Friday, September 30, 2011

Supernatural Native Episode 2


Episode:  Wendigo




This one the earliest episodes of "Supernatural"...actually the second; and, I think, one of the scariest!  Wendigo is another one them Algonquin words, it is a kind of "manitou,"  though it is also what my dad would have called a "booger story" meant reinforce the serious cultural shame that cannibalism would bring (what Polynesians called "tabu" aka taboo).  It may seem like this concept would be obvious, but the farther north you go, the harder the winter were, and agricultural land gets more and more scarce.  The temptation to eat the dead during winter months, when the ground was too frozen to bury them, and when serious hunger set in, would have been great.  I personally think that is why so many Algonquin cultures in the frozen north had a serious practice of burning the dead on a funeral pyre---that removed any cannibalistic temptation.  Just a thought.



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