Canada's Wendigo: The Monster Inside All of Us
Monster.
What comes to mind when you see that word?
Maybe it's some eerie spectre or bloodthirsty creature: the one lurking in the darkness just out of the corner of your eye, yet never quite visible when you turn around to look. Maybe it's the supernatural and doomed Byronic hero: the one you know should repulse you, but who is far too alluring to resist. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the radicalized mass murderer: the one so deeply buried in their online echo chamber that you don't even know they exist until they suddenly burst out into the open, leaving death and destruction in their wake.
For me, a monster can certainly be all of those things. Already, in my mind, I can hear some of the names. See some of the faces. And perhaps, given this time of year, you think this is where I plan to go.
But it isn't. Not this year, nor any year either before or after.
Because for me, when I hear the word "monster", I hear its root:
Monstrare.
It's a Latin word I learned in high school, meaning "to show", and as far as English derivatives go, it does have a number of benign uses: "demonstrate", for one. However, when combined with a second word, monere, "to warn", we have "an object shown as a warning."
A warning to what? Of what?
Many monsters, I'm sure, are meant to warn us of the dangers of the outside world: to be careful about unknown places, suspicious people, or even the unpredictability of life itself. However, the type of monster that I find the most intriguing - and the most worth exploring - is the monster who acts as a mirror, showing us the darker side of our own human nature.
And it turns out that I don't have to look very far - because one such monster is believed to have originated right here in Canada: the wendigo.
Like many other elements of Canadian culture that I've been writing about lately, the wendigo has Indigenous roots: specifically, it has been traced back to the First Nations who speak Algonquian languages and whose ancestors were hunter-gatherers in the northern forested regions (think "Eastern Woodlands" and "Sub-Arctic" from this post here).
With such a vast geographical area to consider, there is, in fact, no one version of the wendigo; its appearance and even its name will vary from one nation to the next, especially as Algonquian cultural influences spread over time into other parts of North America. (Note: for this blog, I am using one of several romanizations - wendigo, windigo, wiindigo - I have come across for the Ojibwe - i.e., Anishinaabe - version of the term.) However, what most versions have in common is that it is someone who was originally human, but became a monster after killing and cannibalizing another: usually a family or community member.
Needless to say, this is completely morally abhorrent in and of itself - one possible hypothesis for the wendigo story's origin, after all, was that it served to reinforce an existing cultural taboo against cannibalism - but I think there is more to it than that. I am not Indigenous; nor will I claim that this interpretation is the one that First Nations cultures would hold. However, since first stumbling across the story of the wendigo about ten years ago, it's stood out to me, more than any other legendary monster I could think of, as a demonstration of monstrare: the monster as warning.
Although murder and cannibalism are certainly key elements of the story, focusing solely on those makes the wendigo feel distant and remote: something someone else "out there" might succumb to, but not us. Not me.
But is that really the case?
See, the thing that really stands out to me about the wendigo is what it suggests about human nature. The cannibalism in question was never solely restricted to malicious intent; it also included those who, in the extreme cold and hunger so prevalent historically in Canada's northern winters, resorted to preying on weaker members of the community in order to ensure their own survival.
In other words, at its heart, a wendigo is an extreme manifestation of something that is, in fact, inherently and universally human: the desire to seek our own wants over the needs of others.
And if the wendigo is a reflection of a trait that all humans possess, would that not make each of us - every single human being, good or bad - potential monsters?
It's a bit strange, really. I do know that for the First Nations peoples who did believe in the wendigo, the thought of possibly becoming one was far more frightening than the thought of running into one. Yet nowadays, I don't think many of us, especially those of us in "Western" liberal democracies, would see individualism as a negative trait. Selfishness, individualism's foil, is for sure - but even so, it's not monstrous.
Not like arrogance. Or violence. Or lack of empathy and remorse.
Yet, if there's any point in our history when, perhaps, we really should start thinking of individualism as a potential root for monstrosity, I do think it's now. I'm not sure how many of us, prior to this COVID-19 pandemic and our current climate crisis, would have believed it possible that a desire to preserve our own individual freedoms could literally kill someone - but if we still haven't realized it by now...then when?
I don't want to point any fingers. Everyone's reality is their own, and there is no way I could know, for sure, what anyone is thinking: something that appears selfish to an outsider might not actually be, and vice-versa.
And that's the part that matters. Because at the end of the day, I think that the wendigo is not so much a warning against certain actions, but the motives behind them. And so, rather ironically, it's only by focusing on ourselves - by looking inward and examining our own consciences - that we can come to find and eliminate the specific, unique monster that lurks inside each of us.
So remember, as you take in all the spooky stuff around you this fall...look out for monsters.
This blog post is actually the first in a new series, The Stories We Tell, which focuses on my attempts to reflect on myths, legends, fairy tales and other classic narratives to see what we might be able to learn from them. To access a master list for this and other series, click here.
Image Credits
All photographs and edits (c) Kitty Na
Note: I am aware that despite this post's being about the wendigo, there are no direct images of it. That is a deliberate choice on my part: even though I address mature subject matter in this blog, I do still want my images, at least, to be family-friendly. If you do want images, Google is your friend.
Further Reading and Resources
While I reflect on some aspects of the wendigo here, know that this blog post only begins to scratch the surface, and was inspired by a number of online sources that go into far greater detail. So, if you want to find out more, here they are.
"Monsters. They're Us, Man: Crash Course Mythology #36" by Mike Rugnetta for CrashCourse (YouTube video)
"The Many Faces of the Wendigo" by Chris Hubbard for The Kitchen Sink
"Windigo: The Flesh-Eating Monster of Native American Legend" by Emily Zarka, PhD for Storied (YouTube video) - Note: This video contains graphic horror imagery.
One significant gap in this list, I confess, is the lack of Indigenous sources (yet another reason why I chose not to go into too much detail in the main post itself). Therefore, if anyone comes across any and would like to share them, please leave a comment!
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