In this edition of the Workers Cauldron, we are headed over to the strange world of TikTok, where a new folklore is developing around creatures appropriated from indigenous American spiritualities. These spirits, oddly euphemized as “Flesh Pedestrians” and “Windy Bois," are said to steal unwary hikers off trails and into the deep forests of North America. We break these stories down, and discuss how this form of appropriation sidesteps the very real history of colonialism, to the horrors of Canadian residential schools to Kit Carson’s brutal attempt at ethnic cleansing in the American Southwest.
Bonus Material: Deer that are not deer. They are #notdeer
Sources:
Shawn Smallman, Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History
Jack Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock
CBS "We're not just relics of the past": How #NativeTikTok is preserving Indigenous cultures and inspiring a younger generation
Dazed Digital: Skinwalkers: the creepy creatures terrifying TikTok
Noah Nez ,Native Skeptic, Skinwalkers
Adrienne Keene, Native Appropriations, Magic in North America Part 1, ugh
Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo
Robert Fletcher: Connection with nature is an oxymoron: A political ecology of “nature-deficit disorder”
JD Sword, Not Deer, or a Deer?
SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO WIDE ATLANTIC WEIRD AND The BEER LADIES PODCAST