At the High Desert Museum in Bend, the new “Sensing Sasquatch” exhibit isn’t concerned with whether or not Sasquatch exists. In many Indigenous traditions, Sasquatch is a bona fide living, breathing sentient being, and that is where this exhibit, which features the work of five Native American artists, begins.
“I didn’t want it to be like, you know, have a cut-out Bigfoot on the side of the road where people can pull over and get their pictures taken with it. I didn’t want it to be like a tourist trap kind of schlocky thing,” said Frank Buffalo Hyde, who has Nez Perce and Onondaga heritage and is one of the artists participating in the exhibit. “I wanted it to be a serious, for lack of a better word, a serious tone where we’re not trying to decide whether Sasquatch exists. We’re doing an exhibit about how Sasquatch exists and lives in a very real sense and is medicine for Indigenous communities.”
A quote from Phillip Cash Cash leads a new exhibit about Sasquatch at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Ore.
Courtesy of R. Todd Cary / High Desert Museum
Phillip Cash Cash, of Cayuse and Nez Perce heritage, is another participating artist. He says that each individual’s experience with Sasquatch is deeply private and needs to be held with respect and reverence.
“When we talk about Sasquatch, it really comes from having an experience,” said Cash Cash. “So the experience is the basis for our understanding. And many community people up to the present have had experiences with Sasquatch.”
For the exhibit, Cash Cash made two large rattles, which are respectively 7 and 12 feet long.
Phil Cash Cash's piece, "Sasquatch Rattle, No.2," in an exhibit at the High Desert Museum in Bend, "Sensing Sasquatch."
Courtesy of R. Todd Cary / High Desert Museum
“Part of the challenge is to broach the more private experience and doing it in such a way that is meaningful and respectful,” said Cash Cash. “And so I designed a rattle. And when you shake it, it creates a noise. So the intent was to show and challenge the average museum goer that the Sasquatch for this being can have agency, meaning that it can do things far beyond anybody’s imagination … And it does give reverence to this being that we all regard as very significant and important.”
Buffalo Hyde’s piece is a large sculptural installation featuring digital video, sound, furand prosthetic limbs, among other things, which he says attempts to portray “the moment when Sasquatch disappears into a different dimension.”
“From a Native point of view — and including the People of the Plateau Region there in the Northwest — they’re open to an ongoing life experience with the world. And that includes perceptual and sensory engagements with the cosmos, the world, and the ecology. And this grounds oneself in the world through experience from these engagements,” said Buffalo Hyde. “And they then lend themselves to creating knowledge about the things they experienced, including beings like Sasquatch.”
The “Sensing Sasquatch” exhibit is open through Jan. 12, 2025.
To listen to the whole interview with Cash Cash and Buffalo Hyde on “Think Out Loud,” press the play arrow above.