wendigo

Details

A pure, unadulterated word

"The figure of the Windigo is familiar to Native and First Nations Algonquin peoples and predominant in Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Cree literature. It goes by various names with variant spellings but is most commonly rendered as Windigo, Wendigo, or Witiko. Windigo is a malevolent manitouor spirit whose insatiable appetite for human flesh can never be satisfied. The Windigo or also has the power to turn humans into cannibals who suffer the same voracity. Ojibwe storyteller Basil Johnston explains that Windigos came into being in winter and stopped villagers and beset wanderers. Ever hungry, they craved human flesh, which is the only substance that could sustain them. The irony is that having eaten human flesh, the Windigos grew in size, so their hunger and craving remained in proportion to their size; thus they were eternally starving. The Windigo’s appearance reflects the bitter winters of the remote North, and its presence often is signaled by sudden cold and wind. Although it can take many forms, the Windigo often is depicted as a giant spirit-creature with a heart and sometimes a body of ice endowed with prodigious strength and able to travel as fast as the wind. […] Windigo’s cannibalistic behavior recalls the vampire, the zombie, and the werewolf. Like the vampire, it feasts on flesh and blood, writes Columbus. Like the werewolf, it shape-changes at will."

by Grace L. Dillon

"Wétiko is a Cree term...which refers to a cannibal or, more specifically, to an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts, including cannibalism… I have come to the conclusion that imperialism and exploitation are forms of cannibalism and, in fact, are precisely those forms of cannibalism which are most diabolical or evil… It should be understood that wétikos do not eat other humans only in a symbolic sense. 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. That, I would affirm, is truly and literally cannibalism, and it is cannibalism accompanied by no spiritually meaningful ceremony or ritual."

by Jack Forbes