Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger
My mother once told me that if you speak about Wendigos out loud, they will come. They are cannibals, flesh eaters, spirit eaters. Wendigos survive by consuming the life of others without reciprocity, care, consent, or regard in the name of personal gain or profit. Growing up, I was taught that the...
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ftunitorontoojs:oai:jps.library.utoronto.ca:article/38558 2023-12-10T09:39:50+01:00 Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger Walker, Jonnelle 2023-06-06 application/pdf https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/tijih/article/view/38558 eng eng Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/tijih/article/view/38558/31744 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/tijih/article/view/38558 Copyright (c) 2023 Jonnelle Walker https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health; Vol. 1 No. 3 (2023): Coming to Know 2563-5506 wendigo human care responsibility infrastructure kinship info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Peer-reviewed Article 2023 ftunitorontoojs 2023-11-12T18:42:20Z My mother once told me that if you speak about Wendigos out loud, they will come. They are cannibals, flesh eaters, spirit eaters. Wendigos survive by consuming the life of others without reciprocity, care, consent, or regard in the name of personal gain or profit. Growing up, I was taught that the Wendigo condition was something that you caught like a disease or that grew within yourself like a cancer. They were monsters, they were the closest thing we had to “human.” Afterall, according to the ideological lineages of Marxism, liberal Enlightenment, and settler colonialism, to be “human” is to be a monster, a capitalist, a cannibal. Each of these ideological lineages root the definition of the “human” in transcendence, defined by property, exhibited through man-made aesthetics rooted in capital, white supremacy, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigeneity, and a false human/nature divide. In this paper, I argue that the term “Anthropocene”, much like the “human” it centers, requires an ontological limiting that fails to encapsulate the fullness of Anishinaabe worlds, but most importantly Anishinaabe responsibility to each other. I offer a reframing from my positioning, where the last 500 years of apocalypses can be theorized through an analysis of the rise of the Wendigos. In conversation with other critiques of the well-problematized “Anthropocene,” this contribution offers a theoretical exploration of Wendigo theory to further support that the term “Anthropocene” is reflective of itself (Davis & Todd, 2017, p. 761-780). I suggest the term “Wendigocene” as an alternative to “Anthropocene” within the context of Anishinaabe communities for Indigenous theorists, as this reframing invokes a responsibility to care for our relations and exercise abolitionist legal praxes which are central to our sovereignty. Article in Journal/Newspaper anishina* University of Toronto: Journal Publishing Services Todd ENVELOPE(-85.933,-85.933,-78.050,-78.050) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of Toronto: Journal Publishing Services |
op_collection_id |
ftunitorontoojs |
language |
English |
topic |
wendigo human care responsibility infrastructure kinship |
spellingShingle |
wendigo human care responsibility infrastructure kinship Walker, Jonnelle Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger |
topic_facet |
wendigo human care responsibility infrastructure kinship |
description |
My mother once told me that if you speak about Wendigos out loud, they will come. They are cannibals, flesh eaters, spirit eaters. Wendigos survive by consuming the life of others without reciprocity, care, consent, or regard in the name of personal gain or profit. Growing up, I was taught that the Wendigo condition was something that you caught like a disease or that grew within yourself like a cancer. They were monsters, they were the closest thing we had to “human.” Afterall, according to the ideological lineages of Marxism, liberal Enlightenment, and settler colonialism, to be “human” is to be a monster, a capitalist, a cannibal. Each of these ideological lineages root the definition of the “human” in transcendence, defined by property, exhibited through man-made aesthetics rooted in capital, white supremacy, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigeneity, and a false human/nature divide. In this paper, I argue that the term “Anthropocene”, much like the “human” it centers, requires an ontological limiting that fails to encapsulate the fullness of Anishinaabe worlds, but most importantly Anishinaabe responsibility to each other. I offer a reframing from my positioning, where the last 500 years of apocalypses can be theorized through an analysis of the rise of the Wendigos. In conversation with other critiques of the well-problematized “Anthropocene,” this contribution offers a theoretical exploration of Wendigo theory to further support that the term “Anthropocene” is reflective of itself (Davis & Todd, 2017, p. 761-780). I suggest the term “Wendigocene” as an alternative to “Anthropocene” within the context of Anishinaabe communities for Indigenous theorists, as this reframing invokes a responsibility to care for our relations and exercise abolitionist legal praxes which are central to our sovereignty. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Walker, Jonnelle |
author_facet |
Walker, Jonnelle |
author_sort |
Walker, Jonnelle |
title |
Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger |
title_short |
Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger |
title_full |
Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger |
title_fullStr |
Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger |
title_full_unstemmed |
Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger |
title_sort |
wendigocene: a story of hunger |
publisher |
Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/tijih/article/view/38558 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-85.933,-85.933,-78.050,-78.050) |
geographic |
Todd |
geographic_facet |
Todd |
genre |
anishina* |
genre_facet |
anishina* |
op_source |
Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health; Vol. 1 No. 3 (2023): Coming to Know 2563-5506 |
op_relation |
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/tijih/article/view/38558/31744 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/tijih/article/view/38558 |
op_rights |
Copyright (c) 2023 Jonnelle Walker https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 |
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1784890069722595328 |