sasquatch
sasquatch
Halkomelem (Salish)
“Sasquatch comes from Halkomelem sasq'ets, a word from the Sts'ailes people of British Columbia. The word entered English as the name of a mythical ape-man, but in Sts'ailes tradition, the sasquatch is not mythical at all.”
Sasquatch enters English from Halkomelem sasq'ets (or sesquac), a word from the Sts'ailes (Chehalis) people of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. The journalist J.W. Burns popularized the anglicized form 'sasquatch' in the 1920s and 1930s through articles in Canadian newspapers. Burns collected accounts from Sts'ailes and other First Nations people about encounters with large, hairy, humanlike beings in the forests of British Columbia.
For the Sts'ailes and neighboring First Nations, the sasquatch is not a myth or a cryptid. It is a being that exists in the physical and spiritual worlds. Sts'ailes oral traditions describe the sasquatch as a shape-shifter and a guardian of the forest, present for thousands of years. The Sts'ailes reserve the right to their own understanding of the sasquatch and have objected to its treatment as a joke or a hoax in mainstream culture.
The 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film — sixty seconds of shaky footage from Bluff Creek, California, showing a large, bipedal, hair-covered figure walking across a clearing — made sasquatch (and its synonym 'Bigfoot') a fixture of American popular culture. Whether the film is genuine or a hoax has been debated for nearly sixty years. The debate itself became more famous than any conclusion.
Sasquatch is now a billion-dollar cultural industry. Television shows, merchandise, bumper stickers, festivals, and tourism all profit from the word. The Sts'ailes word for a being they consider real and sacred was borrowed, anglicized, commercialized, and turned into a punchline. This pattern — indigenous spiritual concept becomes Western entertainment product — is one of the oldest stories in colonial linguistics.
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Today
Sasquatch is a punchline, a TV show, a bumper sticker, and a costume at the county fair. For the Sts'ailes people, it is none of these things. It is a being that belongs to their world, described in their language, understood in their terms. The borrowing of the word — without the understanding — is the colonial pattern reduced to its simplest form.
A word taken from people who were not asked. Applied to a concept they did not recognize. Sold to an audience that never heard the original. The Sts'ailes word for a forest guardian became an American word for a joke. The guardian is still in the forest. The joke is still on television.
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