Writer, musician, activist, single father from Chicago. The beautiful maang tikka, or hair accessory falling down the part in the middle of the hair, marks a . [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. This inspired an entire thread -->, Sucks to be these artists I guess. With teepees, Im not sure I get it. 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. Privacy Policy. I have always felt a distinct emotional connection to it, in fact. [43] These works set the template for later portrayals in popular culture, at times even replacing the Native American lore. According to Professor Chris Schedler, the figure of the wendigo represents "consuming forms of exclusion and assimilation" through which groups dominate other groups. Ojibwe scholar Brady DeSanti asserts that the wendigo "can be understood as a marker indicating a person imbalanced both internally and toward the larger community of human and spiritual beings around them. 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 The game I will be going over in this is Until Dawn, a horror game made by Supermassive Games, made . Learn how your comment data is processed. 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. 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). Cultural appropriation is the use of a people's traditional dress, music, cuisine, knowledge and other aspects of their culture, without their approval, by members of a different culture. All of these Indians went to where the Windigo was and cut off his legs. When I got over my initial bout of self-defensiveness, I realized I was totally wrong. [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. I wouldn't be offended if someone dressed as a stereotypical Scottish person whatever that looks like lol. And you know what? 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. The use of the creature in horror stories . (Not to put too fine a point on it, but you should totally go buy my novella. 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. 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. [28] He eventually confessed and was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan. 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. [26][27] During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. Europeans may well have behaved like Wendigos when they invaded the Americasthey didbut they didnt bring the Wendigo with them. For Indigenous peoples in Canada, cultural appropriation is rooted in colonization and ongoing oppression. 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. Beyond Forbes, other Native American thinkers have also used wendigo stories to present critical perspectives on various social problems and call for their resolution. In my blind quest to represent everyone, all I did was reinforce the problem. A classic example is wearing a Plains Indian war bonnet (see the 80s band The Village People). "Today, many believe the crows to be . 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. You're absolutively spot on! If ANYTHING is disrespectful to woke (does not exist in the real world) culture then I say: DO IT - AND DO IT BIG!!! Welcome to Facing Today, a Facing History blog. 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. 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 . He just gave the boy so much time to go there and back. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Wendigos specifically represent the very real threat of starvation and what moral depths a person will sink to to avoid starving to death in the hard, cold de Continue Reading More answers below KEY OOY This country is seeking to be whole Stretching out its arms and consuming all it can. The cannibalistic forest creature is known for allegedly . https://www.deviantart.com/forum/community/complaints/2611618/. The horror film Antlers adopts an old monster for its story, which serves as both a benefit and a hindrance. It first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #162 (April 1973), and again in the October 1974 issue. As a concept, wendigo can apply to situations other than some Native American-European relations. I am just reacting to what I read in this ridiculous PSA journal out there on Deviantart. 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. 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. Aye, I love wendigos. In contrast to modern horror stories that appropriate the wendigo as a plot device, Forbes implies that what actually ought to be terrifying to us is that we live in societies enveloped in violence and exploitation that we struggle to identify as such. does not have antlers or have any wolf features. As a result, in 1907, Fiddler and his brother Joseph were arrested by the Canadian authorities for homicide. I think it's okay because you're not trying to rewrite actual history or actual legend. 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. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. And we merely follow".[38]. He has written, produced and directed (and occasionally acted in) over a dozen plays, most of them in the Horror and Crime genres. Unlike cultural appropriation, strategic anti-essentialism can be practiced by both minority cultures and majority cultures. Your culture and entertainment cheat-sheet. Dont look at it! Learn how your comment data is processed. That will depend on who you ask. Im just struggling to understand the significance of it. The cultural appropriation police answer the yoga and banh mi objections with a familiar counter-argument: it's about power. so no, if you're some white kid hearing crying in the forests of california you're not being "lured into the 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. Their visitations speak to the inseparability of human experience National identity is irrelevant to this borderless horror. PSA: These 11 Halloween "Costumes" Will Always Be Offensive. You're just making up a story. The appropriation, and reclamation, of Native American mythology', Journal of . It can serve as a metaphor explaining any pattern of domination by which groups subjugate and dominate or violently destroy and displace. I do not know whether Algonquin People indeed consider Wendigo depictions in mainstream media so culturally sensitive or taboo as the "woke" in your lead comment implied I would somehow doubt it but do not know for sure. It sounds like you did research which is more that J. K. Rowling so I think yes? Some of this critique was rightly directed at literal cultural theft . [31][32] Others have pointed to a number of credible eyewitness accounts, both by Algonquians and others, as evidence that Wendigo psychosis was a factual historical phenomenon. 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? But I do notice that Eyre stopped short of saying colonialization is the origin for the Wendigo legend. In their most recent music video for 'How You Like That', fans spotted a Ganesha idol kept on the ground, in the background of the music video. To fully understand its consequences, though, we need to make sure we have a working definition of culture itself. Historically, deciding exactly what culture is hasn't been easy. No, I read your comment. 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. 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). identity. BLACKPINK. wa, which may have meant "owl". 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. Handle the characters and the story with respect. Archived post. In my blind quest to represent everyone, all I did was reinforce the problem. 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. Draw/write what you want, I say. I would refuse to be shackled by political correctness. 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). ][22][failed verification], In historical accounts of retroactively diagnosed Wendigo psychosis, it has been reported that humans became possessed by the wendigo spirit, after being in a situation of needing food and having no other choice besides cannibalism. Explore the latest videos from hashtags: #culturalappropriation, #cultureappropriation, #culturalappropiation, # . By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. No one can try to stake a singular claim to it. To Helheimr with it! So, thanks, Dave! It's fine for colonized Indians to incorporate European fitness . LOL. It's like saying vampires are sacred. Cultural appropriation means using a racial, religious, or social group's customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits without authority or right. Cultural appropriation is a bullshit term made up by people who feel some bizarre psychological need to make up reasons to punish themselves. "[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. In some cases, this entailed killing people with Wendigo psychosis. During a panel at YES! Until Dawn logo. Watch popular content from the following creators: Thorn (@shr00mermaid), Thorn (@shr00mermaid), Nuoance(@nuoance), MattHatterPlays(@matthatterplays), Aidan Mattis(@theaidanmattis) . As a concept, wendigo can apply to situations other than some Native American-European relations. And besides that, it never hurts to include your sources. Dollightful's Wendigo Doll - Cultural Appreciation or Appropriation? She annoys the hell out of me. The legend of the Wendigo is, in fact, one of the oldest manifestations of a taboo peculiar to most human societies, and which was already widespread among Anglophone tribes: cannibalism. 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. Don't tell lies to those Indians." (A friend sent this screenshot to me, along with the info, because he knows how much PC-ism pisses me off. MORTUI VELOCES SUNT! 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. 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. Still though, Im not sure I fully get the Native American spirits(?) The people who get offended over it, on behalf of someone else, are pathetically absurd. How stupid to think otherwise. 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. cultural identity theft, many would argue that cultural appropriation is inevitable in a melting pot like the United States. They're monsters. 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. I know people who are absolutely terrified of them, branching out from their fear of deer. Discover short videos related to wendigo cultural appropriation on TikTok. Representation in media is crucially important, something I have become very aware of as I've grown older and consumed more entertainment. 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. 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. Not only is it not offensive, I LOVE seeing references to wendigos in popular culture! Guillermo del Toro, producer of the film, developed the wendigo on the basis that the more the creature eats, the more it gets hungry and the more it gets hungry, the weaker it becomes. The question of how to challenge the wtiko psychosis as described by Forbes and Wendigo Economics as described by LaDuke is a difficult one, but the mythic force of the concept of the wendigo helps to underscore the urgency of these questions. I believe cultural appropriation is Only when someone of another 'race' or culture creates something and passes it off as if it is authentic. Ill admit, my initial reaction was very dismissive. As a concept, the wendigo can apply to any person, idea, or movement infected by a corrosive drive toward self-aggrandizing greed and excessive consumption, traits that sow disharmony and destruction if left unchecked. Mistgod Edited Oct 11, 2020 Hobbyist Traditional Artist Apparently, wendigos are sacred creatures from several indigenous cultures. There's too much variety of opinion on the question to obtain a consensus. In another unaware move made by a YG artist, mega girl group BLACKPINK, were recently called out for cultural appropriation. 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. 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 film dives deep into cultural appropriation during those pivotal scenes in which the black crows help save the day for the titular flying elephant. Is it okay for a white person to celebrate the culture. It also includes the unauthorized use of parts of their culture (their dress, dance, etc.) Basil H. Johnston, an Ojibwe teacher and scholar from Ontario, gives a description of a wendigo: The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones.
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