Dangerous Spirits, forthcoming from Heritage House.
My work on the windigo, an evil spirit in Northern Algonquian traditions, will be published by Heritage House in Canada this November, and in the United States this spring. We’ve now finalized the book blurb:
The windigo is a cannibal spirit prevalent in the traditional
narratives of the Algonquian peoples of North America. From Labrador in the north
to Virginia in the south, and from Nova Scotia in the east to the Rocky Mountains
in the west, this phenomenon has been discussed, feared, and interpreted in different
ways for centuries. Dangerous Spirits tells the story of how belief in the windigo
clashed with the new world order that came about after European contact.
Dismissing the belief as superstitious, many early explorers, traders, and missionaries
failed to understand the complexity and power of the windigo—both as
a symbol and as a threat to the physical safety of a community. Yet, judging by the
volume of journal entries, police records, court transcripts, and other written documents describing windigo cases witnessed by or recounted to Euro-Canadians over …
John Rae, the great explorer, who learned the fate of the Franklin expedition from the Inuit.
In all the annals of Arctic exploration, there is no disappearance so famous as that of the lost Franklin Expedition. In 1845 Captain John Franklin led 128 men and two ships to search for the North West passage to Asia through the Arctic. Not a single man survived to be seen again. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the British admiralty and Lady Franklin sent out expedition after expedition to find out the fate of lost ships. In the end, it was an explorer on land, John Rae, who learned from the Inuit that the ships had sunk, and that the men had been so starving during their escape overland that they had resorted to cannibalism. For this discovery, he was ostracized by many of his peers, because Victorian gentleman would never eat one other; as such, he had insulted the dead.
This history has become part of Canadian identity. It’s a staple in Canadian literature and poetry, as Margaret Atwood discussed in her book, Strange Things. Stan Rodgers, the great Canadian folk singer, sang about Franklin in his iconic song the Northwest Passage. The only traces of what happened from the crew were two notes left in a cairn, miraculously discovered in the high Arctic. What happened to the crew after they left this record in April 1848? …
Dangerous Spirits, forthcoming from Heritage House.
I have a new book forthcoming this fall with Heritage House press, a great Canadian publisher. Here is my the back-cover blurb on the work:
In the traditional Algonquian world, the windigo is the spirit of selfishness and winter, which can transform a person into a murderous cannibal. Native peoples over a vast stretch of North America—from Virginia in the south to Labrador in the north, from Nova Scotia in the east to Minnesota in the west—believed in the windigo, not only as a myth told in the darkness of winter, but also as a real danger.
Drawing on oral narratives, fur traders’ journals, trial records, missionary accounts, and anthropologists’ field notes, this book is a revealing glimpse into indigenous beliefs, cross-cultural communication, and embryonic colonial relationships. It also ponders the recent resurgence of the windigo in popular culture and its changing meaning in a modern context.
In the traditional Algonquian world, the windigo is the spirit of selfishness, which can transform a person into a murderous cannibal. Native peoples over a vast stretch of North America—from Virginia in the south to Labrador in the north, from Nova Scotia in the east to Minnesota in the west—believed in the windigo, not only as a myth told in the darkness of winter, but also as a real danger.
Drawing on oral narratives, fur traders’ journals, trial records, missionary accounts, and anthropologists’ field notes, this book is a revealing glimpse into indigenous beliefs, cross-cultural communication, and embryonic colonial relationships. It also ponders the recent resurgence of the windigo in popular culture and its changing meaning in a modern context.
– See more at: http://www.heritagehouse.ca/book_details.php?isbn_upc=9781772030327#sthash.89GXI7Bt.dpuf
In the traditional Algonquian world, the windigo is the spirit of selfishness, which can transform a person into a murderous cannibal. Native peoples over a vast stretch of North America—from Virginia in the south to Labrador in the north, from Nova Scotia in the east to Minnesota in the west—believed in the windigo, not only as a myth told in the darkness of winter, but also as a real danger.
Drawing on oral narratives, fur traders’ journals, trial records, missionary accounts, and anthropologists’ field notes, this book is a revealing glimpse into indigenous beliefs, cross-cultural communication, and embryonic colonial relationships. It also ponders the recent resurgence of the windigo in popular culture and its changing meaning in a modern context.
– See more at: http://www.heritagehouse.ca/book_details.php?isbn_upc=9781772030327#sthash.89GXI7Bt.dpuf
“Sashimi Meal With Tuna And Bass” by artur84 at freeditigalphotos.net
This week I had my students watch a documentary, The Cost of Sushi, which describes how overfishing is endangering the tuna stocks in the Mediterranean. The reasons why are familiar from past disasters: the real needs of local communities and fisherman, the development of new fishing technologies and factory ships, the demand from foreign markets, the vast sums of money involved, and the uncertainty about how much fishing the stocks can actually take. In the case of the Mediterranean, what is clear by the end of the documentary is that much of the problem lies not only with the level of the quotas themselves, but also with the vast amount of illegal fishing that takes place. While the documentary clearly shows that huge amounts of tuna is being taken illegally -which environmental activists document both by tracing ships, and by genetically sampling tuna in markets- at no point are any corporations or individuals shown being held accountable. Given that a single tuna has sold for $1,76 million dollars (the current record), and the size of the waters involved, its easy to understand the difficulties that fisheries inspectors and activists face. Globally, the Atlantic blue fin tuna and Southern blue fin tuna are, respectively, endangered and critically endangered. Sadly, it seems that the local fishing communities, which have relied on this resource for many generations, will be the ones to suffer. …
Berengia present day by the U.S. Geological Survey on Wikipedia Commons
According to a recent article in the Guardian, China is planning to build a high-speed railway to the United States. The rail trip would take two days to travel through China and Russia, underneath the ocean in the Bering Strait, through Alaska and Canada, before arriving in the continental United States. As the article points out, there are many reasons to doubt the seriousness of this proposal, not the least of which neither the United States or Canada (and perhaps Russia as well) have been consulted. But what is interesting is the historical background to this story, which represents a dream that can neither achieve fruition nor die. James Oliver’s The Bering Strait Crossing, discusses the lengthy history of exactly this idea. Of course, Siberia and Alaska in ancient times were united by Beringia, a land bridge that allowed camels and horses to travel to the Old World, and people to arrive in the Americas. But the two regions have been separated since the end of the last glaciation, when rising sea levels sank Beringia. Oliver’s work discusses the early history of Russian exploration in the Americas, which represented an effort to bring these two regions back into sustained contact. Vitus Bering, a Danish sea captain in the service of the czar, first reached the Western hemisphere on 15 July 1741. This launched a Russian empire in Alaska that endured until 1867, when the Czar sold Alaska to the United States. In the end, Russia’s heartland was too far, and the U.S. dream of manifest destiny was too powerful, for this empire to endure. But the realization that only a brief stretch of ocean separated Russia from the United States led people to discuss building a railroad to connect the two nations. …
“Panorama Scene Of Refinery Industry Plant” by khunaspix
I’ve blogged before about Canada’s oil sands, and the political battles and environmental issues that they have spawned. What is clear, however, is that despite the environmental and safety issues that new energy supplies raise in North America, economic changes are reshaping the energy industry with stunning speed. While the Canadian Oil Sands are the main focus of attention, it may be that discoveries of massive supplies of natural gas near Ft. St. John in northern British Columbia are also of global significance. As this article by Brent Jang in the Globe and Mail describes, it is enough supply to support a century’s worth of production. For Canada’s native peoples, in particular the Gitga’at people, potential exports are both a danger and an opportunity. But the discovery has implications that stretch far beyond the region. For Japan this find is so large that it has strategic implications as the nation turns to liquified natural gas (LNG) to replace the electricity production lost with Fukushima. Canada is a logical energy partner, and a large supply of Canadian natural gas will increase the competition for the Japanese market, which should make this energy transition easier. …
“Big Glacier” by porbital at freedigitalphotos.net
It’s all too easy to believe that everything worth discovering has already been found, and that the age of exploration is over. But some recent discoveries make the point that it’s still possible to uncover something new. In Canada, Adam Shoalts discovered seven waterfalls while traveling on the Again River. In one case, he discovered the waterfall by hurtling over it, a roughly 40 foot drop. One photo of his canoe makes it clear how lucky he was to have survived. A number of people have argued that other travelers had encountered these waterfalls. It is difficult to imagine that the First Nations in this region, in particular the Moose Cree in the Western James Bay area, were not familiar with these obstacles to navigation. I sometimes suspect that during the height of the fur trade they may have had a better geographical knowledge of northern rivers than exists even now. Nonetheless, none of these waterfalls were on any map. As Shoalts told the BBC in an interview: “There’s still a lot of work left to be done. That’s reality,” said Shoalts. “Canada’s so vast. Even if I do this the rest of my life, all my work would still only be a drop in the bucket. We don’t know the world nearly as well as we think we do.” …
Map of America by Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net
I’ve talked before in this blog about the idea of decriminalizing drugs as some European countries, such as Portugal, have already done. What is surprising is the rapidity and momentum behind this idea throughout the Americas. In November 2012 both Colorado and Washington decriminalized marijuana possession. Indeed, in Washington State the police recently handed out Doritos (along with a new marijuana legal fact sheet) at a public pot smoking event. But events in these states represent only the vanguard of a much larger movement. …
“Chest X-rays, 3D Image of lungs, Sagital Plane Image” by Praisaeng at freedigitalphotos.net
Valley fever (cocci dioides), a fungal disease in the Arizona, New Mexico and California, has received a great deal of media attention lately, with good reason. There have been over 20,000 cases documented, which likely is only a fraction of the total number of people infected. Tom Geoghagen of the BBC has a good piece on the disease, and the video interviews of the affected families are heartbreaking. In late June 2013 a judge in California ordered California to move inmates held in two prisons in San Joaquin in order to reduce their risk of contracting the disease, which made people living in local communities wonder if they should also move. …
I’ve recently been thinking about the unexpected connections between the weather
Cracks in Frozen Lake by Evgeni Dinev, courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
news and Howard Norman’s book In Fond Remembrance of Me. Norman worked in Churchill, Manitoba collecting Inuit folklore during the mid-1970s but from the start everything went wrong. As soon as he arrived in northern Manitoba in 1977 he learned that a Japanese linguist and Arctic expert, Helen Tanizaki, was interviewing the same Inuit elder. While she was willing to collaborate, their informant loved Helen but could not stand Norman. The befuddled Norman also soon realized that his informant was also making up much of the folklore that he was documenting. These tales centered upon a cycle of stories in which Noah drifted into Hudson Bay, where the ice trapped the ark during the winter. In all these stories Noah encountered Inuit peoples, who would paddle their kayaks out to the ark to understand why both he and this remarkable boat was there. In every case these people would make a request –a piece of wood to burn or perhaps some animals to eat- to which Noah would always answer “No!” This denial would be incomprehensible to the Inuit. After all, Noah had many animals- why shouldn’t he share the giraffes with them? The result was always a disaster for Noah, who might witness his family deserting him so that his wife could marry a better hunter, or his animals dying in the dark of winter. In the end, Noah was usually left on the ice to be rescued by the Inuit. In the spring Noah would leave the Inuit to walk south, from where –as so often in folklore- he “was never seen again.” …
