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Student's research has X-Files flavour by Bev Betkowski
As his condition worsened, the man's neighbours locked him in a cabin. One eyewitness, a fur trader from Scotland, said that the man hardly resembled a human being at one point. Frightened villagers eventually executed the man, buried him and piled logs on his grave to make sure he couldn't come back to life, as he had vowed to, unless a priest came to the village within three days. Strangely enough a priest did arrive - apparently the first ever in that area - and found all the villagers huddled in a shack, fearing for their lives. Nathan Carlson never believed the spooky tales his grandmother told about Windigo (known as Witiko in Cree). But when he became a Native Studies student at the University of Alberta Carlson chose the subject for his thesis, to investigate and disprove his grandmother's tall tales. The fourth-year arts student was stunned when he started researching the topic and found Edmonton newspaper accounts, missionaries' records and Northwest Mounted Police reports mentioning macabre events at the turn of the 19th century, most notably in the tiny northern community of Trout Lake. In a research project he refers to as "two parts Native Studies and one part X-Files," Carlson, who is of Métis heritage, has spent the last two years unearthing and reviewing literature about the Windigo legend. He is exploring the dynamics behind several violent incidents attributed to 'Windigo psychosis' and is contesting conclusions made by researchers who either dismissed it as a type of culture-bound mental disorder, or rejected the legend altogether. "This designation of mental illness does not account for the historic cases where two or more people apparently became affected by Windigo disorder at the same time in the same place," Carlson said. "It also doesn't explain why in some cases these victims were cured by Catholic priests, usually by suggestion alone. It seems to have been more a product of a spiritual belief in possession by a cannibal spirit than actual mental disease. By no means does this explain away the mystery. Many people still believe in Windigo." According to northern Cree and Métis legend, Windigo hexed his victims through nightmares or sorcery and cursed starving villagers or hunters who had committed cannibalism, eventually turning them into human Windigos that craved human flesh. Carlson has unearthed references to 35 such incidents, including possibly two recent cases in Alberta, by reviewing old newspapers, archival records and interviewing native elders. "There was some kind of phenomenon that actually happened," Carlson said. "Modern-day textbooks say that this condition was caused by a universal clinical disorder like paranoid schizophrenia, while others say the historic reports mentioning Windigo executions were actually rationalizations made up by a community in order to eliminate its sick or troublesome members." The main contention of skeptics was that there were no reliable non-native eyewitness reports describing anyone with the strange condition that the native people feared. With the help of past research, Carlson was able to uncover new evidence to suggest that the Windigo reports were more than just folk-tales or hearsay. "When you look at the evidence, these previous theories don't stand up. Something else was happening." His research included visiting a village six months ago at Trout Lake, 600 km north of Edmonton, where his grandmother had told him one of the most infamous incidents of 'Windigo psychosis' occurred. The story made the front page of the Edmonton Bulletin, the city's first newspaper, in April of that year. At Trout Lake, Carlson knocked on doors, asking about Windigo, but was turned away by people who didn't recall anything about it, refused to speak on the subject. "They weren't comfortable talking about it." Eventually a friend of his grandmother's introduced Carlson to an elderly man who had an account from an eyewitness who was just 12 when the incident occurred. While visiting the village, Carlson believes he also found the grave of the afflicted man. "I found an area in a ditch that was fenced off and there were still some sticks and logs piled there. His grave is still up there...it sent a chill down my spine for sure." Carlson was able to find only one actual case of Windigo cannibalism: Swift Runner, a Cree man who was convicted of killing and eating his wife and five children near Athabasca Landing, was hanged at the Fort Saskatchewan prison in 1879. His research has implications for the fields of psychology and psychiatry, Carlson said. "They should rewrite their definitions of Windigo psychosis. Textbooks call this a clinical condition, but the old people still say Windigo is an evil spirit." While Carlson is not out to convince people of the existence of monsters, he says that this phenomenon should be taken seriously. "Cultural beliefs play a large role in how people perceive the world around them, and a lot of people believed in the Windigo monster in northern Alberta in the 1800s. While we tend to dismiss these sorts of things today, beliefs need to be taken into consideration with this subject. In some cultures, disorders are caused by spirits or monsters, whether they are real or only perceived to be real." This article originally appeared in ExpressNews.
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