Instead, researchers scrutinize how the monster legend is used, examining its changing function as it migrates through differing audiences, historical eras, and social contexts. A pure comparison between the “original” text and the “popular” text is not sufficient-by definition, there is never a single “original” text, and subsequent tellers and artists have the same artistic license to make subtle changes for reasons of audience and environment as do all folk performers. In this chapter, Gail de Vos, legend scholar and instructor in the Aboriginal Teachers Education Program at the University of Alberta, compares the older Algonquin folk windigo variants to the contemporary popular versions prevalent in mass media today. As with any oral tradition, many iterations of the windigo exist. Many readers will immediately recognize it-a tall, slender, often hungry, near-skeletal being of the north that preys on humans and brings the cold-perhaps not by name but by popular media’s depiction (or, some might say, appropriation), in the White Walkers of Game of Thrones, the giant Wendigos of Final Fantasy, or the lurking Tuunbaq of The Terror. The windigo, an important North American entity, is difficult to define. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ģ82 18 The Windigo as Monster Indigenous Belief, Cultural Appropriation, and Popular Horror Gail de Vos PREFACE Some North American monster legends have indigenous origins, and many that don’t are ascribed them anyway.
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