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Let me preface this with the statement that I have complete respect for Native American concerns. But I'd like to point out the following: If what we've heard about the someday-to-be-released DNA study is accurate, then the haplotype places its origin in Europe. At one time most Europeans lived much as traditional Native Americans do/did. These European peoples had many legends of bigfoot-like beings, and also interacted with them on a level similar to that of Native Americans. It was the cultural conversion first under the Roman Empire, and then the Holy Roman Empire that changed this. Part of this conversion was to label many Celtic traditions (and other similar cultural traditions) as evil. The old lady with a lifetime of pharmacological lore became the local witch. The local wildmen became evil, etc. During this cultural conversion (some might say conquest), if one persisted in honoring the old traditions, or simply maintained that they had seen wildmen, they were sometimes labeled as evil. This had consequences. One might conclude over time that our current cultural dismissiveness of bigfoot and ridicule of those who "consort" with bigfoot has its origin in the aforementioned cultural conversion. People were encouraged to hear, see, and speak no evil and not to associate with those who did. When nordic immigrants came to America, they reported seeing trolls. Others reported wildmen, and some simply called them boogeymen, bugbears, ogres, or giants. This is reflected in a wealth of place-names throughout North America that bear these monickers. I agree that Native Americans generally acknowledge and respect bigfoot, but I doubt that they do more so than Native Europeans did prior to their cultural conversion. Even today, if you get to know rural folk and share your interest with them, they'll eventually let you in on what they've experienced. I find them to be very pragmatic about bigfoot, though not eager to raise a hue and cry when they see them. I do not find this to be dissimilar to modern Native American attitudes toward bigfoot. So my points are that bigfoot itself may well be a European immigrant, that bigfoot traditions are a shared experience, and that no one culture has a monopoly over interaction and relations with bigfoot.

I liked the 80's better personally. We were done with disco and there were lots of new types of music with music videos to boot. We upgraded from cassette tapes to cd's, we had great arcades, home gaming systems, home computers, car phones, pagers, better special effects in movies, better radios, better tv sets, better tv shows and we had vcr's to record them, plus we got rid of Carter.