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Native American myths/traditions support Bigfoot? A critical look.

I have been to many Sweat Lodges in the past
and I soon learned that these stories of mythological spirits
were Stories, not of sightings and blurry blobs.
But were Great Traditional Teachings.
It was interesting how these stories, or should call them Teachings
would relate to my life at the time.

Actually on the most part... especially the Elder.
Were some of the most well grounded people I have ever met.
The Elder was also a very humorous story teller.
I don't recall anyone ever mentioning Bigfoot
Maybe they never had the nerve.
The Great White Buffalo is a big part of their teachings.
But they are not out there hunting it down.

I got to be Crowlogic by way of associating with Cree Elder Don Cardnial. Dozens of Sweat Lodges and hundreds of stories Don told. Many were based on occurances during vision questing and shamonic trance. I recently lamented to a cohort from thoses times that I never once asked Don anything about Sasquatch. If anyone would have had knowledge it would have been him. However in those days the subject was light years away from my focus. Dan Cardnial was a good man I miss him.

 
My tribe, Athabascan, was more pragmatic. I asked my mom, who was raised in the old ways, if the males of our tribe went on spirit quests. She said "What the hell would you do that for?"
 
I got to be Crowlogic by way of associating with Cree Elder Don Cardnial. <snip>
I recently lamented to a cohort from thoses times that I never once asked Don anything about Sasquatch. If anyone would have had knowledge it would have been him. <snip>
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_18755494f0f742cbb4.jpg[/qimg]


No doubt he was a fine man.
Why do you think a Cree elder would have any more knowledge about sasquatch than you?
 
No doubt he was a fine man.
Why do you think a Cree elder would have any more knowledge about sasquatch than you?

I've never seen a Bigfoot, have you? I don't write a Native Americans a free pass on having special knowledge of Sasquatch. However a Native American who has made the efforts this man did in preserving his culture as well as his own personal wilderness observations leads me to conclude that the subject would have been in his knowledge base. He may have said yes its out there flesh and blood or he may have said no its just a myth or didactic device of his culture.
 
Wow! You sure have no idea of the huge differences in First Nations cultures.

His culture - The Cree - does not have a history of sasquatch or Bigfoot.
Therefore, the only way he would have a greater knowledge than you, is if he asked more questions or read more books on the subject than you.

Lumping all First Nations into one big belief system is incredibly simplistic and displays an appalling ignorance of the huge diversity amongst the different tribes.
 
Wow! You sure have no idea of the huge differences in First Nations cultures.

His culture - The Cree - does not have a history of sasquatch or Bigfoot.
Therefore, the only way he would have a greater knowledge than you, is if he asked more questions or read more books on the subject than you.

Lumping all First Nations into one big belief system is incredibly simplistic and displays an appalling ignorance of the huge diversity amongst the different tribes.

My connection had nothing to do with Bigfoot. I said that had I asked he might have hand a telling answer concerning the Bigfoot question. I wasn't lumping anything into anything. Where are you getting that I'm inferring anything about all FNP? You're also discounting potential personal knowledge. Why are you trying to create a tempest in a teapot over this? But whereas I managed to spend a couple of hundred of hours of direct communication with the elder of a FNP I'll close by asking you how many hours have you've spent and under what circumstance?

FYI read this. Please in the future make sure that you know what you're talking about.

http://1stnationstribes.tribe.net/thread/ed99fc73-32a2-4a46-ba10-9c394fd72d81

The Cree call it Nabagaboo the Ojibway know it as Sasquatch
" One of our community street names is called Nabagaboo, which means Bigfoot in Cree. Bigfoot is a common legend among many diiferent ancient tribes of First Nations peoples. Each had variations to the story to reflect the own living realities. The Ojibway called them Sasquatch. Some believe that Bigfoot still roam the forests today. They say it looks like people and runs around in the woods screaming and breaking down trees. It never bothers the Native tribe though. People who have seen it looked long, tall, hairy and smelled bad. They say that he makes shelter from broken down trees to sleep at night. There have been many sightings of big foot prints in the black mud on lakeshores." by Kieffer Bunting
 
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The Cree call it Nabagaboo the Ojibway know it as Sasquatch
" One of our community street names is called Nabagaboo, which means Bigfoot in Cree. Bigfoot is a common legend among many diiferent ancient tribes of First Nations peoples. Each had variations to the story to reflect the own living realities. The Ojibway called them Sasquatch. Some believe that Bigfoot still roam the forests today. They say it looks like people and runs around in the woods screaming and breaking down trees. It never bothers the Native tribe though. People who have seen it looked long, tall, hairy and smelled bad. They say that he makes shelter from broken down trees to sleep at night. There have been many sightings of big foot prints in the black mud on lakeshores." by Kieffer Bunting

Log, surely you've read this thread enough to know better.

I'm highly doubtful of this. I don't think Bigfoot is a part of Cree traditions. First, a search of "Nabagaboo" gets only 3 hits which could be Bigfoot-related. Two are the same post by an anonymous source that you quoted and the other seems non-specific but may be related to Gayle Highpine. It's not something I think you heard straight. I think you just tried a search and pulled that out. And the sasquatch reference is just silly. We know exactly where "sasquatch" came from (white guy) and we've already seen reference to Bigfoot enthusiasts having Ojibway identifying Bigfoot with wendigo or alternatively Rugaru (Loup garou).

Let's see another source:

Mathiessen reported similar views among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway in North Dakota, that Bigfoot --- whom they call Rugaru -- "appears in symptoms of danger or psychic disruption to the community." When I read this, I wondered if it contradicted my hypothesis that the Ojibways had identified Bigfoot with Windago, the sinister cannibal-giant of their legends (see Track Record #14); I had surmised that because I had never heard of any other names for, or references to Bigfoot in Ojibway culture, even though there must have been sightings in woodlands around the Great lakes, and indeed sightings in that region have been reported by non-Indians. But the Turtle Mountain band is one of the few Ojibway bands to have moved much farther west than most of their nation; and Rugaru is not a native Ojibway word. Nor does it come from the languages of neighboring Indian peoples. However, it has a striking sound similarity to the French word for werewolf, loup- garou, and there is quite a bit of French influence among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway. (French-Canadian trappers and missionaries were the first whites that they dealt with extensively, and many tribal members today bear French surnames), so it doesn't seem far-fetched that the Turtle Mountain Ojibway picked up the French name for hairy human- like being, while at the same time taking on their neighbors positive, reverent, attitude toward Bigfoot. After all, the Plains Cree -- even though they retain a memory of their eastern cousins tradition of the Wetiko (as the Windigo is called in Cree) -- have seemed similarly to take on the western tribes view of Bigfoot as they moved west.

http://www.wintersteel.com/Bigfoot.html

So we have Ojibway and the European source Rugaru or the equally non-Bigfoot Wendigo, whom the Cree call Wetiko. No Bigfoot.
 
Yoo hoo geniuses I posted the link where any one of you sharp as tacs boys could have clicked MR mouse and gone to it. Also the name of the autrhor of the quote is listed with the quote.
 
We know sasquatch is not a NA word ..
Makes the rest of the anecdote suspect...

And the name the Indians gave horses when they first encountered them translated into "Dog That Works." However today I doubt that you'll find any Native American that will use the original word that Dog That Works translates into. They just like everyone call them horses. Yet the fact that the Native Americans now call horses horses does not negate the association they had with horses before adopting the white/modern term for them. Lets not forget that the Indians called black military personnel Buffalo Soliders. Does the name change the fact if in fact there is a fact behind the name?
 
We know sasquatch is not a NA word ..
...

Neither is Seattle. It's a bastardized word, like sasquatch.

(I'm really waiting for kit's disection of the Cannibal....book) ((and hoping this list isn't swiftly disavowed))
 
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Yoo hoo geniuses I posted the link where any one of you sharp as tacs boys could have clicked MR mouse and gone to it. Also the name of the autrhor of the quote is listed with the quote.

Let's see if we can make some progress here. Log, what is this statement of yours based on?:

The Cree call it Nabagaboo the Ojibway know it as Sasquatch
 
And the name the Indians gave horses when they first encountered them translated into "Dog That Works."

The Indians, huh? Rather vague, no?They all did? All those countless tribes and languages?

However today I doubt that you'll find any Native American that will use the original word that Dog That Works translates into. They just like everyone call them horses. Yet the fact that the Native Americans now call horses horses does not negate the association they had with horses before adopting the white/modern term for them. Lets not forget that the Indians called black military personnel Buffalo Soliders. Does the name change the fact if in fact there is a fact behind the name?

OK, I get it. So they used to say something else but now use the white man's words Bigfoot and sasquatch. So according to your rebuttal to Greg's noting of the dubious use of sasquatch, your statement here:

The Cree call it Nabagaboo the Ojibway know it as Sasquatch

Would more correctly read "the Cree call it Bigfoot or sasquatch and the Ojibway do too."
 
Let's see if we can make some progress here. Log, what is this statement of yours based on?:

It isn't my statement! The link to the page is comes from is posted in the post I quoted it with. Why don't you go read the page and decide for yourself. If any of you had read my posts we wouldn't even be having this stupid exchange. This is pretty funny since at no point did I ever say or imply that the Cree may or may not have had a Sasquatch type in their lore and traditions. All I ever said was that within my association with a Cree Elder the topic never came up, unfortunately. I would have liked to have had his comment on it whichever way it went.

However I didn't have to look very far to come up with the quote I posted. But I do believe that you need to go back and read my posts here and you'll learn that I haven't tried to attribute Sasquatch to the Cree. However if you need to belch gas about it go right ahead. I forget sometimes around here that rabid dogs can't help but bite.
 
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It isn't my statement!

Actually, yes it is. You said:

The Cree call it Nabagaboo the Ojibway know it as Sasquatch

That is you making a statement as fact. The Cree call Bigfoot Nabagaboo and the Ojibway call it Sasquatch. Based in what? That blurb you quoted? That's it? What kind of critical thinking is that? Didn't you think to be a little more thorough? You should expect by now the bar here is set higher than what it took for you to make that pronouncement.
 
Actually, yes it is. You said:



That is you making a statement as fact. The Cree call Bigfoot Nabagaboo and the Ojibway call it Sasquatch. Based in what? That blurb you quoted? That's it? What kind of critical thinking is that? Didn't you think to be a little more thorough? You should expect by now the bar here is set higher than what it took for you to make that pronouncement.

I posted, with the name of the writer retainded a the end of the quote, a segment from an entire web page with link to page in post. Perhaps you didn't notice, or didn't want to notice that Rocknikt very erroniously stated that I had somehow linked the entire belief system of the FPN with a belief or tradtion of Sasquatch. I did no such thing. I didn't set out to prove a link to Cree and Sasquatch. I said so in my first post. I quoted the page I did to illustrate that a blanket statement concerning the Cree was not so easily made in that I quite easily and quickly found a reference to such.

As for a bar being set there is no bar to be set here. However if you feel you need to rail further go right ahead. But the argument is not with me. I never said it was true or false trustworthy or untrustworthy only that it was.
 
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My connection had nothing to do with Bigfoot. I said that had I asked he might have hand a telling answer concerning the Bigfoot question. I wasn't lumping anything into anything. Where are you getting that I'm inferring anything about all FNP? You're also discounting potential personal knowledge. Why are you trying to create a tempest in a teapot over this? But whereas I managed to spend a couple of hundred of hours of direct communication with the elder of a FNP I'll close by asking you how many hours have you've spent and under what circumstance?

FYI read this. Please in the future make sure that you know what you're talking about.

http://1stnationstribes.tribe.net/thread/ed99fc73-32a2-4a46-ba10-9c394fd72d81

The Cree call it Nabagaboo the Ojibway know it as Sasquatch
" One of our community street names is called Nabagaboo, which means Bigfoot in Cree. Bigfoot is a common legend among many diiferent ancient tribes of First Nations peoples. Each had variations to the story to reflect the own living realities. The Ojibway called them Sasquatch. Some believe that Bigfoot still roam the forests today. They say it looks like people and runs around in the woods screaming and breaking down trees. It never bothers the Native tribe though. People who have seen it looked long, tall, hairy and smelled bad. They say that he makes shelter from broken down trees to sleep at night. There have been many sightings of big foot prints in the black mud on lakeshores." by Kieffer Bunting

I spent almost a year researching and working with the Cree in Northern BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan on their treaty and land claims. I lived on the reserve with the brother of the Grand Chief whose mother was a great healer and feared woman due to her knowledge and power.
She was alive when Treaty 8 was signed - so that would have made her at least 97 years old when I knew her.
Proving land claims is all about researching the cultural and traditional ties to the land. Speaking to elders was a huge part of the equation, obviously, and I got to know a lot of them very well.
You would be surprised at how the tales and traditions varied with the age of the "elders". There was a lot of cross-cultural contamination with obvious references to other tribal beliefs - mostly picked up from American tribes. This is directly attributable to popular media (TV, movies, and fictional books) and the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) and their popularity during the seventies.
A.I.M. sought to unite the people by giving them an all-encompassing belief system. They also promulgated a demonstrably false lie about a past utopian lifestyle that was destroyed by the Europeans. (The old "Noble Savage" and "living in tune with nature" nonsense).

Based on the research into the cultural heritage of the Cree that I and many others have done - there is no reference to ANYTHING resembling what we know as sasquatch or Bigfoot in the Cree tribal lore. Period.
Any reference to it nowadays is political gamesmanship and/or outright bastardization of their cultural heritage by people who should know better.

You tried a weak appeal to authority by bringing your "Cree Elder" friend into the mix.
Why was his heritage or cultural ties brought into the mix unless you were trying to impress us with the fact he was Cree and had some knowledge particular to the Cree? After all - the fact that he is of First Nations ancestry does not make him any more knowledgeable about the bush or wildlife than anybody else. Therefore, if all you were thinking about was his bushcraft - the reference to his ancestry was - and is - irrelevant.

Others have pointed out the obvious silliness of your link.

Maybe you should research the mating habits of the Ojibway women with giant beavers. After all - there is ample evidence of that legend in their tribal culture.
But a tall, hairy, flesh and blood, bi-pedal ape? Nada.
 
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