I was surprised and disappointed to see my appearance on the History Channel’s Search for the Lost Giants, Episode 3, used in a manner that appeared to give credence to a long-discredited theory concerning giants. Who said anything about giants?  I thought I was being asked to inspect the Goshen tunnel and to offer my opinion concerning who may have built it or what it was used for.  The site was very interesting.

The search for giants is a long-standing and familiar tradition of denying indigenous histories by promoting absurd alternate explanations. In North America the notion of such a race of giants is one of a list of explanations used to deny the accomplishments of Native Americans. Speaking directly to Native American scholars or consulting a widely distributed text such as Kenneth Feder’s  Frauds, Myths and Mysteries would provide ample documentation of the history of such ideas and the evidence used to disprove them. The real giants of the past were the indigenous men, women and children who built the sophisticated societies that flourished across the continent for thousands of years. Their descendants have been denied such histories by theories such as that discussed on the program.