesuit Relations reported: The "Dark Horse" singer . Okay, dont anybody get me wrong. Indigenous peoples have seen culturally . Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge 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. For more information, please see our One of those advisors I just mentioned, Chris Eyre, had this to say of the Wendigo: They [meaning Native peoples] truly, truly believe in it, because it represents greed and colonialism when we first came to the shores of what is now America, and pillaged all of their resources and forced them [into] cannibalism.