The Little Hummingbird

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is from Bowan Island, BC

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a very active player in a vibrant shift in the world of Canada’s iconic First Nations’ art. After a career that spanned three decades of involvement in high-profile Haida political successes, Yahgulanaas decided to finally apply his formal training in classic Haida design.

Yahgulanaas takes from an extensive corpus of Haida narratives and transforms them into contemporary, accessible and socially relevant Art. Yahgulanaas invented a new genre of graphic narrative called Haida Manga - part Haida, part Asian, and all Michael - to combat the simplistic narratives perpetrated about Indigenous People of the Pacific Coast. He’s telling another story altogether: of complex human beings struggling, loving and dreaming just like everyone else. Social and environmental issues continue to play a big role in his works and when blended with his passionate belief in the power of the small, Yahgulanaas is clearly adeptly blending appealing imagery with contemporary issues.

Yahgulanaas has formally trained under several artistic masters such as Robert Davidson, Isabel Rorick and Jim Hart Edenso. Yahgulanaas spent much of the mid-1970s with Robert Davidson back at Haida Gwaii, working on a very important totem-pole commission. After spending most of the 1980s and 1990s dedicated to public service and political activism for Indigenous Peoples, he returned to his art full-time in 2000. “What’s really good about it is that the art is informed by that experience,” he says.

His work has been exhibited in Japan, Korea, England and Canada. Yahgulanaas’s books include Flight of the Hummingbird, A Tale of Two Shamans, The Last Voyage of the Black Ship, and Hachidori, a bestseller in Japan. Red, his latest graphic novel and art piece, will be exhibited in Vancouver in 2009 and again in Calgary in 2010. A Bravo! Documentary on Yahgulanaas and Marianne Nicholson will be broadcast in the fall of 2009. urrently, his Haida Anime Flight of the Hummingbird is featured on YouTube.

This book is available in French, Le vol du colibri.