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| Bukwas Mask |
For example, our indigenous speaker Alfred “Sonny” McHalsie discussed
at length the Pacific North West’s familiar monster: The Sasq'ets, or Sasquatch as he’s become more commonly identified. Here
in the Fraser Valley, particularly if you head closer towards Harrison and
Boston Bar, you’ll see Sasquatch signs, statues, and even restaurants
capitalizing on the monster’s image and rumoured locality.
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| Harrison Hot Springs Tourism Ad |
And as McHalsie
explained, the Sasq'ets have been
spotted by members of the Stó:lo nation for ages, some of whom
claim to have photographs. But the belief isn’t new; as Edward Simon writes in
his article, “Why Sasquatch and Other Crypto-Beasts Haunt our Imaginations”:
Since the 15th century, and
possibly earlier, there have been accounts of hairy, nude, and tremendously
strong people living in the more obscure corners of the Caucasus. Called
“Almas,”… Across the sunbaked Eurasian steppe and high in the Himalayas, there
is the white-furred Yeti, the abominable snowman of hikers’ accounts. Six
thousand miles away, the socalled “skunk-ape” skulks among the swamps in
between Florida strip-malls… Australia’s outback has the “Yowie”; in Indonesia,
there is the jabbering, tiny, orangecolored “Ebu Gogo,” or the “Grandma who
eats anything."
Now it’s too simple to say all these creatures are
hallucinations, or misidentified animals. Maybe they are, but ultimately, like
all monsters, they’re a stand-in for an underlying anxiety.
So what can they possibly represent to us? One might wonder
if, before the boom of agricultural, globalization, and the foresting industry,
the wild, untamed landscapes of these areas induced fear in the peoples of the
regions. It is reasonable to assume that in the backwoods of the Pacific North
West, where several apex predators such as bears and mountain lions roam, a
reasonable person might be apprehensive every time they slipped among the
trees. There’s also the fear of getting lost, or dying of exposure, all which
have occurred undoubtedly countless times over the last thousand years.
So
perhaps that is what the Sasquatch and all its contemporaries symbolize: a fear
of the unknown, the untamed. This could be why these creatures are always wild,
hairy, and unnaturally strong too; as both inhabitants and representatives of
an uncontrollable region which exists outside of ordered society, they must be
more animal than man.
As well, these fears are a natural deterrent; regardless of
whether or not these creatures exist, the territories they are said to inhabit
are statistically and historically dangerous. High mountains, deep woods, wild
outback, swamps― could these monsters not, then, represent both a
community’s anxiety about an area, and a desire to keep all but the most
experienced away from it?
In this vein then, we must consider that the descriptions of
the Sasq'ets appearing as a kind of
ape-man, a humanoid creature who walks upright may be a result of those who
have disappeared into the forest. Their meaning can be twofold: they exist both
as a representative of one who becomes lost from their society, and also as a
warning to be cautious and respectful when entering an untamed territory.
Works Cited
Harrison Hot Springs Tourism Ad. Digital Image. Tourism
Harrison. 8 November 2014, https://www.tourismharrison.com/blog/newsletter/cat/Hiking/page/1
Simon, Edward. “Why Sasquatch and Other Crypto-Beasts
Haunt Our Imaginations.” Anthropology of Consciousness, vol. 28, no. 2, Fall
2017, pp. 117–120. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/anoc.12072.
Tom Paterson Bukwas
Mask. Digital Image. Cryptozoonews. 15
May 2014, http://www.cryptozoonews.com/sasqets-mask/
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