StillKim

  • Is Windigo in your life?

    Is Windigo in your life?

    Ever feel like no matter what you’ve got, someone’s got more?

    So asked the bank commercial that played frequently throughout the World Series. 

    And then there’s someone with more more. 

    Is there more more? Or, is there a limit? 

    The bank says we’re richer than we think. I wonder if we really know that?

    As I unpack for the Christmas season of 2025, I am trying to sort multiple messages that are dancing in my head – not sugar plums this year. Bear with me as I sift through a few musings. Perhaps you will share these, or maybe it will be food for thought. 

    The Blue Jays theme was “I want it all and I want it now,” and this year’s series seemed to carry a special significance given the state of the world. I recall thinking at one point, Canada really needs this win.

    Of course, we know the outcome and all of the comments designed to rationalize the blow, but maybe there was a deeper, more meaningful take-away. The team’s hard work brought Canadians together at a time national camaraderie is sorely needed, but there’s more to it than that..

    Then, in another celebrity moment, I was wowed with the statement by American singer Billie Eilish at the Wall Street Journal Innovator Awards ceremony in New York city. 

    “There’s a few people in this room who have a lot more money than me,” she teased in a sing-song voice. Then, “If you’re a billionaire…why are you a billionaire? Give your money away shorties.” 

    This young (she’s only 23) singer recently donated about 22% of her net worth to support food security and climate change  – her donation was $11.5 million! Her audience was comprised of a few billionaires, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  (Who reportedly did not applaud the speech.)

    I wonder how many of them enjoyed a good sleep after that searing comment?  My fear is that they slept well. 

    While it’s great theatre to see wealthy people call each other out to do more, we don’t need to be a billionaire to fall victim to greed. 

    In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s  book, Braiding Sweetgrass Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, the author describes the Indigenous monster Windigo. The short explanation is that Windigo is greed and over-consumption personified in a monster. He would be used as a threat particularly during times of hunger and great need, to keep people in check. When they might be tempted to act inappropriately. For Indigenous ancestors, that might be a winter where food was scarce.  When one might be tempted to not share.

    We can see Windigo, the monster of greed and over-consumption, in our world today. Perhaps it’s the threat of recession for us, or a world that is changing so fast we cling to false prophets.

    When the bank commercial asks us if we notice someone else who has more, that’s Windigo at work. When we envy our neighbour’s car, or house or pool that’s Windigo at work. When we purchase more than we need, that’s Windigo at work. The “I’ve too many to count boots and coats in my closet” is Windigo at work. 

    When children are starving while the rich party at their palatial estates, that’s Windigo at work. 

    When the comfortable question the support given to those with less, that’s Windigo at work.

    We should all fear this monster.

    I have always thought it was good when a business succeeds. I owned a small business for a few years, and it was satisfying to know I was generating revenue to cover incomes for at least four other people and not just myself. 

    But knowledge and time have opened my eyes to the negative repercussions of our economic system. Capitalism rewards business growth and with Windigo at the helm, we have supported a model of greed and over-consumption that has richly benefitted those at the very top echelon. Tesla just approved a $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk and the crowd at the annual meeting burst into applause. Windigo on their shoulders.

    And the distance between the haves and have nots grows. 

    In recent news, grocery stores are now looking at digital pricing so they can immediately lower or increase the amount we pay for our groceries based on the principle of scarcity. Advertise a special, people flock to the store, and suddenly the price goes up because the demand is high. I don’t detect any sympathy in the grocery sector to suggest it won’t be used as a tool to increase their take. Where’s the concern about grocery profits?

    How do we defeat Windigo? As Kimmerer writes, we need more than a change in policy that ensures the wealthiest don’t take advantage. “It is not just changes in policies that we need, but also changes to the heart.”

    Kimmerer writes of early Indigenous teachings which emphasized the practice of taking no more than you need and always leaving some behind for others, whether that was another human, or in some cases, animal brothers and sisters. You didn’t chop down the first tree you come to and you would never chop down the last tree in the grove. Further, when you took from the earth or an animal’s life to feed your family, you gave thanks.

    You didn’t feel entitled, and your worth was not measured in possessions. And you were grateful.

    My settler ancestors certainly knew how to live frugally; they reused and didn’t buy new because they could not afford it.  But over the years in our quest to improve our standard of living, we have given way to Windigo. 

    Having more is how we have placed value on our lives. (You know the adage, the difference between men and boys is the size of their toys, designed to make us laugh as we accumulated more?)

    I remember my mother calling out this unending loop of behaviour – marketing tells us we “need” more, workers want more income to support those “needs”, business wants more for its products and services, workers want more pay, business wants…and so on. Where does it end?

    Can we fight Windigo on a personal level? 

    Kimmerer writes, “Scarcity and plenty are as much qualities of the mind and spirit as they are of the economy.” She goes on to say that a life of gratitude can be “a powerful antidote to Windigo psychosis.”

    Which brings me back to Christmas. A time of giving and of gratitude. The season that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ who told us, among other things, we will either love God and hate money or love money and hate God. Why? Jesus would know people required money to live in the world’s economy. As Brian D. McLaren writes in his book Life After Doom, the Roman civilization in Jesus’ time oppressed the poor because “Money is the measure of value. Without money, to the empire, you’re nothing.” Those without, those with less, were considered unworthy.

    Sound familiar?

    The alternative offered by Jesus was to “run on a different currency altogether: love.”

    McLaren encourages us to read the Bible as Indigenous wisdom and to see Jesus as an Indigenous prophet, who came into the world to teach us to love one another. Part of loving another is ensuring they have enough and then expressing gratitude to Jesus, to God, to our Creator, that our needs have been met and that there is enough for everyone. We’ve lost the Indigenous knowledge of how the earth really does provide all we need, if we just take care of it.

    With all due respect to the Blue Jays, and the band Queen who made the song famous, maybe having it all isn’t what we need in more ways than one.

    ***

    Bank of Nova Scotia, YouTube, You’re richer than you think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_j2FF8u_0I f, ret.November 6, 2025

    You Tube, I want it all, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JtGdEB1fPXo, November 24, 2025

    ETalk, YouTube, Billie Eilish calls out billionaires during innovator awards speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj2R_LuCLoU ret. November 6, 2025

    Kimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, Canada, 2013.

    CNN, ov, 6, 2025, Tesla shareholders approve $1 trillion pay package. for Musk, https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/business/musk-trillion-dollar-pay-package-vote, ret.November 24, 2025

    City News, Toronto, Shoppers are wary of digital shelf labels, but a study found they don’t lead to price surges, https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/06/09/shoppers-are-wary-of-digital-shelf-labels-but-a-study-found-they-dont-lead-to-price-surges/ , ret. November 9, 2025

    Loblaw Companies Ltd., Media Release Nov. 12, 2025, Loblaw Reports Revenue Growth of 4.6% in the Third Quarter, https://www.loblaw.ca/en/loblaw-reports-revenue-growth-of-4-6-in-the-third-quarter/https://www.loblaw.ca/en/loblaw-reports-revenue-growth-of-4-6-in-the-third-quarter/, ret. November 18, 2025

    CNN Business, Tesla shareholders approve Elon Musk’s $1trillion pay package, https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/business/musk-trillion-dollar-pay-package-vote, ret. November 11, 2025

    Brian D. McLaren, Life After Doom, Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, New York, 2024

  • A forgotten connection?

    A forgotten connection?

    Oh, blessed autumn: cooler breezes, still-warm sunshine, and fall colours. I can’t even mourn summer when we are offered the beautiful weather that September delivered. There’s no better time for getting on the saddle and pedalling away. 

    Riding a bike was my primary mode of transportation when I was a kid – I travelled all over town on my gold-coloured bike. No special brakes or gears, just girl power. Now I have rediscovered bicycling as a way to visit sites all around Ontario.

    My husband and I recently upgraded our 21-speed bikes for the latest craze, e-bikes. They are game changers. We can go further without wearing out and those steep hills don’t stop us anymore. 

    We still get exercise, but what I most appreciate about this past-time is how it gets me outdoors and enjoying nature. Bicycle paths are abundant around Ontario, and I relish the scenery as I travel through parks, over rivers and creeks on bridges, or beside farm fields on rural trails. The Guelph to Goderich Rail Trail has an added bonus of being shaded by trees planted in memory of loved ones. I see familiar names on plaques as I pass and I remember them. 

    Fields of hay, corn, beans, and apples reveal the seasons as we travel by them in early spring, again in mid-summer, and finally at harvest time. Then, there’s the animals. Watching a young horse, also enjoying the fresh air, chase the sheep around an enclosed pen brings a smile while seeing a beautiful red fox leap across the trail a few short yards ahead brings a gasp of wonder. The groundhog that ran across the trail and thankfully passed under my pedals brought a shreak! 

    It feels good to get away from the concrete and ordered life of town or city. 

    Bicycling is also a bit of an escape from daily chores and gives me time to reflect. As I do, the neurons in my brain seem to make new connections as they sort memories, conversations, and recent readings. 

    The corn stalks beside the trail eventually create a wall that towers above me, and I think about the fact I was not raised on a farm. I’m a townie. My parents didn’t even maintain a garden. Food, as far as I knew, came from the grocery store and was canned, boxed or frozen. But I loved to visit my friend who did live on a farm, and I remember her father seemed to really appreciate it when I asked to go out to the barn. (I dearly wanted to see a calf being born but was not rewarded that wish!) Even as a self-absorbed teenager, I sensed the deep devotion her father had to his farm, the care of his animals, and the tending of his crops. This usually quiet man would become animated as he told me about the farm. Farming was his livelihood, but there was a connection to his way of life that went deeper than a job. 

    We were never allowed to have a pet at home, but I remember making a big deal of stepping on an ant one day. My dad, always one to poke a conscience, asked me why I had done that. The ant wasn’t doing anything to me, was going about its own business, and had a right to live, he said. Geesh, make a kid feel guilty about an ant? Seemingly simple memory, but the intended lesson has stuck. (So glad I missed that groundhog, and the chipmunks!)

    I recall going to school in downtown Toronto, returning home most weekends via bus. As the bus got closer to rural landscapes and I could see farm silos and barns out the window, the knots in my stomach would begin to unravel. 

    I remember that when my kids were little, we would go out on “nature” walks and I would get them to look for and collect different shaped leaves, or rocks etc. I especially loved the smell of the earth in the spring and the smell and sound of rustling leaves in the fall. Our grandchildren have also enjoyed walks through local trails, in deeply wooded areas where the ground cover of pine needles absorb sound and it is quiet. We listen and identify sounds we may hear. On one occasion, I picked up a small twig of pine needles and suggested to my young granddaughter that it was a mouse broom and perhaps they were using it to clean their homes. A bit of fanciful nonsense that we shared. A year later we visited the same area and she was telling me she had found the mouse brooms! 

    These seemingly unconnected memories reinforce the idea I don’t have a history of living on the land, but I do feel some kind of connection to the land, or to nature. My inside voice has always suggested this connection was perhaps a bit fake or “put-on” because, as I say, I don’t have a history that I can connect to.

    Or do I?

    This tenuous connection was given some veracity recently as I began to read Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In her preface, she explains that sweetgrass is “the sweet-smelling hair of Mother Earth.” Then, she adds a statement that has really stuck with me: “Breathe it in and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten.”

    I contemplate a crazy thought. Is it possible my sketchy connection to the land is based on a memory I have forgotten, a memory passed to me through my ancestral roots, or even further back in time to my place in the world as a human being? If we were created to play a part in the eco-system of earth, perhaps there’s a reason beneath my appreciation of the smells and sounds in nature or behind the unravelling knots in my stomach when I see a rural landscape.

    Is it possible, I continue to reflect, that we are all connected to Mother Earth, but some of us have forgotten? That it is buried by generations of progress and development that pushed the connection down deep into our subconscious?

    I hear many people reflect the sentiment that we have lost touch with the land; we have moved away from living on the land, of surviving only by what the earth can give us. Our modern, urban existence has changed our relationship with the land. I wonder again, have we suppressed a connection? 

    I have also understood that people who farm the land, and Indigenous peoples have different relationships with the earth. But I didn’t fully understand the Indigenous connection until reading Kimmerer’s book. 

    In Indigenous culture, the land is a gift. And to fully appreciate this, you must also understand how the Indigenous interpret the term “gift.” Their economy is based on a gift exchange, unlike ours which is based on a commodity exchange. As Kimmerer explains, if you pay for a pair of socks in a store, the exchange ends once you give the clerk your money. You now own the socks. That’s a commodity exchange.  But if those socks were given to you as a gift, the gift creates an ongoing relationship between you and the gift giver. The gift comes with responsibilities and obligations, and a need to reciprocate.  

    The earth is a gift from the Creator and thus, in Indigenous culture, it can’t be bought and sold as a commodity. And when we accept the gifts of the earth, we are obligated to care for them. We are to reciprocate by returning the gift. 

    Kimmerer asks “How in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again? I know we cannot all become hunter-gatherers – the living world could not bear our weight – but even in a market economy, can we behave “as if” the living world were a gift?”

    If we believed the world was a gift, how might we change our behaviour?

    I certainly feel I have been blessed with a gift as I bicycle on trails around Ontario where you get a whole new perspective of the land, and the nature that inhabits it. 

    As I continue reading Kimmerer’s book, I look forward to further food for thought as she weaves her first-hand knowledge of Indigenous culture as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, with her professional training as a botanist and scientist.  Perhaps October will offer more opportunity for bicycling and reflecting.

    ***

    Kimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, Canada, 2013.