Haida Stories Get New Life
Japanese anime and art bring trickster Raven into 21st century context
Performance
The Word on the Street
Where: Library Square, CBC Plaza
When: Today, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Tickets: Free
By STUART DERDEYN
Arts Reporter
Vancouver Province
Sunday, September 26, 2004
How does a tale well-told transform into one well-read? First Nations artist Michael
Nicoll Yahgulanaas came up with a unique way of meeting the challenge of making
oral culture contemporary.
He calls it Haida Manga, after the Japanese graphic novel and animated film genre.
"I never wanted to use the word 'comics' because they are, generally speaking,
simple mainstream stuff designed to entertain adolescent males suffering from
hormone toxicity," says Yahgulanaas.
"Manga, on the other hand, reaches every sector of Japanese society - it's
40 per cent of the nation's publishing.
"It comes from between North America and Asia and compares nicely with
my stuff, which can be pretty weird."
A great example of that "weirdness" is found in the
Rocking
Raven series (www.rockingraven.com), based on an ancient Haida
narrative titled
Raven Who Kept Walking.
The most recent edition in the series,
Red White: A Lousy Tale
perfectly captures the ebb and flow of a story of the trickster Raven up to its
usual ne'er-do-well goings-on.
In the story, Raven visits a distant in-law, Cormorant the great fisher, and the two
go fishing. Cormorant has great luck, the braggart Raven none. That is, until he
steals Cormorant's voice and claims the motherlode for himself. Married to
Yahgulanaas' artwork, the story takes on visual, psychological and emotional
elements that would be absent in a straight re-telling or a poor Western text
translation.
"When you hear these stories, they are bizarre, twisted, complex tales
with so much emotional depth and also humour, laughter and everyday life
in them. To have a much more honest vision of native society, all of these elements
need to be encompassed.
Red White: A Lousy Tale aims to
do that."
The Japanese certainly think so. When Yahgulanaas and fellow members in the
non-profit Bark Design Collective showcased at the Tokyo Design Week, the
group took seventh place out of 100 nations. Later this month, he heads off
to Korea for a graphic novel convention.
It's ironic that he may have a major publisher in Asia before Canada.
To see Yahgulanaas create Haida Manga on the spot from larger traditional
designs, check him out from noon - 4 p.m. today.
