From a search: “Skookum was originally a Salish word for a demon or monster, hence something “awesome.”
Now, is your screen name because of the bigfoot thing, or an ego thing -you’re awesome! ;) - or, my first thought of the word is is “things are good” - everything’s skookum.
I used to have a WA State Game Warden help me once in ahwile. He couldn’t help me one day as he was spending all day traveling to a farm with a State Biologist. Seems a farmer saw a Bigfoot climb over his fence and left some hair. The biologist was going down for the samples, and my friend was going down to look/follow for track.
He didn’t talk much about it (which was rare for him not to talk!) - but did say “we do it just to satisfy the taxpayers”. Well, I know there are MANY things that they DON’T investigate that are also a concern. I found it real interesting that they would put two high-level employees out for a whole day just to humor one farmer. He was very non-commital about what they found.
I understand there is a fair number of "unidentified primate" hairs in various hair analysis experts collections. With no known species to connect such samples to, the analyses remain inconclusive.
You may have heard that the US Dept. of Agriculture has more employees than the US has farmers. Did you hear about the USDA employee that was skulking around the office? A colleague asked him what was wrong. His reply: "My farmer died today."