Bindernagel on Bigfoot
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 24th, 2008
“North America’s Great Ape: the Sasquatch”
Presented by Dr. John Bindernagel
A wildlife biologist looks at the continent’s most misunderstood large mammal.
Book Signing and Public Presentation
WHEN: Saturday, May 3, 2008
TIME: 10 AM to 12 Noon Book Signing; 1 PM Public Presentation
WHERE: State Capital Museum
211 21st Avenue SW
Olympia, Washington 98501
(360) 753 2580
COST: $5 per person for all ages
(Olympia, WA–) The State Capital Museum invites you to a special presentation by author and field researcher Dr. John Bindernagel of British Columbia. He will speak about his more than 30 years of studying Bigfoot. His work highlights some 150 Sasquatch reports and compares them with similar reports of great apes in Africa and Asia. Refining his field of study, Bindernagel has recently focused on the behavior of Sasquatch including its response to human presence. His field work consists of evidence gathered in the mountains of Vancouver Island and the ecological questions surrounding the life of a great North American ape.
Dr. Bindernagel’s presentation will be preceded by a book signing of his work North America’s Great Ape: The Sasquatch. This will be held at the museum and is hosted by the State Capital Museum Store.
The presentation and the book signing is a ticketed event. Tickets are on sale at the museum. Please come in during public hours, 11 AM to 3 PM, Wednesday-Saturday to purchase tickets in person. You may call to purchase tickets at anytime, not just during museum public hours. Please call either 586-0170 or 586-0166. If you have to leave a message, someone will return your call promptly.
The cost is $5.00 per person which includes the presentation, book signing and museum admission. The presentation will be held in a nearby facility with seating capacity of up to 300 people. You are advised to purchase tickets ahead to insure your admission to the book signing which will be held at the State Capital Museum in the morning, and the presentation in the afternoon.
This program is offered in conjunction with the exhibit Giants in the Mountains: The Search for Sasquatch, on view at the museum through September 2008. The exhibit explores the Sasquatch mystery and focuses on the Pacific Northwest environment which has created a rich setting for the traditional beliefs that have grown up around these beings. Scientific explanations, hoaxes and popular cultural interpretations about Bigfoot are tackled. Tribal artifacts and artwork as well as physical evidence collected in the field by anthropologist Dr. Grover Krantz are on display. Organized and presented by the Washington State Historical Society.
The State Capital Museum is located in Olympia six blocks south of the Capitol Building at 211 21st Avenue South West in the historic Lord Mansion. The State Capital Museum is a division of the Washington State Historical Society. The museum presents exhibits, programs, and events that bring to life the stories of Washington’s history. For more information, please call the Washington State Capital Museum at 360-753-2580, or visit us on the web at www.washingtonhistory.org . ###
Giants in the Mountains: The Search for Sasquatch October 2007-September 2008
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
My problem with Bindernagel’s generally excellent book is that his analysis of the animal relies so heavily on the Patterson-Gimlin film’s authenticity. If that is considered inauthentic, as Napier, Heuvelmans, and others opined, then a great deal of Bindernagle’s work has to be done over again.
This gets one back into the dicey problem of deciding what footprints and what sightings are convincing enough to be used, with a minimum of doubt, as scientific evidence. Bindernagel is much better qualified to make that judgment than most people, and yet it remains a matter much in dispute: I would wager that no two leading cryptozoologists have the same “top ten” list of “near-certain” evidence. (Someone should actually do a survey on that.)
Bindernagel’s approach of assuming the species’ reality and then studying its characteristics was original and has value, but it has not gotten us closer to proving the animal’s existence.
While I think Matt makes some valid points, I would merely like to point out that using the late primatologist John Napier’s and the late cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans’ negative opinions about the Patterson-Gimlin footage is not a strong foundation against the film. Napier died in 1987, and really did not study Bigfoot beyond the 1970s. Heuvelmans, while dying more recently, doesn’t appear to have made an in-depth study of Bigfoot, instead leaving that for others to do.
I would submit that neither deeply examined the enhanced analysis of the footage that has occurred in the 21st century, frankly, because both were dead.
I’m going to see Dr. Bindernagel at the Washington State Capital Museum on May 3rd. should be very interesting.
Re: Heuvelmans and his antipathy towards the P/G footage.
My personal opinion is that Heuvelmans was upset that the P/G footage completely and utterly overshadowed his Minnesota Ice Man and couldn’t accept that the P/G footage went on and on gaining fame while his moment of ‘triumph’ was largely ignored and all but forgotten.
Just a theory of mine. He did seem to somewhat resent the P/G footage.
One of Napier’s primary arguments was the “chimerical” nature of the subject, and I think it was Meldrum (?, don’t quote me) that pointed out his statement was made before the discovery of the”Lucy” fossils in the early 70’s, which had features then associated with both “humans” and “apes.”
That said, Matt is right as usual, though his argument is nonunique to Bindernagel, as the film is now the bedrock of most serious writings on the subject.
I think that Bindernagel’s attempt to build a sort of behavioral profile of the alleged animal has huge value to those who are actively searching for sasquatch. I understand he will soon be publishing another book on the subject?
Many people will not accept the possibility that a north american primate still exists. I know they do, I have seen one! And I am studying some very interesting evidence in northern Ontario.
MattBille says:
“This gets one back into the dicey problem of deciding what footprints and what sightings are convincing enough to be used, with a minimum of doubt, as scientific evidence.”
Actually, there is no dicey problem here at all. THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR ANY CRYPTID.
“Scientific evidence” is evidence accepted by the scientific mainstream as diagnostic of a known phenomenon. Okapi tracks in Virunga? The animal is there, after 50 years missing. Proof, period. Bear tracks? One went this way.
When the scientific mainstream accepts evidence of the sasquatch, that will be scientific evidence, i.e., proof. And not until then.
The dicey problem can be easily sidestepped, by a basic means I have espoused here many times.
Get into the field, and search, on recent data that clusters around means suggested by all the data that has come before.
Dicey problem solved.