WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Winter People, Part 1 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:07.920 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:11.119 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.159 Time to go into the old Vault. And you know 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.799 we're going to do an episode about winter today. But 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.200 I must say, on the day we're recording this intro, 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:22.480 doesn't feel much like winter, does it. Yeah, it's unseasonably 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:25.280 warm at the moment, but who knows next week. Certainly, 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:27.280 by the time this air is again, it could be 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:30.080 winter again in Atlanta. That's right, some whipsaw weather. It'll 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:32.839 get us back into the correct territory to air the 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:38.520 Winter People Part one. This originally aired December. You know what, 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:40.720 I'd have to guess that was probably a hot day anyway. 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:43.519 It's always hot down here in December. It very often is. 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.880 So without further ado, let's jump right into the Winter People. 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:52.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:52.920 --> 0:01:01.880 Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.399 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:08.119 we are entering into winter, are we. Yeah, well, today 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:10.280 it feels more like winter. I would say in Atlanta, 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:14.080 we enter into winter sometime around mid March, and then 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:18.080 we exit it sometime around mid March, and then it's 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.840 summer again until December when fall begins. Yeah, that's the 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.600 way it was this last year. It's it basically stayed fall, 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.600 then it became spring just enough for my fig tree 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.560 to begin to to emerge, and then it was winter 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:33.760 again for like three days. This is enough to kill it. 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.880 This is really disrupting, I think, because you want to 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.959 be able to have seasonal traditions, and you want them 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:44.200 to be able to to be re enacted with some 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:48.440 kind of reliability every year. Seasonal traditions or something that 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.320 I think gives a lot of anchoring meaning to our lives. 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.520 When you're a little kid and you have that recognition 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.720 that like, oh, Christmas is coming or something like that, 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.400 whatever your traditions, maybe if you don't celebrate Stmas, you 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.200 probably have something like that sometime in the year that 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.440 sort of like marks a seasonal transition and and that 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.640 another part of a season is based around. So like 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.560 here in America, for kids who celebrate Christmas, winter is 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:16.960 not just a cold time, It's Christmas time. Yeah. Yeah, 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:21.560 it's it's almost impossible to escape the trappings of essentially 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:26.679 Northern European winter survival traditions. They've been you know, they've 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.919 been neutered and altered and and and changed into a 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.040 different form altogether. But the shape is still there, like 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:39.360 the deep mythic importance of Santa Claus and and Yule 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.160 logs and all the all these various trappings, like their 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.560 their their mythic purpose is still present if you you 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:48.080 just look hard enough. Yeah, but you can also see 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:50.960 that there's something kind of wrong with the way we 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.600 practice Christmas here in Atlanta, Georgia, because when I see 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:59.160 all of the traditional aesthetic stuff that's associated with Christmas, 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:01.440 it's all got snow on it. There's just snow on everything. 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.359 Santa's walk around in the snow, He's got snow on him. 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:06.519 He kind of looks like he's sort of made of snow. 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.359 There is snow on all the Christmas trees you see 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:12.639 in all the pictures, and children playing in the snow. 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:15.639 And it never snows on Christmas down here. It's usually 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:17.880 in the seventies. I think we gotta we got a 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:19.880 white Christmas at some point in the last few years. 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:22.200 But yeah, for the most part, you're right. The only 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:24.880 way you're going to have snow on Christmas as if 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.280 you import it or you you have your tree flocked. 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:28.679 But yeah, to come back to the point I was 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:31.560 making earlier, I think one reason this variable weather and 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.720 the unreliability of it actually feeling like wintertime at Christmas 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:38.640 is so troubling is that we really want to have 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:43.400 dependable seasonal cycles that correspond to our ceremonies, because our 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:47.400 ceremonies make the seasons mean something, and it almost feels 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:51.240 encoded into our bodies that the seasons should mean something. 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:54.000 It shouldn't just be a time where the weather is 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.280 a little different outside. It feels like seasons should mark 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:01.080 something important in our existence. Yeah, though it is hard. 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.240 It is hard to backtrack because you can't just suddenly 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.680 say I'm sorry, kids, but a Christian saint is going 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:11.600 to climb out of the hearth tonight and start bestowing gifts. 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.200 You know, if he's actually supposed to be based on St. Nicholas, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:17.039 you should You should do yourself a favor and go 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:20.240 look up some of the legends about the actual St. Nicholas. 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.640 He's fantastic. There's a great story where St. Nicholas goes 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.520 into an inn where there's an evil innkeeper who has uh. 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:29.479 I guess he just didn't like children. So he took 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.800 some boys and he killed them, and he chopped them up, 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.000 and he pickled them in a big pot. And then St. 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:39.120 Nicholas resurrects that chopped up pickled children. Oh man, that's wonderful. 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:41.880 That's the best resurrection story ever heard. But it does 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.360 drive home the inherent darkness of Christmas. When we talk 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:50.200 about the like the commercialization and the modernization of holiday traditions, 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.240 we're generally squeezing the darkness out of it. And that's 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:55.479 why I feel like so many people have taken to 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.400 sat Crampus and other traditional yet dark l mints of 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:05.120 holiday and pagan tradition because they represent the darkness that 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.320 we're trying to get away from. And it ultimately is 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:09.800 a dark time. It is about surviving the winter is 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:15.240 it is about the cold moving in, about life draining 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:18.400 from all of our vegetation, and we have to somehow 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.599 stay warm and stay fed and live to see the spring. Yeah, 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.200 And it feels very possible that this could be something 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:27.520 that's like, I don't know, almost kind of a young 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.000 Gian archetype kind of thing, a thing that's coded deep 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.080 into the unconscious. That's some kind of received memory from 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:35.960 bioh history, because you look at how a lot of 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:40.440 other animals deal with the winter, deal with the cold months, 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:44.560 and it is they go. They undergo profound changes beyond 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.599 just the changes in how humans practice their culture when 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:49.640 it gets cold. Oh yeah, I mean one of the 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:53.240 most iconic examples is, of course, the bear. Oh yeah. 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.839 And I was recently listening to Roaming Imagination What the 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.920 stories we tell about bear say about a on CBC 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.640 Radio's Ideas with Paul Kennedy, one of my favorite podcast 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.520 slash radio programs. Folks out there, you didn't get to 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:09.800 hear it, but before we started, Robert was trying to 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.720 do a Paul Kennedy. Yeah, I sadly I can't. I can. 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.200 I can nail a few impersonations, but I just can't 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.000 quite capture Paul Kennedy's lovely voice. You sound kind of 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.159 like Optimist Prime when you do it. Yeah, he's like 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.200 a Canadian Optimist Prime, I would guess. But in this episode, 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.760 they point out the mythic power of bears in many 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.360 ancient northern traditions, traditions that gave the bear place of 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.960 honor as a boundary walker between the human and the divine, 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:40.120 because when the cruel winter rolls in, threatening our survival 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.679 and even our very sanity, the bear ventures into the earth, 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.640 only to emerge again in the spring. So it's it's 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.840 it's like a resurrection really. So this is why you 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.440 see shaman's have in ancient societies taking on the guys 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:59.440 of the holy bear. Norwegian traditions, for example, uh entailed 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.359 grave routs of bear hide, appropriating the magical power of 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:07.719 this animal that seeks and returns from the winter grave. 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.880 In Finland you have pre Christian traditions that hold that 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:16.720 bears can reincarnate, and the indigenous reincarnate as other bears 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.400 or reincarnate as other types of creatures as bears. Yeah, 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.800 so there's like that, there is this this cycle of 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:25.080 the bear, so like the bear is following a different 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:27.840 set of rules for life and death. And then there's 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:31.600 the indigenous I knew people of Japan that holds the 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.920 bears a god, but in a in an interesting twist, 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:39.640 a god made flesh for their consumption and use. So 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:42.840 so these are bear eating people's well yeah, yeah, they 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.280 they eat the bear, they use the bears hide, and 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:49.240 they make products out of the bear. But there's this 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.000 idea that the god that becomes the bear has become 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.240 the bear so that they can use its flesh, oh 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:58.960 like like a sacrificial like this is my bare body, 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:01.880 take and eat actually, yeah, and then afterwards they hold 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:04.520 a ceremony to return the bear God's spirit to the 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:08.080 spirit realm. And of course, even today, bear hibernation, which 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.800 which is not a true hibernation, remains of interest to scientists, 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.840 even in the consideration of future space travel. Now you 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.440 say it's not a true hibernation, what would actually be 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:20.440 the difference between this pseudo hibernation we see in bears 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.360 and a true hibernation. Well, what bears do is certainly 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:25.760 incredible and and we'll get to the details of that 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:28.840 in a second. But but true hibernation is even crazier. 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:31.840 The Arctic ground squirrel, for instance, drops its body temperature 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:35.600 below freezing, which is cold enough that neurons in the 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.960 brain's cortex are physically incapable of firing, so basically it 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:43.400 can put its brain on pause. Yeah, basically. Uh. In 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:48.040 the Jason Biddle's Slate article the Great do Bears Hibernate Debate, 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:53.800 he points to a wonderful two experiment with torpid marmots, 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:56.959 and it found that you could place these hibernating creatures 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:00.679 in a glass container full of noxious gas and they 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:03.680 were unharmed so long as their body temperature didn't rise 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.080 enough for them to emerge from hibernation, so they could 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:09.840 sort of freeze. And it's almost like they just cut 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.120 themselves off from outside influence and some unless something like 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:15.320 squishes them. Yeah, yeah, as long as nothing comes in 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.320 and messes with them during the hibernation, right, I guess 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:20.560 you're always going to be vulnerable to getting squished. Yeah, 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:23.320 that's I mean, that's that's the risk of being a marmot. Uh. 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.200 But in the case of hibernating bears, I mean this 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:29.040 they fascinated us for a number of reasons, and a 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.080 lot of it comes down to the fact that you 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.959 have this rugged apex omnivore. So it's it's a be 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.360 steal reflection of us in many respects. I mean, you 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.240 can even walk on two legs when it needs to. Yeah, 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.360 I was just thinking about that, all the ways that 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:46.000 the bare mirrors the human. It can walk on two legs, 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:48.959 it does eat both, you know, it's it's a total 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:52.839 opportunist in terms of diet, can eat both plants and animals, 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.360 and when it decides to eat animals, it is a 0:09:55.480 --> 0:10:00.000 formidable predator, just like humans. Um it almost it seems 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:02.480 like it's like the other thing like us out there. 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.560 If you don't have great apes to compare yourself to, Like, 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.160 if you're not in a place where there are chimpanzees 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.160 or orangutangs or guerrillas, what's the closest thing to a 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:13.680 human seems like it might be a bear. Yeah. And 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:18.079 I was running cross across various folkloric beliefs and myths 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:21.120 and involved people turning to bears, bears turning into people, 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.720 the idea that bears are people who have wandered too 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.280 far into the wilderness and they've been transformed by the 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:30.920 magic of the wilderness. So it feels almost like Grendel. 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:33.840 It's like the earth rim roamer becomes a bear. Yeah. 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.840 And indeed, and this is an earth rim roamer in 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:39.600 many of these traditions, it is it is ranging between 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:43.080 life and death because it can it can essentially leap 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:45.800 frog over the coldest and cruelest months of the year. 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:51.120 They quote unquote hibernate. They cut their metabolic rate in half. 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.559 So tell me about the pseudo hibernation. Okay, Well, according 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.400 to Edgar Folk of the University of Iowa, a late 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:01.680 fall bears heart beats forty fifty times a minute during sleep, 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.440 but during deep hibernation it slows to as few as 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.400 eight beats a minute, so they during this time they 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.320 don't eat. Their body is stored up enough to provide 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.559 them up to four thousand calories a day during the winter, 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:19.840 and the bear's body even takes uriah, you know, in urine, 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:24.160 and builds new nitrogen from the protein. They don't defecate, 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:26.720 they don't drink, and yet when they wake in the spring, 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:31.559 there they're They're hydrated, they have a balance of of 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:35.000 water in their bodies, and they also avoid muscle cramping 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.040 in degenerative bone loss during this time despite being just 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:40.720 crammed up in a tiny space the whole time. I 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.840 feel like humans often use the metaphor of hibernation like 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.040 we think, Okay, it's winter time, I'm going to spend 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:49.199 a lot of time indoors with my loved ones. We're 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.760 gonna cuttle up. I'm gonna be under a blanket most 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:55.480 of the time. But we don't really have anything like 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:58.640 this to to compare this experience to This is just 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.360 a different type of existence where you can go into 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:07.360 this sub metabolic state where you really do It's not 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:09.760 like you die and come back. I mean metaphorically it's 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:11.320 kind of like that, but it is as if you 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.560 become a different kind of organism for for a significant 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:17.920 part of the year. It's like you it's almost like 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:21.960 an animal sort of becomes a plant for the amount time, Yeah, 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.000 becomes this sort of fleshy rock in the earth and 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.600 then and and you can see why you capture the 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:31.760 imaginations of people. Um though, it is interesting to try 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:35.840 and imagine ancient people following the bear and finding out 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:39.559 where the bear goes and what that discovery was like, 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:42.160 like how they came to this realization that the that 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.679 this formidable creature is climbing into the earth and just 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:49.440 not emerging for months on end. You can easily see, 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:51.920 especially given what we've already said about it being in 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:54.280 some cases kind of similar to a human, why this 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:58.160 would take on a magical aspect to people. Yeah, so 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.280 in this episode, we're going to look at what we 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.640 humans become during the winter. So obviously we don't experience 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:08.240 anything like the bear or true hibernators, but the winter 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.000 does have an effect on our bodies, on our minds, 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.240 on our personality, and our culture. And through culture, I 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.640 think we have sometimes found ways to mirror the bear. Now, 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:20.120 obviously there are plenty of examples we could turn to 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:25.280 for winter survival culture, but one of the most amazing 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.160 is that of the qua qua Yuuk people. Yeah. So 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:31.600 the qua qua Quuk is the name of a group 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:35.560 of First Nations tribes that speak the Quaquala language and 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:39.319 that this is basically their home is the Pacific Northwest 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:42.800 around Vancouver Island and stuff. Yeah, and and these various 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.520 tribes have different names for themselves, but this is just 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:49.480 the this is the the catch off for their their 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:54.240 their cultural system. Yeah, the language group. Yeah. And interestingly enough, 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:56.959 the Field Museum in Chicago, they have an excellent section 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:00.000 on the art and culture of various Native American tribe, 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.840 including this one. And Joe, you and I both visited 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:05.800 this during a two thousand seventeen visit. Yeah, that is 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:10.600 a fantastic collection. And these artworks and ceremonial artifacts are 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.200 just beautiful if you ever get a chance to see it. 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.800 But Also, if you get a chance, you should check 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.560 out the u Missed Cultural Center of British Columbia, which 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.120 is run by the Umistic Cultural Society. And and that's 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:27.040 a Qua Kua kuuk uh run center dedicated to preserving 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:30.840 the cultural heritage and the h and the traditional artifacts 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:33.440 of the Kua Kua Kuuck people. Yeah, and I'll include 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.840 a link to that organization on the landing page for 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.120 this episode at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. So, 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.680 for the quaku Ku people, summer is a time of travel, 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:47.200 gathering of foods, preservation of foods for the winter because 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:50.800 when winter comes, which runs November through March, it is 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.480 a harsh time, but it's also a sacred time. And 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.680 during this time the people are visited by supernatural spirits. 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:03.840 Everyone takesfferent names and are defined more by their membership 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.040 in these different dance societies, each based on a different 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:11.200 supernatural entity. And so these societies they even take president's 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:15.200 over clan affiliation. It basically divides their world up into 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:19.000 two phases. You have the summer, which is uh box us, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.560 and then there's winter which is uh sets qua, which 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:26.280 which has been translated as secrets. This is a really 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:30.960 fascinating aspect of this culture because it takes something that, 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:33.720 as we were saying earlier, in some ways as kind 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.960 of subtly or implicitly present in many other cultures, like 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:41.160 the way we sort of change according to the seasons, 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.080 but it makes it more explicit and and sort of 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:47.360 commits the people within the culture to say, yes, we 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.920 are different beings when the cold months arrive. Yeah, Because 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:53.120 it's one thing to think, well, you know, Joe is 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.880 a slightly different person during the winter. But if you 0:15:56.920 --> 0:15:59.280 were to actually change your name, if you were to 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.760 distinguish between summer Joe and winter Joe and like sign 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.680 things as winter Joe, and you know that would be 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:08.920 that would be a different case altogether and have different 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.040 intra society association. Yes. So, in other words, for the 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:16.440 Qua qua Qua people, all cultural energy shifts from harvesting 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:20.280 food to a four month ritual cycle aimed at taming 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:25.440 cosmos threatening supernatural forces. While the rule of summer is 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:30.240 a hierarchy based on mythical founding ancestors, Uh said, sae 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.240 Qua is all about the dance groups. And I have 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:35.120 a wonderful quote here I want to read that I 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.000 think underlines a lot of this. This is from a 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:40.120 paper titled it is a Strict Law that bids Us 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:44.800 dance UH Cosmologies, colonialism, death, and ritual authority in the 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:48.600 Qua Qua pot Latch eighteen forty nine to nineteen twenty 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:53.080 two by Joseph Masco, published in Comparative Studies in Society 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.720 and History. In total, the seasons present a ritual cycle 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:01.280 which deconstructs and reinvents the social order. The barren winter months, 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:04.280 in which the collective spiritual energy of all the tribes 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:08.200 must be focused on regenerating the natural world, are turned 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.639 into a fecundity of the summer months, when the animal world, 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:16.639 placated by continuing ritual, offers itself up for human consumption. Thus, 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:21.000 the Quouus saw themselves as participants in a universal ecology 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:25.159 requiring continuous maintenance. Its root metaphor was that of hunter 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.119 and hunted to live means to kill. Now to give 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.480 you an example of some of the the dance groups 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:34.400 the the affiliations at one UH is associated with during 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:39.240 the winter UH there is the Hamasta or Cannibal society, 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.719 and they're defined by the myth of four brothers who 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.639 ventured into the home of the cannibal spirit at the 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:47.720 quote north end of the world, which I can't help 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:52.440 but think of Santa when we touched on that. But uh, here, 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:55.560 the cannibal spirit lived with a man eating raven called 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.879 Crooked Beak of Heaven and a giant bird who cracked 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.760 open human skulls with its beak and ate the brains. 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:05.800 The brothers end up defeating all of these creatures and 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:09.040 they gained special powers. So to join the society, you 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.240 have had to undergo an ordeal in which the cannibal 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:14.320 spirit kidnaps you, takes you into the woods, and when 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.880 you return to the tribe, you're possessed like a wild man. 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.880 You're dressed only in scraps of hemlock, you're dancing about 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.639 in a squatting position, and the others have to entice 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:27.320 you to venture close to the fire with either a 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.920 corpse or a corpse like figure. Yeah, so you lune, 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.440 you're lunging at people, you're biding at people, you're even 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.520 actually biding pre selected people. So this is like a 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.640 choreographed thing. Yeah, well, I wonder to what extent it's 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:42.879 it's like choreographed, maybe a little bit of improv, you know, 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.000 it's it's theater. It's essentially well, just call it theater 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.879 is is probably not giving it enough depth, because it 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.520 is the most potent form of theater. It's not necessarily 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.960 a performance for an audience, but it's an enactment, yes, 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:58.879 an enactment for the people and for the cosmos. It 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.160 is it is a magical ceremony. Finally, an attendant leads 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.359 you around the fire by a neck ring, pacifying you 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:07.879 with music four times around the fire, and then you 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.000 climb through a hole in a ceremonial screen and you 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.639 reappear in the mask of the man eating raven. Then 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.520 you reappear maskless, and then as the crooked beak of Heaven. 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.520 And finally you return for a fifth dance, fully tamed, 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.879 and dance in an upright position. So we see this 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.760 like this transformation, this taming of the wild, um and 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:29.840 and and it also touches on this idea of the 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.280 cannibal spirit. Would you see president in a number of 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:39.760 different Native people's folk beliefs, probably most famous and typified 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:41.679 in the Wind to Go. In addition to this, you 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:45.040 have the grizzly bear society that keeps ordered during the ceremony, 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:49.919 sometimes even even punishing transgressions with death, and during some 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.400 of the dances you see them wearing full bear skins 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:56.200 and behaving as bears. You have full fool dancers who 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.119 run around causing chaos. And then you have the wild 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:02.240 Woman of the Wood. That's great, oh yeah, because this one. 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.760 She appears as a person clad in bear skins and 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:09.080 a horrid mask, and she carries a basket which she 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.920 uses to to crate away children who have wandered into 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:15.600 the woods so that she can eat them. I detect 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.159 some parallels to cramp Us. Yeah, I mean, both of 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:22.480 these are the wild child eating creature that that serves 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:26.480 as a warning to naughty children, uh during during the winter. 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:29.960 So on one hand, I my reaction to this is 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.600 strong in that I not only find this very like 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:38.280 esthetically pleasing and beautiful, but also I detect a kind 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:41.720 of deep genius in it, if that makes any sense. 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.600 There's something profound that the practitioners of these ceremonies have 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:49.280 tapped into about our nature as human beings that a 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:51.320 lot of us have not quite figured out how to 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:56.000 properly animate. Yeah. Yeah, I love how revealing this example feels, 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:59.040 even for denizens of the modern world, you know, we're 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:02.359 so can a lot artically aided in our battle against winter. 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:05.919 We we have heated homes, we have we have you know, 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:08.480 all the electricity we can use. We have, we have 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:12.000 fresh water, we have we can even have fresh vegetables 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:16.120 delivered right to our door. Uh. And yet this still 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.040 strikes a court of truth for us. Yeah. Absolutely, because 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:21.680 no matter how many space heaters you surround yourself with, 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:25.119 and no matter how much you have access to unholy 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:29.159 summer foods out of season in the winter. And folks, 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:31.399 I should just say, don't buy tomatoes in the winter. 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.280 Just don't do it. Don't encourage that. But what if 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:37.480 you need spaghetti? Spaghetti is such a use can tomatoes? 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:39.440 They were canned in the summer. That's okay, that's right. 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:41.639 I mean, that's the spirit of surviving the winter is 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.360 use the canned goods, use the survival foods. Eat the pickles, 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:47.800 as long as they're not made from children. Obviously, Wait 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:51.560 where was I going with that? Well? No, anyway, so um, no, 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:53.520 you know, no matter, just like you say, no matter 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:56.919 how much we can use technology to ward off some 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.480 of the worst effects of seasonal changes, whether it's actually 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:01.560 winter or hot summer months, or if you live in 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:04.000 tropical areas, whether it's the rainy season, you might be 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.679 able to technologically put yourself into a state of stability, 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:11.600 you know, indoors with all of this electrical equipment. But 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:16.480 we sort of can't write seasonal changes out of our DNA, 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:21.040 things like the winter, the rainy season, you know, whatever 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:23.880 these seasonal changes are that are relevant wherever you live. 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:26.760 There are a deep part of us that is not 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.800