Guest Speakers

MICHAEL NICHOLL YAHGULAANAS

Panelist
Illustrator ~ Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
www.rockingraven.com

Michael Nicoll Yahgulaanas challenges native stereotypes through illustrative story telling.  These are not the powerful, shamanistic images of artists such as Bill Reid or Robert Davidson. But neither are they the all-too-common media images of Indians living lives of poverty and pain on reserves or in inner cities.
 
The stories of the trickster Raven, as told by Yahgulaanas, are something different. For one thing, they are not images carved into cedar; they are drawn on paper. They are what most people would call comics, and they are fun, humorous and sometimes just plain rude.  Yahgulaanas takes traditional Haida stories and turns them into manga (Japanese-style comics). He has dropped the traditional rectangular boxes and voice balloons associated with the North American comics of Marvel and DC. Instead, he has developed a flowing style that uses a bold line stretched almost to the breaking point - a motif strongly associated with Haida art - to link the images in the narrative.

For the past two decades, besides developing his unique visual style, Yahgulaanas has spent most of his time working with other Haida people to prevent their homeland, Haida Gwaii, from being logged.