#athabascan

S’éex’át (Tlingit for shrimp) Stone Lithograph

Crystal Worl

from the website: Despite its small size, this charming print depicts a shrimp and her eggs. This art is a tribute to one of artist Crystal Worl’s favorite foods and her memories of shrimping with her uncle. Stone lithograph with one color of deep and beautiful color red. Red symbolizes wealth, richness, and opportunity.

I don't typically make posts like these but I feel this one is important information, and something I -- as someone of native American descent who partakes heavily in my culture -- need to clear up here.

Wendigo or Wechuge?

One of the reasons why I hate people talking about Wendigos (aside from the fact that they're not meant to be spoken of at all outside of certain situations) is the fact that you probably aren't even really talking about a Wendigo.

So, what are you talking about?

Wechuge

Despite popular belief (and Google's idiodicy) this is not a Wendigo, this is a Wechuge, an entirely different being from entirely different folklore.

Please correct me if I get any of this wrong, I do not know Athabaskan mythology that well.

The Wechuge is a man eating spirit from Athabaskan culture. They are a person who has been overwhelmed (or "possessed") by one of the giant ancient spirit animals. These spirits were strong, crafty, intelligent, and somehow retained their power after becoming the normal sized animals of present day.

So what is the Wendigo you all have been fooled into thinking you're talking about?

Well, THIS is the Wendigo.

The Wendigo is a native American legend, and it's story varies from tribe to tribe, but the sentiment stays for most; they aren't to be spoken of, and are meant to be respected the same as the dead.

The Wendigo is a "curse" of sorts, a human possessed by a spirit after devouring another human being. The spirit they are possessed by causes insatiable hunger and an intense craving for human flesh, feeding the spirit even when the human it possessed is essentially dead.

So what is the difference?

Well, while they may share many similarities, there are also many differences.

1) Appearance

The Wendigo is a possessed corpse. They look like a human, but twisted and distorted, often smelling of decay with elongated limbs and an anorexic form.

The Wechuge is a human that grew too powerful and was taken over by a spirit, their body being twisted to sport animalistic features such as the iconic deer head and antlers.

2) Nature

The Wendigo is a mindless brute that kills and eats without discrimination, attacking any human that it sees, and having an insatiable hunger that cannot be eased.

The Wechuge is an enlightened being with ancestral insight, and is cunning and intelligent, luring its victims away before devouring them unlike the Wendigo.

3) Transformation

The Wendigo is only created when a human eats another human, whether driven to it by starvation, out of curiosity, or in a moment of madness.

While the Wechuge can also be created by cannibalism, it can also be created when someone displays an act of extreme violence, or obtains high power.

4) Cultural Context

The Wendigo is a warning against cannibalism of any kind.

The Wechuge is a warning of transgressions, power, and the consequences of breaking cultural taboos.

So now you know!

Then America acquired the territory, and there was a space of 29 years where I can't find out what it was "officially" called by the nice men who measure elevations and draw the way rivers go. For seven years at the end of that, some prospector had named it, for himself, "Densmore's Mountain", which is just stupid enough to be charming. Evidently that name never stuck, as another prospector wrote of locals living at the inlet south referring to it as "Bulshoe" (after the Russian word). Eventually, though, Americans got to calling it Mount McKinley (as in the American president, when he was still just a candidate, which made it for a time basically the world's largest billboard). It later became that officially, and remained so for another 98 years, until Hewwo Mistew Obama renamed it Denali—the word preferred by the tribes living north of it. Barack Obama was not the most faithful adherent to treaties involving indian rights, but a generally lot of Americans liked that move. A lot of Alaskans liked it, too!

Here is the important point of all this: to the native Koyukon, the people of the Koyukuk River, who as a people originate from there, it never wasn't Denali. The natives of that area had been calling it that, and variations in closely related languages, for untold generations. Those languages originated there, growing from the people, and paint the entire landscape with their names for places.

The language lives in the land.

The peoples are sown in the land.

Even if the speakers had, like other tribes, been expelled and driven to far-away reservations, then as long as they kept their culture alive, and their people's connection to the land, they would still be calling it Denali.

In 2025, purely as a primitive display of power, Donald Trump issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America". In this same EO (which does not bind the individual states), he changed the name of Denali back to McKinley.

Let Us Have a Story - Mask

Kathleen Carlo (Koyukon Athabascan)

bass wood, pigments, buttit shells, hair, feathers, mexican milagros, copper tacks. 24” x 21” x 2”

This mask features a number of non-traditional objects that are hallmarks of Kathleen Carlo’s style: bullet casings, Mexican milagros charms, and automobile inspection mirrors. Each of these elements is significant: the halo of mirrors is a tribute to the passing of fellow mask-maker Lawrence Beck (Yup’ik) who taught Carlo at a seminal two week workshop at the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and helped her on the path to her career. The milagros charms in the mask’s mouth are traditional Mexican prayer charms: a parishioner would buy one in the form of a trouble or ill in their lives and take it to church with them. For Carlo, her masks speak of these troubles and ills, perhaps solving them through prayer, story or song. The addition of bullet casings–or buttit shells–signifies the importance of hunting for Carlo and many natives in Alaska. Raised on a subsistence diet of gathered and hunted foods–such as salmon, berries and moose meat–Carlo adds the shells to connote the human element in the more spiritual world of the mask.

Like I get an identity crisis when the seasons change 💀

I mean not only do I need to change the way I dress and apply makeup but also I go from white passing racially ambiguous to very obviously not real MaYoNnAiSe

And idk it’s just a weird way to exist? From white people who know me grabbing me randomly to freak out over how tan I suddenly got and/or asking if it’s real, to the up tick in people wanting to play the “what are you game”

And because of my curls a lot of people make the assumption that I’m part Black or Hispanic/Latinx and that feels weird cause I’m being assigned like complex weighted social identities that I don’t really have anything to do with while never having the ones I actually do be recognized?(I’m Athabaskan, Alaskan native)

I honestly don’t know how to word all the feelings around that or if it’s even worth trying for or if it’s more just internalized issue that I need to work on personally and not worry so much about other peoples perceptions

Which is a bit of an identity crisis in its own way because being able to clearly articulate nuanced ideas in a meaningful way is something I’ve had grafted to my idea of self since I was a child

And I mean struggling with the reverse of this when the sun leaves and my melanin recedes with it is also really hard because instead of being conflate with the wrong minority I start to wonder if I still have one at all

Which is weird because it’s not like I turn ghost white or my hair is turns straight so it’s not like everything disappears but also those aren’t even really things that I associate at all with my native identity at all, in fact the curls are from my Irish side of the family, they’re simply things I know others use to gage my otherness

I guess I just feel I’m constantly trying to juggle having cultures that aren’t mine handed to me and then exchanged for another while never getting to really hold my own, I wanna be so careful because if either I drop or hold anything I’m handed I can easily hurt and offend people

even holding the white culture I’m actually kind of a part of feels not only disingenuous but dangerous

But there is one thing growing up like this has taught me, if all that I am can appear subjective, then why would I ever take anyone’s appraisal of my beauty as written in stone?

If all the pain, love, and knowledge passed from my ancestors to me can be mistaken for blood sweat and tears of another with the passing blase of small talk then how on earth could I take another’s word for what is or isn’t beautiful about me?

November is national Native American Heritage Month!

The indigenous people of the US and Canada lived in large groups, and those groups were connected with each other.

Many groups, like the contemporary nations of Europe, engaged in cycles of warfare and alliances. However, the warfare was generally less bloody, as they would fight until beaten, not 'to the last man', and the political leaders were more involved in the fighting than were European kings and emperors.

Treaties and alliances were common as well. The most famous example is the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), an alliance of five (later six) tribes in the Northeastern Woodlands. The unique political system there set the stage for, and was an important inspiration to, American democracy after 1776.

Trade spanned the continent for thousands of years. The Mississippi River was an important tradeway, and materials and goods moved thousands of miles along it. Civilizations would commonly have both materials from the Gulf of Mexico and copper from around the Great Lakes. When Europeans landed in what is now Massachusetts and were taught to coplant the Three Sisters, those three crops (maize, beans, squash) were all originally Mexican plants.

We also know that inter-tribal adoptions took place, as well as marriages.

The map of language families also elaborates the unique relations between tribes that existed far away from each other. The Athabaskan languages (a subgroup contained within the Na-Dené linguistic family) occur in Alaska and northwest Canada, a few spots on the Pacific Coast, and in a large cluster in what is now New Mexico and Texas.