Mitchell talks with WVII about encounter with ‘one who eats a lot’
John Bear Mitchell shared his encounter with a creature for a WVII (Channel 7) piece titled “Some say Bigfoot seen in Maine.” “I never expected it, I never wanted it, never thought it would ever happen, but this happened,” said Mitchell, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation and the University of Maine Wabanaki Center outreach and student development coordinator and lecturer of Wabanaki studies and multicultural studies. “I just happened to be in a place where this animal, this creature, was at the same time. We bumped into each other … and once we noticed each other we both went our separate ways.” Mitchell said a lot of people don’t believe that he met Gwakcoo — a Native name for “one who is hungry all the time.” “No matter how much education, no matter what you do for a job, when you see something and you know you saw something and you tell that to somebody and they look at you and they say, ‘Yeah, that’s not true. They don’t exist.’ You are never going to convince that person that they do exist.”