Oh man, what to say here, what…to…say.
I want to skip the play by play here mainly because the issues Fox brings up in this episode are just…infuriatingly stunning.
Again, when I comment here on Fox, it’s based purely on what she’s saying and how she’s saying it, and not on her gender, appearance, or the stereotypes around her past professions.
Up to this episode we’ve learned a lot about Fox and her opinions and beliefs about American and World History. We’ve learned that she deeply believes in new age style spiritualism, to the point of being a religious tourist as often as possible, shopping various religions and cherry picking what she wants to take away from it. We know she buys into the idea that myth is fact, and if the bible says something, then it must be true (this becomes painfully apparent in this episode). We know that she views know archaeological hucksters as authorities in topics they are simply not qualified in (nor have they attempted to become qualified in). And we know that she starts each episode off with a bias and tries to hammer facts into her preconceived conclusions.
This episode on Giants, because that’s what it is, is no different.
I know I usually do a play by play, So here’s the show in brief.
Fox begins in Pennsylvania at the Meadowcroft Rockshelter learning about the (still) debated idea that there is evidence for human settlement dating to pre-Clovis times. Yes, this is a real archaeological debate, and yes there are people on both sides. I’m not going into it here, but just be aware, there is a debate.
We then jump to San Diego, CA. Qualcomm Institute and their simply bad-ass lab there and we get to see all the cool things acrchaeology can do and investigate with proper funding and new technology. We learn about the 130,000 year old skeleton that was recovered from an underwater cave, and I have to wonder out-loud, WHY AREN’T WE PUTTING OUR OWN PROGRAMS ABOUT THIS OUT THERE?! THIS IS FREAKING AWESOME!
Ok, over it.
We jump to the Channel Islands to the Bella Luna and the researchers that pilot her looking for evidence of the earliest occupations of America. And again, yes there is a lively discussion in archaeology on how exactly the Americas became populated. Jennifer Raff has come on the Archaeological Fantasies Podcast several times to talk about genetic evidence and what it tells us about the peopling of the Americas. So yes, there is a kind-of controversy here as well, not that Fox spends any time trying to discuss it, or examine it, or interact with it at all.
No, she’s too busy trying to claim credit for “discovering new evidence” for things she didn’t and also didn’t spend any time trying to understand.
Then Fox jumps off the deep end and takes us all with her. It’s also here that I completely lose my cool with the program.
Fox goes to Malibu, CA. to meet with two people she advertises to us as Native Americans, and I’m really sorry folks but there is no easy way to do this…
Problems with the above statement:
- Two Native Americans do not speak for the 2.6 million Native Americans who live in the United States alone.
- One Native American tribe’s oral tradition is not the same oral tradition for the 562 Federally recognized tribes in the US alone.
- Even if we believe what Riverwind says and agree that there are a whopping 3 whole tribes that have giants myths in their oral traditions, you still have 559 who apparently do not. So that kinda negates that whole “All Native Americas have myths about giants” argument right there.
- And then, of course, there is a the Riverwind’s themselves.
Chief Joseph Riverwind is listed on a skeptical watchdog site, New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans, as being a New Age fundamentalist who pushes religious/Ancient Alien ideas, like Native people believing in Nephilim/giants that apparently came to Earth from the Pleiades and Orion’s belt (Colavito 2017).
The dog whistles for this are clear when Fox interviews the couple. Joseph Riverwind making blanket statements about all Native Americans. His twisting of clearly biblical stories and dressing them up with native sounding concepts, to make it seem like there is a lost Christian element to all Native American oral traditions. Laralyn Riverwind calling giants another ‘species’ that inhabited the Americas before Native American ancestors. The concept of giant ‘Hybrids’ that were evil.
And so on, and so on…
What you are actually hearing is Transoceanic Master Race drivel and Ancient Alien racism being dressed up as Native American oral tradition. Fox is banking on no one doing research into the Riverwinds, their work, or their claims, and hoping that if she show you that these two Native Americans believe in giants, then all Native Americans do and therefor giants must be real!
I wish I could say this was the low point for the show, but it’s not…oh it’s so not.
We go from the Riverwinds to Jim Vieira from Search for the Lost Giants, to listen to him try and sell us all on the idea that there is evidence of giants. He provides nothing that hasn’t been debunked by other people on other shows and again reiterates the biblical tie-ins of giants.
Then he brings up Denisovans. Vieira is impressed that there is a small percentage of Denisovan DNA in Native American DNA and I really need to get Jennifer Raff on to explain all this. But basically Vieira throws a bunch of buzz words at Fox who nods along eagerly and it sounds very science-y. So then…Fox says:
“50,000 years ago, a large human like species called Denisovans populated the Asian landscape these ancient giants migrated into the Americas and interbred with humans creating giant hybrids, and in fact traces of Denisovans genetics have been found in Native Americans” (Fox 2018)
That is a direct quote from the show.
I just…don’t have words.
The last bit of the show goes over the whole Cerutti mastodon from California again. It overlaps with the Solutrean Hypothesis that I’ve addressed before and am not going to rehash here. (Links below in the Resource section.)
In conclusion:
If you can’t tell from the tone of this article, I’m not ok with the statements of this show. The show starts off as the others have, showing us actual archaeology with dubious voice overs hinting at what Fox is planning on twisting the show into. Then it just jumps off the deep end with both feet making unjustified claims based on no evidence whatsoever and presenting people in positions of authority who have no business being there.
Fox is either ignorant of the implications of the claims she is making in this episode, or she is aware and is fine with them. Suggesting that Native Americans are somehow in-human because they are a giant/human hybrid is something straight out of the colonial era. It’s that exact kind of thinking that led to the atrocities that Native Americans faced at the hands of settlers and then the US Government. To hear that kind of racist rhetoric coming from a TV show in 2018 is beyond upsetting. I could rant for pages on this, and I’m really tempted to, but the reality is, there are too many people who are now watching this show and thinking “Oh archaeologists think giants predate Native Americans and also Native Americans are a different species than white people.” And no, that’s not hyperbolic, if you think that then you haven’t been paying attention.
Anyway, before I go off the deep end. I have nothing nice to say about this episode. Thank you for reading.
Resources:
Colavito, Jason
2017 Did The Nephilim Build the Pyramids or Were They Woolly Mammoths? http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-the-nephilim-build-the-pyramids-or-were-they-woolly-mammoths. Retrieved 12/2018
Archaeological Fantasies Blogs and Podcasts:
No CBC hasn’t proven that ‘White’ Europieans made it to America ‘First’.
CBC, The Solutrean Hypothesis, and Jennifer Raff – Episode 92
The Solutrean Hypothesis – Episode 31
DNA in Archaeology with Jennifer Raff – Episode 50
Olmecs and Ancient DNA with Jennifer Raff – Archaeological Fantasies ep 98H
Fringe Archaeology and Giants – Episode 3
Giants! With Andrew White – Episode 6
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Archaeological Fantasies 
Ignorant people say ignorant things, the problem lies in those ignorant people being willing to remain ignorant.
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The “ Native Americans” that Fox interviews in the ancestral homelands of the Chumash People of Malibu are not even Native American, let alone of the Chumash people. These frauds are Puerto Rican (Riverwind) and his Euro-American wife. They have zero ties to the Chumash people of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands and their territories from Malibu inland to the mountains and up the coast to Monterey County. They have no right to be on Chumash territory acting like they are indigenous to this area. They have no right being interviewed about the Chumash Indians and their oral histories and lore. Which has nothing to do with belief that giants occupied our homelands before our ancestors. Our ancestors believed we were created of clay by Hutash the earth mother and our father Sky Snake the Milky Way, who was looking for Ideas on how we would look, the condor wanted to give us wings and feathers, and the Trickster Coyote wanted to give us fur and paws, and the gecko lizard wanted us to have feet and hands with 5 fingers and five toes. So Sky Snack decided he like the lizards idea, so he gave us feet and hands, so Condor got angry and flew into the sun and that’s why Condors have black feathers under their wings. This story places our creation on Limuw Island, now called Santa Cruz in the SB Channel Islands, and when they got too over crowded due to many children being born, and it was too noisy Hutash got mad, and told Sky Snake that the Children were to many and too loud, he created a Bridge out of a rainbow and told them to cross over to the mainland to Where Carpinteria is, and populate the rest of our homelands from Malibu to Monterey. Hutash told them not to look down into the swirling fog, but some did and got dizzy and fell into the dark blue waters and started to drown. Hutash was sad to see them drown so she turned them into Dolphins, and that’s why the Chumash say that the Dolphins are our brothers and sisters, who protect us when we paddle our Tomols from Syuxtun Mainland to Limuw Island and back. Nowhere in our creation stories is talk of Giants and anything close to biblical myths, or Christian doctrine, or Giants! Who gave those fake Indians the right to try and rewrite the lore and the history of the Chumash in their own homelands?! They are not from the west coast or Chumash country!!
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Though I am not Christian and never will be, there are a lot of Catholic Chumash due to the invasion and missionization of California Indians in their homelands. The Christian Chumash People now would never try to muddy the waters our try to tie the Chumash lore and cultural practices to pre-Mission days, because it’s disrespectful to our ancestors who had their own spirituality. But these foreign invaders spout their crap to the world, and Fox is to blame also for her idiotic show on giants! They Had no right to plant Christian revisionist loons in our territory, instead of asking or interviewing the real Chumash people about their own creation stories, instead of creating a fake tribe of white giants in the Santa Barbara Channel Islands and attribute our land and our Paleolithic presence to these mythological giants!!
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