Yowiehunters Forum

The following article was originally created as a response to Shazzoir’s “Interesting article - Bigfoot interactions” thread but I felt it warranted a topic of it’s own.



Cultural Bias: Bigfoot Lost in Translation

The act of seeking out and incorporating traditional indigenous knowledge has a long and successful history within Western civilization. A wide variety of plants (including timbers and medicines), animals, and minerals have been “discovered”, identified, and utilized with the aid of indigenous knowledge. Indeed, who would know the landscape better than the very people who have lived there for generation after generation?

Indigenous cultures are inevitably oral (i.e. no written language) and often ascribe spiritual beliefs into their world-view. Personifying and spiritualizing creatures, places, and events promotes and intimate and practical knowledge of their domain. However, this can create difficulties and differences in understanding when transferring such traditional knowledge into our modern literal culture.

This is a significant point which is often overlooked or ignored in the field of crypto-hominology - the study of yet unidentified hominids. By all means, it is generally considered desirable to have an “open mind” when researching this phenomenon however such an approach often ignores the effects of cultural bias and promotes blind acceptance of traditional beliefs over critical reasoning which can skew the data towards inappropriate paranormal explanations for what is essentially a zoological problem.

As a case in point, let us examine the belief - widespread (over nearly all the continents) throughout indigenous cultures - that crypto-hominids have “backward facing feet”. What does this actually mean? In our literal Western culture it means that crypto-hominids have their heal at the front of the foot and their toes at the back where the heal should be. With our knowledge of biology it is clear that such a statement cannot be accurate. Indeed, no witness has EVER noted such an abnormality. Does this mean that crypto-hominids are paranormal creations, malformed spirits, or aliens? No. The “backward facing feet” statement does, however, imply meta-meaning - meanings beyond the literal - thus providing several points of practical knowledge - that crypto-hominids:

* are difficult, if not impossible, to track with any reliability.
* promote confusion as part of their evasiveness strategy.
* have sentient intelligence - an awareness of self beyond other animals and more akin with humans.
* are cunning - potentially leading the tracker away from a significant area or towards an ambush.

Thus, other indigenous statements - like how crypto-hominids can “can shift and leave this realm” - would be better served when analysed in a similar manner as above rather than simply taken at face value in a strict literal (Western) sense.

I welcome any debate and comment and would be interested in further non-literal analysis of other indigenous beliefs in regards to crypto-hominology.




Upcoming Article: Schizophrenia and the New Age Bigfoot.

Gday Night Walker, I enjoy reading your posts... ... they are mostly informative or are asking questions... which is what I come here for.

My take on the 'backwards facing feet' and 'how crypto-hominids can can shift and leave this realm', is this..... are you ready for it?..... SLANG

I believe that when indigenous folk from around the world say that they have tracked something that has backward facing feet, it just means that they couldn't catch up with whatever they were tracking. Like they were following the tracks the wrong way.
The same goes for when they say whatever they were tracking just disappeared into another dimension..... it shouldn't be taken literally!

It is the same as if you or I saying that we 'flew' to the shops in a hurry... we didn't actually fly there, but we did say that we flew! ... or if I said that I was so hungry I could eat a horse... I don't actually want to eat a horse!! (although when I was young, I thought that corned-beef was made from horse - bloody older sisters)

So, as far as I can tell, it is just slang. You shouldn't always believe what somebody tells you. No matter who tells you! ... Trev

WHAT HE SAID ^ ^ ^ !

This is my take on that too, Trev, that they were tracking it, but couldn't find anything, therefore, as the pride of the hunters was at stake, they may have supposed that it was something unearthly that they couldn't find (sound familiar?). This may have led to them coming up with this backward pointing feet idea to salve their pride and save their standing as hunters in their communities.

Besides, the old saying 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story' says so!

SHazz

...It is the same as if you or I saying that we 'flew' to the shops in a hurry... we didn't actually fly there, but we did say that we flew! ... or if I said that I was so hungry I could eat a horse... I don't actually want to eat a horse!! (although when I was young, I thought that corned-beef was made from horse - bloody older sisters) ...

...lolololol ... aw bloody hell Trev... that cracked me up big time!!!!!... funny as!!!!! ... **Sticky wipes tears of laughter from his eyes** ... well done mate... you made the Stickman lose it!!! ... hmmmmmm... you may have given me an idea ... cheers... Stickyfingers.

Thanks, AussieTrev.

People tend to pick and choose particular indigenous beliefs when researching crypto-hominology - citing beliefs that lend weight to their arguments while conveniently ignoring others that contradict it. Furthermore, the effects of cultural bias - problems with literal translations - when citing these beliefs are rarely considered. Oral languages are typically far less verbose than English and many indigenous words and concepts are simply loaded with cultural information and meanings of which we are largely unaware and thus fail to translate well or even at all.

A more reasonable (and more time-consuming) approach would be to compile a database of indigenous crypto-hominid beliefs in a nation by nation (or tribe by tribe) manner incorporating their location. In this way, rather than simply plucking favourable beliefs out of their original context, we could better appreciate the wholeness of each indigenous nation's understanding of crypto-hominids while being able to compare similarities and differences with other indigenous nations nearby and from across the world.

Does something like this already exist? I doubt all or most would even want to share such knowledge but it would provide a wealth of information for us self-proclaimed researchers. It would also be valuable to learn which nations and regions DON’T have much or any knowledge of crypto-hominids.

I'd be interested in collecting such information and would appreciate people sending in links and references either to this thread or via PM.

Thanks for that Night walker, its nice to see a sensible , logical & unbiased view on this aspect of the subject, nice read.


cheers