Flight of the Hummingbird – Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
3 Comments Published by Sanjay Khanna August 29th, 2008 in Climate Change, Indigenous, Nature, Sustainability, WisdomOn Wednesday night, I attended a talk at Simon Fraser University by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, a mirthful Indigenous artist of the Haida people of British Columbia’s North Coast.
Once an artist-activist whose prime focus was to help to protect his ancestral lands from over-exploitation, Yahgulanaas describes himself now as a "Haida Manga" artist. His work addresses contemporary issues of identity and culture, synthesizing Haida myth and iconography with rich influences from Japanese manga comics.
Yahgulanaas’s hour-long talk, which spanned some of his arts endeavors, was moving, not in the least because of the launch of Remember, a Haida Manga work commissioned by the Vancouver Memory Festival in association with Geist magazine.
Additionally, Yahgulanaas was selling copies of a recently published book, Flight of the Hummingbird, in which his Haida manga illustrations grace a story that has "[its] origins with the Quechan people of South America and the Haida of the North Pacific."
Flight of the Hummingbird tells of a hummingbird that gives itself completely to doing what it can to stop a great forest fire.
Given humanity's perilous relationship with the natural world, and the threat of runaway climate change, the hummingbird-so small, so courageous, so moved to take action-is awe-inspiring.
Like the hummingbird, we're all small and tiny in comparison to the vastness of the biosphere, the solar system beyond, and the nature of the interconnected economic and environmental problems we face.
Yet, what's the best each of us can do? What might it mean to selflessly do those things, sometimes seemingly inconsequential, that we can?
Consider viewing the embedded video clip or reading the beautifully illustrated parable with a foreword and afterword by Nobel Prize winners Wangari Maathai and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, respectively, and a brief, but surprisingly wise, essay by Yahgulanaas on the power of small.
Print this Post
3 Responses to “Flight of the Hummingbird – Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas”
- 1 Pingback on Sep 5th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
So, when does small become too small? When does the hope of the solo fighter become despair? I understand the hummingbird well but I feel worried about the effectiveness of the solo effort these days. I guess for me, the issue is how does the effort of the one, galvanize the many? Is there a tipping point at which this occurs? How do we get “community” or communities, to reach such tipping points on issues of global warming, community cohesion and more? What is the “realistic” response to the plights we share as a global/local community? Is “realistic sanctuary” a whistle in the dark as we walk by the cemetery?
ZK, I surmise that those who work for change in communities believe that people are at their most effective when they’re not isolated. That being said, all of us have to live with ourselves, and understand that against forces so large, from the institutionalization of economic belief to the integrated workings of the biosphere, we are small and insignificant, grains of sand on the beach. Despair seems a natural part of the process even for many who work in groups to address larger socio-cultural, environmental or economic problems, yet maybe, just maybe, knowing that we’re giving of ourselves can provide solace even to “solo fighters.” And perhaps even provide others with the power of a good example.