It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A Fish Hidden in a Museum Drawer for 150 Years Just Filled a 50-Million-Year Gap
Ashley Driggs Mon, October 5, 2026
Canva.com
Key takeaways
A fossil of a new coelacanth species, Macropoma gombessae, was discovered in a London museum drawer after being overlooked for over 150 years, filling a 50-million-year gap in the evolutionary history of coelacanths.
A single fossil, overlooked in a London museum for over a century, has upended what scientists thought they knew about an enduring creature of the deep. For more than 150 years, this specimen sat undisturbed amid countless other relics, its true value hidden until researchers took a closer look, armed with cutting-edge technology.
The fish in question is a coelacanth, a species so ancient and enigmatic that it earned the nickname "living fossil." Coelacanths are rare survivors, once believed wiped out alongside the dinosaurs. Yet the fossil in the Natural History Museum contained secrets that would illuminate a 50-million-year stretch of evolutionary history no one had expected to fill.
coelacanth
A Discovery Hiding in Plain Sight
The story began in the fossil halls of London, home to specimens collected before the light bulb was invented. When researchers revisited one coelacanth fossil from the Lower Cretaceous Gault Formation, using high-resolution scans and X-ray computed tomography, they found it wasn't just another ancient fish. The results revealed a new species: Macropoma gombessae.
This species is now the oldest known member of its genus. Its discovery addresses a crucial gap in the family tree of coelacanths, offering insight into how these prehistoric fish evolved into the creatures found near Africa's Comoros Islands today. For decades, evolutionary biologists puzzled over missing links in the coelacanth lineage. Here was one, hiding in a museum drawer all along.
The name "gombessae" reverberates with cultural memory. It pays tribute to the "Gombessa," which local Malagasy and Comorian communities have long used to describe coelacanths. The term means "inedible fish" or "worthless fish," a striking reminder that today's scientific treasures were once dismissed by those who lived alongside them.
Coelacanth on black background
Peering Inside with Modern Eyes
None of this would have come to light without the new imaging techniques now at paleontology's disposal. Instead of risking damage by cutting or drilling into the precious fossil, scientists used digital scans to reconstruct its bones down to the finest details.
X-ray computed tomography made it possible to see the inner structure of this ancient fish as never before, revealing features that connect it to both its Cretaceous relatives and modern coelacanths. For the researcher who first recognized the fossil's significance, the ability to digitally manipulate an object of such age and rarity was remarkable and transformative for the study of evolutionary history.
This approach is revolutionizing how museums operate. Once viewed as static storage rooms, natural history collections are being reimagined as research powerhouses, places where even centuries-old specimens can yield new discoveries as technology advances. Old fossils, it seems, still have new stories to tell. Reshaping a Story of Survival
Perhaps no animal embodies resilience like the coelacanth. After disappearing from the fossil record more than 60 million years ago, its presumed extinction was upended in 1938, when a living specimen was hauled up off South Africa. The fish became a symbol of evolutionary stasis, seemingly unchanged by the passage of time and catastrophe
Latimeria or Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae Smith), A living fossil, the oldest known living lineage of Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish and tetrapods).
But the identification of Macropoma gombessae reshapes this narrative. Rather than a tale frozen in evolutionary amber, the coelacanth's story is richer and more complex. The new fossil reveals subtle shifts and adaptations that bridge ancient and extant forms, showing that even so-called "living fossils" defy our expectations of biological change, or the lack thereof.
For those maintaining museum collections, the find highlights the ongoing value of these institutions. Generations may pass before a specimen's true importance emerges. But as research tools evolve, so too does our understanding of the living world's history, waiting quietly in the dark, dusty drawers of the past.
Beyond the Fossil Cabinet
The rediscovery of a single coelacanth fossil, hidden for so long, demonstrates how much is left that we do not know. As scientists revisit collections with new eyes and new tools, the boundaries of evolutionary history shift. Each specimen, old or new, offers another opportunity to see the natural world in greater detail and to appreciate the winding, unexpected paths life takes across millions of years.
Fishing for Dinosaurs: This Ancient Species Is One of Our Most Underrated Gamefish
Joe Cermele Mon, October 5, 2026
Jimmy Fee with a bowfin that sucked up a fresh shad chunk.
Key takeaways
Bowfins, also known as choupique, mudfish, or grinnel, are gaining popularity among anglers due to their unique appearance and aggressive feeding behavior.
IF YOU DIDN'T know better, you may have assumed the fish was dead. You could have easily walked by it, a passing glance convincing you it was just a rotten log. Its dull gray back is the same color as the mud. It camouflages beautifully with the detritus on the bottom of a shallow swamp in early spring before the lilies bloom and inject it with fresh greenery. Look closer, though, and the fish takes shape. It's lying perfectly still save for the dorsal fin that runs nearly the length of its back. Like the lines on a heartbeat monitor, the fin ripples in undulating waves that start near the head and flow back to the tail. I cast a white tube a few feet past the fish and let it settle. The target doesn't flinch. I hop the lure a little closer. No movement. Closer still, but there's no reaction. The next hop will drop the tube right on its nose and I brace myself to swing. When it lands, the seemingly comatose fish erupts like a bullet, sucking up the bait with such force and violence that I swear you can hear the vacuum and snap of its jaws coming together on dry land. It's that reaction, that moment, that made me fall in love with bowfins, a historically maligned species that's creeping its way into the limelight.
Chasing Dino DNA
Bowfin are a fish of many names. In the deep South, they're called choupique (pronounced shoe pick). In Middle America, they're mudfish. In the North and into Canada, they're grinnel. Dogfish, mud pike, swamp trout: The list goes on and on, but while the names might vary by region, what these fish have always shared across their vast range is a lack of respect and general disinterest as a rod-and-reel target. If anything, they are merely by-catch to be tossed up on a bank and left to die. In many regions, in fact, it is widely believed and accepted that a bowfin's sole purpose is to kill mass quantities of more desirable species like bass and crappies.
Bowfin have a reputation for living in nasty water, but a healthy bowfin population actually points to a healthy ecosystem. Joe Cermele
Except within a few niche groups and cultures, bowfins have little value as table fare. Their flesh, so I've been told, turns mushy very quickly after the fish dies, and even when cooked quickly it often has an overwhelmingly muddy flavor. Still, anglers aren't inclined to dispose of other by-catch species, so why bowfins? It's difficult to deny that they have a reputation for being nasty. They evoke a bit of fear, much like spiders, which many people instinctually squish under their shoe without knowing what kind it is, or if it can cause any harm. The reality is that bowfins, like spiders, do more good than harm to an ecosystem. They may be a little mean. But they've had to be to survive this long, and it's their meanness that makes them such worthy opponents In 2021, a research team from Harvard University made a fascinating discovery. By studying bowfins from around the country, they determined that there are actually two lineages of these fish swimming in our waters. Previously, scientists had believed that all bowfins were genetically identical and had remained relatively unchanged since they first appeared during the Triassic period nearly 250 million years ago. While the differences between the two species may not be easily recognizable to the untrained eye, the discovery of the two lines has been a catalyst for more research, which brings with it more protections for the fish. And make no mistake, that research is the equivalent of studying living dinosaurs à la Jurassic Park because bowfins are, indeed, dinosaurs.
The author with a native bowfin. Courtesy of Joe Cermele
They have immense jaw power, arguably making them stronger than all other freshwater fish in North America. Rows of conical teeth angle backward toward the throat to ensure nothing they clamp down on gets away. A bowfin's skull is as thick and hard as granite. They can extract oxygen from the water through their gills or let their tubular nostrils protrude above the surface and breathe air. Combine that ability with their tough exterior and tenacity and it helps explain why come hell, high water, drought, or even pollution, bowfins have endured. It's also that engineering and resilience that makes these fish more interesting to me than many other nonnative glam species. I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way. Clever Girls
According to Drew Price, a veteran guide on Lake Champlain who specializes in targeting trophy bowfins, these fish have also survived for millions of years because they're smart—much smarter, in fact, than many fish we routinely put on a pedestal for their alleged brain power.
"I love brown trout," Price tells me. "I love to fish for them, but while they're selective and spooky, they're not smart. But bowfin have a natural curiosity, and animals that have that are exhibiting intelligence. A fish that will swim up to a boat to see what it is, or swim over when it hears something splashing, is intelligent. I've had bowfins look me straight in the eyes."
That curiosity is what led Price to develop what he calls his "splash-bang" technique. While plying Champlain's coves and shallows in his skiff or canoe, he'll splash the water with his pushpole and even tap the sides of the hull. Quite often the bowfins will swarm. Though Price will use conventional tackle on occasion, his true passion and specialty is fly fishing. He's even led clients to tippet-class record fish, since Champlain, because of its size, depth, and cold winters, grows bigger bowfin than many other waters.
Although bowfins are commonly mistaken for snakeheads by the uninitiated, there are several key differences. The lack of scales on this bowfin's head is one clue to its identify. Joe Cermele
Price has been singing the praises of bowfin for nearly 20 years, though it's been only within the last 10 that people have started to listen. His reputation as one of the leading bowfin advocates in the country was made when he guided Jeremy Wade on River Monsters in 2013. That led to a slew of other show appearances, including on the Orvis podcast, after famed fly angler and instructor Tom Rosenbauer developed a bowfin jones after hanging out with Price. Although Price has been a guide for hire since 2008, he's seen a noticeable uptick in bowfin bookings over the past few years.
Price attributes the spark in interest to several factors. We've seen that angler obsession with sight-fishing grows when social media is flooded with sexy drone shots of rising trout, pike trashing poppers, and giant trevallies charging across flats to smoke a streamer. Bowfin, however, provide that sight-fishing rush for far less money and a lot less time in the air. It also doesn't hurt that they're challenging. Sticking a hook in their rock-hard jaws takes skill. When you do stick it, buckle up, because bowfins don't quit. They will snap rods. They will bend hooks. And even in the net, a bowfin will look at you "with malice in its eyes," as Price puts it. Ultimately, though, Price believes it's the gradual reckoning with the importance of preserving heritage in nature that is flipping the tide in the bowfin's favor.
"Bowfins are probably the most American fish out there," he says. "They have been here longer than any other species. They have remained unchanged since the Cretaceous period. I think people are beginning to appreciate native species and what they have to offer."
I wholeheartedly agree with Price, but I believe it's only one aspect of the bowfin's unfolding success story. The other is rooted, for better or worse, in increased angling pressure. Hidden in Plain View
The cover of the February-March 2021 issue of Fly Fisherman magazine featured a shot of renowned fly angler and tier Blane Chocklett lifting a massive bowfin out of the water. The main text on the cover read, "Exotic Species in Your Backyard." At a time when media seems to push us to drool over far-flung destinations we'll likely never visit, I found this sentiment poignant. I've always preached that you can't call yourself a true angler if you only travel to fish and snub your nose at what's right down the street. The angling opportunities in your backyard, whether they're world class or mediocre at best, should be what defines you, not the fancy places you've traveled to. The funny thing is, bowfin live in a lot of backyards, including my own, but it took me about 30 years to find them.
Although he's fished all his life, the author didn't truly discover bowfins until adulthood. Courtesy of Joe Cermele
As a kid growing up in the '80s and '90s, bowfins weren't on my radar. The only recollection I have of seeing any media devoted to them during those formative years was on a TNN fishing show shot on Lake Champlain. It didn't particularly resonate with me because I viewed them as something I couldn't catch. But they were. And they were right under my nose.
In many parts of the country, bowfins live on the fringes. To use my home water, the Delaware River, as an example, the state fishing compendium has always listed them as an available species, but in all my years wading for smallmouths with my dad and fishing for shad with my grandfather, we never saw or caught a bowfin. The listing seemed to me to be honorary, or historical—yes, bowfin were recorded here at some point, but there were probably only a few kicking around. The truth was there were plenty of them, but the odds of catching one in the main river were slim. They existed in pockets far up tributary arms and in vast tidally influenced swamps and floodplains that were difficult to access. Even if you could, why would you? Mucky, skinny, weed-choked water isn't exactly prime for bass, or catfish, or crappies. I had no reason to trudge around in the mire while I was growing up. Then along came the dreaded invasive snakehead and suddenly I did. Snake Charmed
Steve Cahn is the owner of High Octane Custom Lures, a Maryland–based company that got off the ground in 2019. Recognizing a growing interest in snakeheads among anglers in the Delmarva region, Cahn decided the timing was right to launch a line of lures aimed specifically at this market. The overriding theme of his products is toughness. His version of the Chatterbait, as an example, features stronger hooks, thicker wire, and more durable skirt material than the Chatterbaits already hanging on pegs in tackle shops. Business was slow at first, and then along came the Covid pandemic and everything changed.
Male bowfins can be identified by a black spot at the base of the tail fin. During breeding season, a ring of bright-orange or yellow-green surrounds the spot. Joe Cermele
For the next two years government entities prodded people to get outside. Don't go to a party or social gathering, go out alone and explore nature. And explore they did. The bump in recreational fishing interest during that time was unprecedented, and many anglers living in the Mid-Atlantic and lower Northeast who previously may have been lukewarm to or uninterested in snakeheads saw the light. As pressure increased during the pandemic at local fishing holes, grabbing a kayak or trudging through the mud to get away from people suddenly became extremely appealing. The byproduct of this vigor for the swamp life was that more and more anglers were ending up in bowfin territory, and these fish were happy to hit the same frogs and spinnerbaits intended for snakeheads. Cahn's business spiked so quickly that at one point he had to shut down his website to catch up on orders.
"I have absolutely seen an increase in bowfin interest over the past few years," says Cahn. "I've personally developed a greater love for bowfins since I started seriously snakehead fishing. I'd even say they fight harder than snakeheads, and once people started to figure that out, bowfin just sort of went hand in hand with snakeheads. Anglers were equally happy to stick either one."
That's how it broke down for me, too—it's just that it happened years before the pandemic. I fell in love with snakeheads, and as soon as the first bowfin blasted my frog, I fell in love with them, too. At the time, chasing these fish felt very underground. It was almost too easy at times because pressure was minimal. The irony is that had I known about my local bowfin population as kid, I might have experienced near-zero pressure Shangri-La. Now, I can't help but notice that it's getting tougher and tougher to consistently catch bowfins in spots that were fire on the regular just four or five years ago. Such is the case up and down the East Coast, and it turned out that snakeheads were both a blessing and a curse for bowfins.
Identity Crisis
When snakeheads were first discovered in Maryland in the early 2000s, it created a media firestorm. The destructiveness of the fish was so overhyped, so much fear was created around them, that anglers felt they had to do their part in the snakehead war. The problem was that bowfins and snakeheads looked similar. In time, mistaken identity became a legitimate problem. It wasn't uncommon to see forum and social media posts of bowfins from captors who were looking to confirm if what they'd caught was a snakehead. In some cases, they cut the head off the fish first and asked questions later. For folks like me who went all-in on targeting snakeheads and bowfins, the idea of confusing the two species seemed ludicrous, because while their body types are similar, their fin structure, head shape, and coloration are very different. Still, to be blunt, there were enough anglers out there unwilling to educate themselves that over time, state wildlife agencies began posting signs at public accesses pointing out the differences between the two fish. The silver lining was that despite it taking an invasive species to cast some light on native bowfins, for the first time in many years they were creeping back into the conservation forefront.
As anglers began to confuse native bowfin with invasive snakeheads, state agencies posted signs like this one at boat ramps and other access points. Joe Cermele
The most critical conservation measure in the future of bowfin was already in place in most of the states posting the signs. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania specifically, it was illegal to shoot bowfins with arrows. They were afforded this protection prior to the snakehead influx because they were a native species. In the dark, however, in the heat of the moment, parsing out what's a bowfin and what's a snakehead when you've got an arrow nocked and a second to fire proved challenging for some shooters. Meanwhile, on Lake Champlain and elsewhere throughout the bowfin's range, they are fair game for bowfishermen.
Nothing worries Drew Price more about the future of Champlain's bowfin population than the local bowfishing community, which is why he and many other defenders of "trash fish" throughout the country share data, attend meetings, and do whatever they can to profess the importance of these fish within the ecosystem.
It's ironic that bowfins have come to be associated with dirty, mucky water, since it only fuels the notion that they're worthless fish living in squalor. The reality is that a healthy bowfin population points to a healthy ecosystem. These fish, like many gamefish we love, need fertile vegetation to spawn. They need an abundance of small prey to survive. They need weed cover to rear their young. Bowfins are so tough and can withstand so much that if a population naturally declines, a much worse picture for the watershed emerges than if they're thriving.
With a scaleless head, short anal fin, and small black eyespot near the top of the tail fin, this South Jersey fish is easily identifiable as a bowfin. Joe Cermele
Luckily, the champions for these fish continue to grow. Price, Cahn, and I are just a few. Dr. Solomon David, a biologist at Louisiana's Nicholls State University, has worked tirelessly for years to get a better understanding of the role these fish play in ecosystems in the Midwest. David Graham, host of the Boundless Pursuit podcast, has been chasing bowfins across the Carolinas and Florida for decades, penning countless articles on the species and sharing his knowledge of their behavior. Even YouTube, as much as we love to rag on it for spot burning and calling too much attention to certain fisheries, is generating positive vibes about a largely overlooked and underregulated species. Years ago, when largemouth bass ruled the television airwaves, an inadvertent bowfin catch likely wouldn't even make it on the show. Today, between dedicated backwater enthusiasts and even bass-focused content creators willing to break the mold, the bowfin is finally getting a lot more media respect. The truth, however, is that you don't need to become enamored with targeting bowfins to help these fish thrive. More than anything, you just need to recognize that they've been here longer than any other fish, and that alone—that ability to survive—should garner enough reverence to at least not want to kill them for no reason.
But if you do want to challenge yourself against these dinosaurs, the beauty of them is you can make that pursuit as hardcore or relaxed as you like. A simple piece of shrimp or shad or even hotdog (I've been told) will be sniffed out in short order. I'd recommend a 30-pound leader and a saltwater-grade hook, though. Take the hardest fight you remember with a bass that ate your live shiner, or the toughest battle you ever had with a big channel catfish, and multiply it times five. That's the bowfin. And whether you become obsessed with catching them or just want to say you gave it a shot, you won't forget that first one.
In Necessity: Climate Resistance and the Thin Green Line, Chief Don Sampson tells a story written by beloved Umatilla storyteller Edith Motanic, “The Monster Who Comes Up the River.” He explains how the monster in this folk tale symbolizes the insatiable appetites of colonial powers that devour Native lands and how the wily coyote, spirit of Indian resistance, tricks the monster and ultimately outwits him. Chief Sampson adds that there is a moral to this contest between the monster and coyote and it concerns competing forces within the human spirit. We all carry the capacity for good and for evil. Indigenous people can become selfish betrayers of their own people.
The Windigo legend circulates similarly among First Nations Peoples. According to Shawn Smallman, author of Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History, the image of the windigo beast “was a means of defining moral social behavior, which could serve as a warning against greed and selfishness.” This cannibalistic forest beast takes over the spirits of victims and turns them into other windigos. Driven by insatiable hunger, the beast appears as a towering, emaciated figure emanating the odor of decaying flesh and arousing feelings of intimate horror.
For many Indigenous scholars and cultural critics, the Native cannon of windigo folklore unfolds historically alongside settler colonialism and reflects as much the anxieties of the colonizers as it does the fears of the colonized. From the late 19th through the mid twentieth centuries, Christian missionaries, white trappers, traders and anthropologists reported what came to be termed windigo psychosis, a mental disorder where the sufferer holds the delusional belief that he is possessed with the evil spirit of the windigo monster and is driven to acts of cannibalism. While a few cases of cannibalism have been documented historically, they generally occur in famine or other extreme conditions of scarcity.
Windigoism and the Psychiatric Gaza
Fascination with windigo psychosis among Western psychiatrists and anthropologists led to a hotly debated controversy in the 1980s over the historical validity of the phenomenon. The challenge for these white experts, including American psychiatrists, was to identify and diagnose cases where the person is driven by madness to acts of actual cannibalism. Scholars in the 1960s began to look more carefully at the case material on which this diagnostic picture was formed. In 1981, anthropologist Lou Marano looked back on reports that circulated in psychiatry of psychosis-induced cannibalism among First Nations peoples. “In the vast majority of cases in which the Indians employ the term there is no psychosis by either Algonkian or European criteria, much less a psychosis involving murder and cannibalism,” Marano concludes. “Unfortunately, anthropologists zeroed in on the bizarre, the grotesque, and the macabre in Landes’s reports rather than on their inconsistencies and their second-hand nature.”
The term windigoism is used very broadly among First Nations and Native peoples, Marano points out, for states associated with “going mad.” Among the Ojibwe, “almost driven to windigo” refers to madness that arises from life-threateningly harsh conditions. The term is invoked with considerable sympathy as it expresses despair and distress of people who are separated from the group or lost. To white anthropologists and psychiatrists, the search for evidence of actual cannibalism in the reports they collected blinded them to the social symbolic meaning of the story. Scholars documenting the phenomenon agree, however, that tales of windigoism circulate among the Cree, one of the largest groups of First Nations and Indigenous peoples in North America, living mostly in Canada from Quebec to Alberta. Missionary settlers among the Cree were a common source of these stories, imposing their own cure of Christian conversion on sufferers.
Decolonizing Family Memory
My mother grew up in Norway Valley, Alberta–an area of Norwegian settlers straddling a Cree Reserve. Working with Tara Houska and other Native activists fighting pipelines transporting oil from the Tar Sands fields in Alberta, led me to revisit my own family history. What do we owe to Indigenous people as descendants of white settlers? In Canada, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), operating from 2008-2015, was one form of recognition and place for reparations. Based on legal settlement between Residential Schools Survivors, the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit representatives and the parties responsible for creation and operation of the schools, the federal government and the church bodies, the TRC opened space for uncovering repressed memories of Native suffering–repressed in white colonial narratives but also among Indigenous people themselves.
For those of us who are conscious of the debts we share as descendents of white settlers, disturbing conflicts arise over how we pass on our own family stories of hardship. As a clinical psychologist, I hold a longstanding interest in family stories passed from one generation to the next and in working through family mythologies. One debt we owe to Indigenous peoples, including the Palestinians, is that they have helped us to understand the historical inter-dependencies of the oppressors and the oppressed. And we have learned how oppressed people can become the oppressor, as we see in the brutal subjugation of Palestinians by Jewish Israelis.
My mother worked as a maid for a wealthy family in Bellingham as a young woman in the 1930s before she married my father. She had many stories about growing up dirt poor in Northern Alberta. Her parents, like many rural poor people, were drawn to Spirit-filled Pentecostalism. Their faith was forged by the hell-fire preachers at revival meetings, those seasonal gatherings of believers and backsliders in tents on the prairies.
One beloved family story passed on from my mother unfolded around her own brave and adventurous mother, Ma, following her older brother Ole who had gone before her, leaving Norway in 1906 to arrive in New York City. She then traveled to northern Minnesota where she secured a job as a cook in a hotel. Eight years after marrying my grandfather, Pa, a Norwegian farmer and carpenter, the couple migrated with their four young children to an area at the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan, not far from what are now the tar sands oil fields. My grandpa had seen a post in their town, a railway hub in Minnesota, that announced land grants for white settlers by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. White settlers served as paramilitary sites protecting the rails going through Indian country. My grandparents had seven more children in a cabin that was built by Pa at Frog Lake–an area of Scandinavian settlers that became Norway Valley. The settlement straddled the Reserve of Frog Lake Nation–a band of Cree. My mother liked to tell us stories about her brothers running away from the lashings of Pa and how the brothers found sanctuary from his abuse among the Cree.
Of the many pioneer stories about family hardships that were passed on in my family, the story that put Frog Lake in Canadian history books was not among them. In 1885, twenty-three years before my grandparents arrived at Frog Lake, the largest violent resistance to white settlers in Canadian history took place. The Frog Lake Massacre, or what the Cree call the Frog Lake Rebellion, was organized by a band of Cree that had settled in the area but had not yet accepted the government’s reserve site. In resisting treaty demands and the decimation of buffalo that had left the Cree people in a state of near starvation, Chief Big Bear and Wandering Spirit, the war chief of the band, organized a campaign to seize weapons and food supplies, targeting the Hudson Bay Company post. Cree men attacked and killed nine whites in the small settlement of Frog Lake. Eight Natives, including Wandering Spirit, were hanged on Nov. 27, 1885 in the largest mass hanging in Canada’s history.
My mother and her siblings are now dead and I have no way of knowing what they knew of this history, although a commemorative grave in their town honors the white settlers who were killed. Local records from the region suggest that the massacre was a formative cultural memory for whites as well as for Indigenous people: “After the Indian uprising of 1885 twenty-five years passed before the influx of white settlers began to move into the area…Because of the wide-spread publicity that stemmed from the rebellion, Frog Lake was the place to which the pioneers came.” My grandparents were among those pioneers, encouraged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to settle in Frog Lake alongside the Reserve as part of a larger program of Indian pacification.
Solomon (Sa-we-pah-u) Delver, a Cree member whose family story is recorded along with that of my grandparents in Frog Lake, recalls another legacy of the era.
When I was a very small boy, I don’t know how old I was, I was sent to the Roman Catholic Residential School at Onion Lake. I was there for twelve years. My dad had sent me there to learn to understand the language of the white people. It was hard for me to be brought up as an orphan. I stayed with the nuns; they told me I am really a Roman Catholic which is how I was brought up. I used to ask a blessing before every meal I had. I used to go to Church in the evenings and in the mornings to the service in the Chapel before breakfast. I remember all these things when I was in the Residential School. It was hard far away from home, but it was the only way in which I could understand the White men.
Delver explains how his father sent him to the residential school to learn the language of white people. Yet laws passed in Canada made removal of Native children from their families and severing ties with their cultures mandatory. There were 25 residential schools in the province of Alberta and many were open until the last of the schools closed in the 1990s. The network of boarding schools was established by the Canadian government’s Department of Indian Affairs after the Indian Act of 1876 and administered by Christian churches, primarily the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. Smaller denominations ran Residential Schools as well although their religious oppression may have taken more subtle forms. The Doctrine of Discovery, the papal edict of the late 15th century subsequently incorporated into international law that provided religious authority for European conquest of the continent, was a guiding worldview, supported by a series of Supreme Court decisions in the US and Canada, that justified claims on Native lands.
Solidarity and Survival
In my deeper understanding of my mother’s stories and my own familial work of “decolonizing history,” I still find a place for one of my mother’s favorite memories of the Cree. She liked to tell the story of being sent to fetch fish from an ice trap at the age of 10 and getting lost in thick fog in trying to find her way home. She remembered releasing the reins of her horse, knowing that the animal would know the way. In the fog surrounding her, she realized that she was passing through the Cree Reserve and closer than she had ever been to the Indians. The story ended with Mom’s girlhood astonishment: “After I passed through, I realized that they were not going to hurt me. The Cree Indians were actually good people.”
The monstrous violence inflicted on the Cree by white settlers never found a place in her family stories. Nor was there a place for recognizing Indigenous peoples’ own right to resist their colonizers. It is up to us, as descendants of those settlers, to join in the ongoing work of Indigenous resistance. As ravenous industries devour more of life, land and the planet itself, our collective survival lies in that shared struggle.
This is the second piece of a four-part series. These can be read along with other weekly commentary on her Substack page.
Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist and documentary filmmaker.
Friday, June 26, 2026
FARA Docs: Israel is Spying On Millions Of Christian Americans In Their Churches
And Now a Word From Our Monster – by Mr. Fish, originally on Scheerpost
If you are a Christian living in the Western United States, you have almost certainly been targeted with pro-Israel, anti-Palestine propaganda, paid for directly by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Your searches, location, and internet activity is being monitored by Israel, and your algorithms and search results across multiple platforms are being manipulated by Israeli government in what its American partner calls the “largest geofencing and targeted Christian digital campaign ever.”
Amid a massive drop in support from the Christian community, Israel is spending millions of dollars to target individuals entering churches or Christian colleges with ads, and paying pastors across the country to promote propaganda and false “anti-Palestinian” narratives every Sunday, documents filed with the United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) show.
The 86-page disclosure reveals that Israel is recruiting Hollywood celebrities and sports stars to promote the country, while also manipulating Christians’ social media feeds. And they are doing it by spying on you through your phone.
MintPress explores this explosive story, largely ignored in corporate media.
Propaganda Storm
In September, Show Faith by Works LLC, a San Diego-based company led by conservative activist Chad Schnitger, filed a sworn document with the U.S. Department of Justice. The declaration revealed that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was paying Show Faith by Works $4.1 million to carry out a massive, covert, digital surveillance operation targeting Christian communities across multiple states, including California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
The document noted that all students at every Christian college and every congregant at “every major church” in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado has been spied on through their phone’s location data, and targeted with propaganda extolling Israel’s “moral superiority” and “linking the Palestinian population with extremist factions.” The campaign estimates that it has reached well over eight million Americans.
Show Faith by Works itself divides its messaging into two themes: “pro-Israel” and “anti-Palestinian”. Its primary goals, in its own words, are to “combat low American Evangelical Christian approval of the Nation of Israel,” by “using biblical arguments to highlight the importance of Israel and the Jewish People to Christians.” It also wishes to “educate Christians on the historical importance of Israel and its significance in the region,” and to “counter new and evolving pro-Palestinian messaging as the global narrative shifts.”
Many of their anti-Palestinian talking points are highly controversial, dubious, or even blatant falsehoods. Their principal messaging on Palestine is that there never was (or should be) a Palestinian state in history, that “Palestinians shelter terrorists” and “hide weapons in their schools and hospitals,” and that they are not a trustworthy actor, as the Palestinians’ goals are “genocidal.”
They also share ads and messages with American Christians claiming that Gazans kill U.S. Christian aid workers distributing food to them, and that “Israel is the birthplace of Jesus.” (In fact, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, in the Palestinian West Bank.)
The overall message, then, is one extolling Israel’s supposed virtues, encouraging Americans to visit, while dehumanizing Palestinians (including the 12.5% of historic Palestine who were Christians themselves) as genocidal terrorist intent on destroying the world.
Show Faith by Works projects that this content will receive 47 million impressions across the United States in its first twelve months in operation.
Hi-Tech Targeting
Show Faith by Works and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs are able to carry out this sophisticated operation by taking advantage of a technology called “geofencing.” Geofencing creates invisible digital boundaries around real world locations (in this case, hundreds of churches and universities). Any phone or smart device entering a church on Sunday or a college during term time is logged and recorded. The operation then begins sending targeted advertisements and messaging to each device through ad networks, promoting Israel and demonizing Palestine. These messages appear in Google searches, on social media, and on any number of apps and platforms.
Your behavioral data – how you respond to the ads, what you click, or how long you watch for, is fed back into the operation in order to tailor messaging to each individual, making future targeting more effective. Over time, the system builds up an enormous amount of data on each individual – their locations, beliefs, preferences, and actions, in order to better manipulate them.
Once you enter a church or college targeted by Israel, there is almost nothing you can do about it. They are paying to manipulate your search results, news feeds, and algorithms. What you see online will be decided by Israel, not by you. And virtually none of the millions of people affected are aware this is happening.
Is Your Pastor a Secret Israeli Agent?
The operation admits that it has “digitally target[ing]” every large church in four western states. This includes 219 in California, 39 in Arizona, 32 in Colorado, and 14 in Nevada. Some of these megachurches boast congregations of up to 45,000 people, helping reach an estimated 3.9 million individuals. It has also geofenced hundreds of smaller churches across the country, reaching a further 3.8 million Christians, primarily in urban locations.
A wide range of Christian denominations has been targeted, including some traditionally associated with the conservative right-wing, such as the Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, generally associated. But the operation also focuses on others, such as the United Methodist Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Churches of Christ, and the American Baptist Churches USA.
A full list of confirmed churches and Christian colleges likely targeted can be found at the end of this investigation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the battle for American public opinion to be the “eighth front” of the war, comparing it to the seven-front campaign he is already waging. In order to win this crucial struggle, Israel is employing Show Faith by Works to insert its messaging directly into the sacred sanctuaries of American churches.
The company was involved in the 1000 Pastors Project, an endeavor that saw some 1070 American clergymen accept an expense-paid trip to Israel in December in order to equip them with the ability to serve as unofficial ambassadors for the country. Thousands more pastors are expected to be invited on a similar trip this year.
Show Faith by Works has designed, published and distributed “pastoral resource packages” to hundreds of churches, packages that include “pro-Israel educational materials,” like the ones discussed previously, information “debunking pro-Palestinian popular arguments,” and helps to organize group travel trips to Israel. They also recruit pastors to write newspaper op-eds, and produce 3-5 minute pro-Israel video lectures designed to be played in churches across the nation.
There is also a special effort to reach minority communities, with content specifically aimed at young women, Catholics, and Hispanic Christians being produced, while their pro-Israel material is also translated into Spanish, Vietnamese, and Russian.
American Colleges Get “the October 7 Experience”
Young American Christians are moving away from their traditional positions on the Middle East. A 2021 poll found that support for Israel among evangelicals aged 18-29 had dropped from 75% to just 34% over the past three years.
To that end, dozens of Christian colleges, with a total student body of well over 100,000 students have been geofenced. The Israel/Show Faith by Works project goal is to establish a major presence at Christian universities and seminaries, including making connections with professors, and hiring student representatives to spread the word and hand out specially designed merchandise.
The campaign includes creating an interactive travelling virtual reality exhibit called the “October 7 Experience” that will tour campuses, showing “atrocities from 10/7” and explaining the difficulties that the Israeli Defense Forces face while “fighting bad guys in hostile territory.”
Celebrity Agents of Israel
According to the documents, the October 7 Experience would be constructed by the company’s (unnamed) Hollywood coordinator, who would use their Tinsel Town connections to build a five-star exhibit. The coordinator’s job also included making connections with “top-tier Hollywood talent to book Christian celebrities and Christian athletes to deliver pro-Israel messaging.”
Among the names floated as possible hires include actors Jon Voight and Chris Pratt. From the world of sports, they aim to recruit former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, three-time World Series winning pitcher Clayton Kershaw, and NBA star, Stephen Curry. Curry has expressed a deep interest in Israeli culture, has told the press that he is learning Hebrew, has two Hebrew tattoos on his wrists, and has invested heavily in Israeli defense corporations founded and staffed by IDF officers. For more on the NBA’s connections to Apartheid, see the MintPress investigation, “From Dunks to Drones: The NBA Has an Israel Problem.”
Another key category of influencers the project was looking to recruit was celebrity megachurch pastors. These included Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, and Greg Laurie. Together, it was hoped that this stable of prominent Christians could use their power to influence the opinions of millions of followers nationwide, shoring up Israel’s sliding approval ratings in the United States.
Manipulating the Media
The Israeli government considers the online war as important as its military attacks against Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and beyond. The documents show that Show Faith by Works planned to flood the internet with digital content – websites, social media posts, podcasts, and videos – in order to overwhelm both search engines and ordinary users with pro-Israel content.
Search engine optimization (SEO) – the practice of enhancing media’s visibility in search results – is a key part of this. As the document explains, the group will “optimize SEO traffic so that favorable coverage is increased and unfavorable information is decreased,” by “redirect[ing] nearly all web traffic to friendly sites based on key [search] terms,” “ensur[ing] that [our] website is the top of all search results,” and “prioritiz[ing] our information to key demographics.”
A less well-known tactic the group is using is generative engine optimization, or GEO, a new technique aimed at influencing how A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude “learn” in order to make them espouse pro-Israeli views. Show Faith by Works planned to deluge the internet with fake questions and answers written by them, in order that A.I. will parrot their talking points to users across the world.
Other media projects listed included starting Christian podcasts designed to sneak pro-Israel messaging to listeners, paying for pro-Israel ads and messages to be read out on other faith–based shows, and hiring a pastor to “keep up with Isreal [sic] news and to highlight pro-Israel, anti-Hamas news.”
They also plan to pay Christian influencers on social media to post about the virtues of Israel and “counter pro-Palestinian propaganda with response videos.” This strategy is similar to that of a similar Israeli campaign called the Esther Project, which paid influencers a reported $7,000 per post that supported Israel. None of the individuals receiving the money, however, has followed the law by filing as a foreign agent under FARA, leading to rampant speculation online about who has become rich accepting cash from Tel Aviv.
In short, then, the project’s goal is to create an enormous astroturfed wave of support for Israel in the Christian community by paying pastors, celebrities, and influencers to espouse their support and admiration for the country, its society, and its geopolitical goals.
Unbeknownst to the tens of millions of Christians seeing these messages in their ads, search engine results, chatbot answers, or in their churches and universities, none of this is natural. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate and designed strategy to manipulate their thoughts and opinions into supporting a state carrying out a genocide – including against Christians.
Israel’s War on Christians in West Asia
Palestine was once a land where large numbers of Christians and Muslims lived side by side in relative harmony. Today, that is not the case. During the Nakba – the 1948 establishment of Israel, Israeli ethnically cleansed 90,000 Palestinian Christians, and shut down dozens of churches.
Since 2023, the attacks on Christians have greatly increased. Every church in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed. This includes the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius, the third-oldest Christian place of worship in the world. The site has been targeted multiple times by Israeli forces, leading to the partial collapse of the religious building, which can trace its history back to 425 A.D.
Also targeted was the Al Ahli Church and Baptist Hospital, where repeated Israeli strikes pulverized the complex, killing hundreds.
Inside Israel, attacks on priests, pastors, and other clergy are a regular occurrence. Last month, footage of a 48-year-old French nun in East Jerusalem being pushed to the ground and kicked by a settler went viral, as did images of Israeli soldiers gleefully desecrating a church and taking a sledgehammer to a statue of Jesus in Southern Lebanon.
For decades, Christians have had to endure the common practice of Jews spitting on them. This sort of overt daily hostility towards Christians has proved to be a problem for pro-Israel conservative American church groups traveling to the region. Last year, conservative commentator and podcaster Brandon Tatum drew international ridicule, when, in an interview with Netanyahu, he thanked the Israeli prime minister and revealed that his Christian group was “only spit on once” during their trip to his country.
One of Show Faith by Works’ key talking points that it promotes, however, is that “Israel protects Christians like no other nation in the Middle East.”
American Christians Losing Faith in Israel
Support for Israel among Christians is crashing. This is reflective of a broader trend across the country; an April poll conducted by Pew Research found only 37% of Americans see Israel in a favorable light, as opposed to 60% unfavorably.
For decades, Israel has enjoyed widespread support from American Christians, particularly Evangelical Protestants, as many believe its existence is a prerequisite for the end of days, when Jesus Christ will return to Earth to establish his heavenly kingdom.
Nevertheless, its popularity, especially among younger Christians, is cratering, falling to just 34%. This age discrepancy is partially down to different patterns of media consumption. Elderly Americans continue to get their news from TV networks owned and controlled by billionaires such as Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch, both of whom are extremely close personal friends and passionate supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s expansionist policies. Younger Americans, by contrast, rely primarily on social media as their number one source of news.
Explaining this phenomenon, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of pro-Israel pressure group, the Anti-Defamation League, stated that “we have a TikTok problem…a Gen-Z problem.”
To that end, Israel has poured vast amounts of resources into targeting Americans. The government’s yearly public relations budget has ballooned to $730 million – a roughly 100-fold increase on pre-October 7 levels. And it is Americans that are the prime targets of Israel’s focus. Indeed, the word “target” appears 44 times in the 86-page document, indicating that Show Faith by Works sees them as threats to be neutralized.
Christians report that being singled out like this in their sacred place of worship feels like a violation. Millions of American Christians are being secretly spied upon, and bombarded with propaganda. Christians in Palestine, Lebanon and the broader region, meanwhile, are surveiled, harassed, and bombarded with drones and missiles. In both cases, Israel is carrying out a coordinated, sophisticated and sustained attack on the Christian community. In Palestine, however, they are paying for it with their lives.
There now follows a list of all places of worship listed as targeted in the disclosure.
This article was originally published by Mint News; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
