Killing the shamen

"In the Fall of 1907, one of the most unusual cases in the history of Canadian jurisprudence commenced in Norway House, Manitoba. Charged with Murder was old Jack Fiddler, a shaman and leader of the Sucker clan from the upper Severn River in what is now northwestern Ontario. Joseph Fiddler, Jack's younger brother, was also charged. Their alleged crime was the killing of a possessed woman who had turned into the dreaded windigo. The Canadian Press emblazoned their headlines with reports of this so-called murder: 'Chief and Medicine Men Choked Out the Evil Spirit'; 'Barbarian Custom Among Indians'; 'Strangler Chief'; 'Devilish Indian Cruelty.' Headlines like these ensured political exposure for all the participants in the trial, especially for the Comissioner of the Royal North West Mounted Police, Aylesworth Bowen Perry." "In the sumer of 1971, I went to the village of Sandy Lake in the upper Severn River country to meet Chief Thomas Fiddler, the grandson of the shaman Jack Fiddler. From the meetings that followed we began an investigation into the deaths that the Commissioner of the Royal North West Mounted Police claimed were murder."-- Preface.… (more)