memes

I'm Indigenous and I'm actually more afraid of other people in a populated place ... you never know what these damned humans will do next.

I have a cabin in the woods with no internet, phone or communications ... it's even out of cell phone range and I feel safer there than anywhere else.

I grew up with stories of Windigo ... my parents used to freak us out with campfire stories in the dark and then pat us on the head and tell us to go to bed staring into the dark. My grandmother used to warn us not to make such dirty smoky fires because Windigo might see it from far away and find us.

I spent many nights alone out there and never had a problem ... or maybe that is just want Windigo would like you to think.

The stories go hand in hand with stories of cannibalism in my culture. Many of the stories suggest that during times of famine, which regularly occurred before our modern era back about a hundred years ago, people would go mad with hunger. You have to realize that families of about five to ten people lived alone out there alone for months at a time or even years. And when famines occurred, the families would disappear and there would only be one lone survivor and everyone would quickly realize what happened. The legends suggest that over time, those people who had tasted human flesh eventually just started seeing others as prey to be eaten and consumed ... they had been taken over by the spirit of Windigo.

And the stories get better because there is no one description of Windigo because it's a legend that any one who has ever seen very few ever live to tell. One description we were taught as kids is that it is covered in mounds of animal furs and layers of human skin to misshape its human body into a giant monster. The other feature was the teeth and mouth ... before it gets to the point of eating actual people, the famished person first starts eating themselves. They start ripping off portions of their lips and mouth to eat. It exposes their teeth and they can no longer close their mouth properly. So now you have this big hulking thing wandering around in the bush and when it looks at you, all you see is human teeth.

This is the Ojibway-Cree version of Windigo in the mushkeg and northern lake lands of Ontario. The descriptions vary from tribe to tribe throughout North America but this is the one I grew up with.

After many years of being in the bush ... I've yet to see one ... but late at night next to my camp fire in the wilderness, I always think of these stories.