Pre-colonial Gothic and the Windigo

The recent proliferation of Indigenous-made gothic has revitalised debates regarding how these stories fit within larger conversations and conventions of the genre/mode. Arguing for a kind of pre-colonial gothic aesthetic, this chapter engages two manifestations: traditional stories of the Windigo in contemporary, often colonial contexts and Indigenous experiences in worlds overrun by zombies. A kind of pre-colonial gothic functions as part of what Rebecca Duncan and Rebekah Cumpsty theorise as ‘world-gothic: that is gothic as a cultural index for local experiences of relations that constitute the modern world.’ In the case of Richard Van Camp’s Wheetago, the creature awakened within the Alberta tar sands embodies the modern world signified by the oil industry, which has reached a critical crisis point in how it damages the environment and threatens the local Indigenous peoples. The local experience manifests as gothic, but also, it points to a gothic that has always been.