Indigenous perspectives showcased in new Sasquatch exhibit at High Desert Museum in Bend

For many Indigenous people, it isn’t a question of whether Bigfoot exists, but whether you have seen him. A new exhibit at the High Desert Museum in Bend features the work of many Indigenous artists exploring a relationship with Sasquatch. Phil Cash Cash and Frank Buffalo Hyde are two artists featured in the exhibit. They join us to talk about their work.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller:  This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with a new exhibit at the High Desert Museum in Bend. It’s called ‘Sensing Sasquatch’ and it features the work of five Native artists. As the curators note, the question of whether or not Sasquatch exists is irrelevant to the exhibit’s theme since in many Indigenous traditions, Sasquatch is a bona fide living breathing sentient being. So instead, the exhibit focuses on the past, present and future of Sasquatch as an elder, a relative or a guide. I’m joined now by two of the artists whose work is a part of this new show, Frank Buffalo Hyde is Nez Perce and Onondaga. Phil Cash Cash is Cayuse and Nez Perce. He co-founded Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. It’s great to have both of you on the show.

Phil Cash Cash:  Good to be here.

Frank Buffalo Hyde:  Hello.

Miller:  Frank, first. How did you hear about this exhibit?

Buffalo Hyde:  Well, kind of a roundabout way. I was in a group exhibit at the High Desert Museum a couple of years ago called ‘Imagine a World.’ And that was my introduction to the Museum and the curators and the director. I was doing programming for that show as well. And while we were there one of the exhibit proprietors was talking about an idea he had for a show about Bigfoot. And that was right up my alley. I was like, ‘That’s amazing. That’s like the best idea I’ve ever heard in my life.’

Miller: Why was that right up your alley?

Buffalo Hyde:  From childhood, I was a nosy little brother and my older sister was into cryptozoology and cryptids and paranormal things. So, of course, I was interested in those things as well. So I’ve been unofficially officially researching cryptids and Bigfoot um since I was like eight or nine. Occasionally, Bigfoot would pop up in my paintings. So I just never had the support or the space to go full on Sasquatch, so to speak.

I was going around at the museum saying, ‘you know, I’m really excited about this exhibition,’ sort of joking at first. But then, I did it to enough people that when they got around to discussing the exhibits for the following year, it came back up again and they contacted me and said that they were going to actually do a Sasquatch show and would I be interested in participating?

Miller:  Did you have any questions for them before you decided? I mean, clearly you were interested in the idea. But did you have questions for the curators, to decide whether or not you, in the end, really did want to take part?

Buffalo Hyde:  Oh, yeah, I mean, I definitely had some disclaimers, like I wanted it to be an (air quotes) serious exhibition. I didn’t want it to be like, 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 kind of thing. 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.

Miller:  Phil Cash Cash, what about you? What went through your mind when you heard about this exhibit? And why did you want to take part?

Cash Cash:  I was working with the High Desert Museum as a consultant over several years. And the topic came up and I received the invite to consider and at the same time I, like Frank, had reservations about participating. And there was a concern about some of the deeply private experiences across the community that I’m connected to. And so that required a sense of respect and reverence towards our understanding and also toward this profoundly spiritual and sacred being that we often regard or call Sasquatch. Once we sorted through some of that, I was reassured that there would be that respect and regard. So I willingly and gladly joined with Frank and others in the exhibit.

Miller: Phil, there is a great quote of yours right outside the exhibit: ‘The world is bigger than we know.’ What does it mean to you to know something?

Cash Cash:  In my experience and across the community that I’m a part of, the idea about Sasquatch is not like the mainstream, where a community person believes or doesn’t believe. That’s a debate from mainstream society. And it’s when we talk about Sasquatch, it really comes from having an experience. So the experience is the basis for our understanding. And many community people up to the present have had experiences with Sasquatch. And there’s no debate. I mean, the exhibit isn’t out to prove the existence of Sasquatch and, in many Native communities, wouldn’t be out there arguing about proof. They would call upon their experience and what they learned from their family.

Miller: Phil, can you describe the works that you created for this exhibit?

Cash Cash:  I really went to the limit on my imagination. So part of the challenge is to broach the more private experience and doing it in such a way that is meaningful and respectful and doesn’t conjure anything outside the community framework. So I designed a rattle and I made two of them and I call this ?istiyehénim weye?éeset, which means, ‘The Sasquatch’s Rattle.’ And the first one is 12 ft in length. And the second one is 7 ft in length. And at the fork end of the wood piece that I created are a number of deer horns suspended between the fork. And when you shake it, it creates a noise. native

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 really challenges the idea of it being a real live entity, one living in the world and doing things that no one may not have ever had the chance to imagine. And it does give reverence to this being that we all regard as very significant and important.

Miller: Frank, can you describe the work you created for this exhibit? [It’s] very different from what Phil has just described.

Buffalo Hyde:  Yeah, well, the Museum commissioned me to do an installation. In the previous show that I was in, I did an installation and was just coming off of a solo museum exhibition where I was sort of flexing my installation muscles, so to speak. I was doing more conceptual installation, sculptural installations and combining elements of painting. So I wanted to continue along those lines and incorporate some other things. What I ended up drawing up and conceptualizing is the moment when Sasquatch disappears into a different dimension. The title of the piece was called ‘Enigma’ and I definitely was trying to push my comfort zone.

I was out of my comfort zone. I was incorporating digital elements, sound elements, along with an experience I was trying to recreate, this phenomenon called infrasound. It’s a disruptive deep sensorial vibration sound that makes people feel uncomfortable and, in nature, some predators or animals use it to disorient their prey. But a lot of the Sasquatch or Bigfoot sightings have described that sort of disorientating feeling. So I did some sculptural elements using faux fur and reappropriating some prosthetic moquettes that are used to make prosthetic limbs. And I fashioned, what became, a 9 ft. sculptural installation. I call it a relief but it’s kind of like a digital relief with sound elements and with some limbs.

Miller:  Sort of coming out of this portal. One of the things that is most striking about it is the colors. I’m so used to muted or dark or woodsy colors, but you have bright, almost neon ones, fluorescent ones of purples and greens. What drove your color choices?

Buffalo Hyde:  Well, in my personal art practice, color lends itself to many different things. But for me, when I was imagining what inter-dimensionality might look like, what a portal to those things might look like, I definitely didn’t see muted and dark colors. I saw something that was otherworldly or something that, just like you said, we’re not used to seeing. And I wanted to have something that was visually striking for people to have an experience and hopefully make something that nobody’s ever seen before.

Miller: Phil, what do you most hope that non-Native visitors to the Museum will take away from this exhibit?

Cash Cash:  Well, two things. One is the title itself, ‘Sensing Sasquatch.’ That should be a lead towards how one might sense and feel having an encounter. And so that lends itself and opens a curiosity, so to speak, for the visitor. But in a deeper sense though, from a Native point of view and including the People of the Plateau Region there in the Northwest, is that for the average Plateau person, 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. And they then lend themselves to creating knowledge about the things they experienced, including beings like Sasquatch. And then including other non-human others that are out there as well, not just Sasquatch. But there are other beings as well.

Miller:  Phil Cash Cash and Frank Buffalo Hyde, we are out of time. But thanks so much for joining us. Phil Cash Cash and Frank Buffalo Hyde are two of the artists whose work is now a part of the new exhibit ‘Sensing Sasquatch’ at the High Desert Museum in Bend.

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