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James B. Waldram. Revenge of the Windigo: The Construction of the Mind and Mental Health of North American Aboriginal Peoples. Anthropological Horizons. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. xii + 414 pp. $70.00, £28.00 (cloth, 0-8020-8826-0), $29.95, £15.00 (paperbound, 0-8020-8600-4).
The cryptic title of this excellent book refers to windigo psychosis, a culturebound syndrome that has long fascinated psychiatrists and anthropologists. Afflicted patients fear that they have become a windigo, an ice-hearted cannibal that haunts Algonkian mythology. Recent studies have shown that windigo psychosis is as mythic as the windigo itself, existing only in the imagination of white researchers. James Waldram uses this case to introduce the sweeping arguments of his book, a comprehensive review that documents how anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists have misunderstood and misconstructed aboriginal mental health.
Waldram, a medical anthropologist who has long worked among the aboriginal peoples of Canada, poses a simple question: "What do we think we know about North...