President Windigo is devouring our country, and our world

The Windigo beast is insatiable, and will destroy anything and everything to get what he wants... and cannot have

Were it up to me, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s books, Braiding Sweetgrass —Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and The Service Berry — Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, and her precious booklet, The Democracy of Species (Green Ideas), would be required reading — particularly for those who are energetically disconnected from Mother Earth. Some of us live within her while others only live on her... spiritual surface-dwellers. Her books are a wealth of insight and indigenous perspective for living in harmony with Gaia, and each other. They are guidebooks for finding our way to breaking through that surface and really connecting with the land.

Beyond just connecting and living in harmony with Gaia, one section of Braiding Sweetgrass really struck me: her discussion of the “Windigo nature.” This indigenous story is one of an insatiable entity that cannot stop consuming. Devouring. The more it devours, the hungrier it gets, and its existence distills down to endless consumption in a futile attempt to satisfy its appetite. In Kimmerer’s words, “an increase in Windigo hunger causes an increase in Windigo eating, and that increased eating promotes only more rampant hunger in an eventual frenzy of uncontrolled consumption.” The indigenous stories of Windigo were taught as a direction to strengthen one’s own self-discipline, to “build resistance against the insidious germ of taking too much.”

Kimmerer emphasizes that the Windigo nature isn’t something that only exists “out there” — it exists within each of us. It is our greed. Each of us has ugly sides to ourselves, our Shadow selves, and we may succeed in keeping them contained and under control... but they are always there. They always have potential to re-exert their power. Quoting Anishinaabe elder Steward King, Kimmerer says we need to be aware of our dark aspects and understand their power, so we do not feed them.

In the traditional indigenous stories, Kimmerer also refers to Windigo as an energy, and a beast: “The beast has been called an evil spirit that devours mankind. The very word, Windigo, according to Ojibwe scholar Basil Johnston, can be derived from roots meaning ‘fat excess’ or ‘thinking only of oneself.’ Writer Steve Pitt states that ‘a Windigo was a human whose selfishness has overpowered their self-control to the point that satisfaction is no longer possible.”

Wow. I read this and immediately thought of our current President, an utterly and completely self-centered individual whose hunger for approval, loyalty, and grotesque wealth cannot be satiated. His life is a perpetual chase for satiation, which he cannot capture. It is forever just out of his reach. In his lust for what he desires, he will destroy and kill anything and everything in his path. Those he harms and the things he destroys mean nothing to him. The only thing he values is achieving satiation. And he will not. Ever. That is his nature. His Windigo nature. He is Windigo. He is the Beast.

Kimmerer mentions the “current epidemic of self-destructive practice,” both on an individual and national/cultural level, and says this is “a sign that Windigo is alive and well.” Oh, absolutely. And holding the highest level of public office in the United States, as well as an enormous amount of global power and influence. He is amongst the oligarchs and CEOs of multinational corporations that seek only to advance themselves at the risk of Mother Earth and all life on it. These entities, Kimmerer says, “have spawned a new breed of Windigo that insatiably devours the earth’s resources ‘not for need but for greed.’ The footprints are all around us, once. you know what to look for.”

The Windigo lore provides us a frame of reference — a paradigm — for seeing what is happening to our planet, and country. The only way to stop Windigo is to stop feeding it or, to prevent it from feeding. That’s a very tall task for those of us who choose non-violence as a solution. We can fight back with our wallets, and stop feeding the corporate beasts. We can fight back by holding our Congressional representative accountable, for they are the ones who keep shoveling President Windigo food. If they will not become accountable, then they must be voted out of office. Do not give your precious vote to any member of Congress who remained silent while President Windigo devoured our Constitution and laws. They are ultimately more responsible for the crisis we’re in than the Beast himself. We also must keep speaking out and resisting in accordance with our own abilities. We cannot all go on marches, but most of us can call our Congressional representatives. Most of us can speak up in our own ways, whether in gatherings with friends and family, or in posts like this one. We must keep hammering away at this message: I will not support this. I will not validate this. I will not cooperate with this. I will not participate in this. I will not feed Windigo.

If you aren’t sure where to start, I recommend Kimmerer’s books to reacquaint you with our Mother, and why our own survival directly depends upon hers. Let her introduce you to indigenous wisdom and how it applies to us. This is the wisdom of the Ancestors of Place. They walked this land first, and warned each generation of the danger of feeding Windigo. Never has this indigenous story been more pertinent than right now.