"The Windigo" Speaks

Come on in and forgive the cold, I've been thinking about a creature of ice and snow, so it tends to affect the den. Grab a blanket and get close to the fire. First off I'd like you to go and read Louise Erdrich's poem "The Windigo" and then you can sit down and read another little point of view on the poem. For those that have never heard of Louise Erdrich, a websearch does wonders, but she is also one of my favoriete authors, I still reread her book Love Medicine about once a year.

Louise Erdrich’s ‘Windigo’ uses strong domestic imagery and subtle tones to flesh out the political ideas contained within the title. A surface reading of Erdrich’s poem coasts one through an intersection of day to day lives, yet they hover with an ominous tone. It is the understanding of the Windigo myth and its own intersection into the political and cultural differences of First Nations and European society that the subtle and alarming nature of the poem become more than a story and instead you see the persona of a social commentator emerge. Erdrich’s statement, thought quiet and an undercurrent to the narrative, is no less filled with anger and strength than a bold statement that dominates the plot.

To start with is a further understanding of what a Windigo is. While the description at the beginning of the poem gives us a brief introduction of what one is and how it is defeated it is the creation of the Windigo that is also important. It requires an evil act that turns a human’s soul cold, causing the body to collect the ice and snow that transforms a man into a cannibal. Essential to this cannibalism is the Windigo’s hunger, it is never full, and that is unmentioned. Instead it is that subtle subtext unannounced which adds to the quiet voice that is part of the persona built within the poem.

Adding to the Windigo’s unmentioned hunger is the historical significance of the moniker used in reference to the coming of European settlers. While not a universal descriptor across the North American First Nations, those that were some of the first to encounter the coming Europeans were the tribes who lived among the great lakes, which the Chippewa were among, used the name Windigo to describe the actions of the Europeans. Europeans appeared to have an unending hunger for resources, coupled with their pale skin, which caused many observers to make unfavorable comparisons between the mythical figure and the settlers.

Between the unmentioned aspects of the Windigo legend and its historical context Erdrich has placed a poetic narrative that starts to take on a much darker and powerful nature besides the home and hearth imagery employed. Only one last historical piece is left unturned to fully complete the stalking, hungry tone of the words. Canada’s history is not the only that used assimilation schools to tear at the fabric of First Nation culture. In the United States of America Industrial Schools, boarding schools similar to our own residential schools, were created to take children who were coming close to working age to indoctrinate skills and social values. The aim was to give these people who could get no other job skills in jobs that no one else would want. Mine work, industrial factories, and chemical orientated manual labour were all the focuses of these schools and like the residential schools of Canada they were the cause of societal disintegration within American First Nation families and reserves.

Although the poem makes no explicit mention of any of these facts, and only glosses over the myth of the Windigo, it is these facts that combine to give Erdrich such a powerful social voice. “You knew I was coming for you,” (1) speaks the narrator, a construct like the Windigo; a society much more powerful and ruthless in its goals. In fact who the narrator is now insignificant and the sense it is now what the narrator is that matters. Erdrich here does not speak from the point of view of who she is, in fact she has fully stepped outside of her own life and experience to occupy the nebulous ‘other’ who that has oppressed and targeted her people and society.

Once the point of view of the narrator is made clear due to the significance of what a Windigo is the shocked and stilted use of language and form become yet another hint at how these unmentioned actions have caused rifts within the First Nations and the narrator. There is still an overall rigid form, like a loose framework that it all fits into: five stanzas of five lines each, with a small exception. The fourth stanza is only four lines. Here the narrator has “stole […] off” (16) with the young target of line one. In terms of a culture colliding here we have the first three stanzas establishing the stalking of another, and when they finally intersect the rules are broken, only four lines. Deeply imbedded in this stanza are the various other breaks throughout the history of interaction between European/American culture and First Nations. Like the agreements, treaties, proclamations, and simple basic human decency that have been ignored, warped or destroyed, this stanza too rings with that same violation. The beast runs off with its captive through the woods, destroying all he passes due to the wintry aura “until they stood, naked, spread like the cleaned spines of fish.” (19) These images are no different than the agreements that have been ignored or broken.

This form is taken a step further in the language of each stanza. It harkens to memories of home yet takes disjointed images and pulls them together within the eyes of a stalking beast. The first stanza takes a simple piece of home cookery, “the kettle”, and has it “jump[ing] into the fire.” (2) The action of heating water, instead of being an action of solace to make a tea to comfort or warm a body is instead now a hellish act of sacrifice. This same image of burning, a paradox to a creature of ice, follows in the second lines of stanzas one to four. The food is scolded to warm it, the copper is burned in the raw wood, and steam rolls from the arms of the beast. Like the paradox the burn of cold is virtually identical to the touch as heat is. Each leaves destroyed flesh, withers the body through cellular destruction. Like the body of culture of the First Nations, the introduction of the beast has withered and destroyed its overall cohesiveness.
Erdrich introduces a strong element of the malaise of First Nations people. Line 10, spoken from the beast as it eyes its victim, is italicized, and brought out to stand alone as a statement that speaks both from the Windigo and the soul of the people. Just as the two cultures are locked together so is the beast locked to the soul of the victim. Paradox plays a role again in the passive yet active nature of the statement as the child is told to both hide and lie still. Hide from it but lie still, work to stay away from the beast, yet it will still find you. These are elements that are strong points of a dominated culture, as the First Nations have taken years to start to re-assert their own culture and take the reigns of their destiny again. That Erdrich brings this line into contrast with the rest of the poem by italicizing it strengthens and asserts this idea within the context of the previously stated parameters. Simply put, she is shouting by whispering a small yet powerful truth.

The final stanza densely packs itself into five lines that hold a significant amount of commentary, both from the narrator and the underlying social commentary Erdrich is laying into the poem. Five lines again, but broken and disjointed. A disconnect not just in the language but the subject matter. The young victim is taken, and in turn takes. The child is taught the nature of greed, of unrelenting hunger, and slakes itself on the very flesh of the Windigo, shoveling its hands full of the flesh of another. A new lifestyle is shown to the child of simple domestic pleasures. Just as the First Nations culture was taken, repackaged, and sold out again, here too the youth are taken, re-educated, turned into the other.

The beast runs all night, carrying the child along as it feasts. Night to morning the child is taken. From one day to the dawn of another. Standard for most uses of dawn as re-birth but the narrator tells us that the morning “broke the cold earth,” (22) and while it can be suggested that this could be a hint at the child’s own actions reflecting the legend told in the poems introduction, instead the emphasis should not be placed on the breaking or the cold but instead what is broken. The dawn, the rebirth, broke the cold earth. It broke the foundation. The earth was sundered; the basis for life, the wellspring of future generations, the repository of natural history, the one thing we all share, the common element that might cause reconciliation is broken. The past has been rent and a pit lies across the path from now to then. The rebirth of the stolen child has no connection to the past it once knew and now continues on without a past.
And as such, the beast returns the child, lies down this broken and changed thing, no longer a part of what it once was and now no longer a part of the world it was shown. It is home, and lay down like “a river shaking in the sun.” (24) This last line seems so problematic and out of joint with the rest of the narrative it requires special consideration. To this point all mention of water has been in one of its transition states. Boiling water, ice and snow, and steam; we have not been given an image of water doing what it does naturally. Yet the water shakes. It trembles and this too is an image at war with a river. No river ever shakes, it flows, winds, bends, hurtles, speeds, slows, mires, but never has a river shaken. However, water does shake given the right circumstances. We just don’t call a shaking river a river anymore. If water were to shake in the sun it would be falling, perhaps off a broken piece of land: a waterfall. The land has been broken by the rebirth, and the flow of this newly born thing now hurtles off into the space, shaking and dispersing itself over air and the rocks below, shaking itself apart as it must now deal with the rift between past and present.

The last stanza builds these densely packed issues one on another until the discord falls back into a meaningful image yet even then that too is a disconnect. Bringing the images back to the cultural and historical a person without a past, without knowledge of their culture will no longer be a part of that culture, yet the culture, the Windigo, that remade the child into this new thing will not accept it as a part of their culture either. There is now a state of perpetual change within the new person, a constant war between a culture that it no longer understands and a culture that it cannot belong too. The Windigo has succeeded in his action, and the subtext has succeeded in pointing out the paradox and impossibility of the action ever truly succeeding.

“The Windigo” uses powerful thrusts as Erdrich lets the monster tell its tale. Lying beneath that persona lies Erdrich’s own message, and she builds strong bonds between each image that lie scattered after the path of destruction the beast creates as it plows its way into the home and hearth of First Nations families. With the cultural understanding lying within the title itself, and building from a subtle hint as to the nature of the Windigo the poem builds itself not as a narrative of the people being harmed but from the monster’s point of view. Erdrich here leaves her subtle trap and her own touch of the cultural perspective. Each is a part of the other and what happens to one will happen to the other. Each becomes a cannibal of sorts that must feed continuously off the other. The monster takes the child but only succeeds in making another monster which it must now contend or compete with. By understanding the monster we understand both the actions that led to the current state of First Nations in relation to the dominant culture but also why those actions are not an isolated matter that can be ignored but instead are a relevant and dangerous situation that lies in wait to create even more unending cannibals.