Using a blend of traditional and modern art, graphic novelist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas brings to life the tumultuous history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples and the early colonization by the Europeans of the northern West Coast. Join him in discussing the storytelling process through graphic novel, and the importance of drawing out histories from an Indigenous perspective.

Hybrid events are held in person, you will also be able to watch it live streamed from our Youtube channel.

Location: Theatre, UBC Robson Square

Type: In Conversation

Sponsored by Pace Accounting

Moderator: Mike Alexander

Reader: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, JAJ: A Haida Manga (Douglas & McIntyre)

About The Moderator

Mike Alexander is an emerging Anishinaabe visual artist and writer originally from Swan Lake First Nation in Treaty #1 Territory. Adopted out to a non-Indigenous family shortly after birth, Mike is a 60’s Scoop survivor and a second-generation Residential School survivor who grew up in Winnipeg. He has attended the University of Victoria, the Victoria College of Art and the Vancouver Island School of Art. Mike is honoured to have received mentorship from master carver and recipient of the Order of BC Carey Newman (Kwagiulth) as well as master of the Woodlands School of Art, Mark Anthony Jacobson (Anishinaabe). He has been the recipient of several generous grants from the Kamloops Arts Council, the First Peoples Cultural Council, the BC Arts Council as well as the Canada Council for the Arts and is currently practicing as a full time, internationally collected artist. Mike identifies very strongly with the Woodlands School of Art. He celebrates his ongoing reclamation of culture using art as a process of decolonization, healing, and cultural revitalization. He has been an exhibiting artist since 2015 and is looking forward to his upcoming show at the Bill Reid Gallery in October 2023. He is currently an artist in residence at Skwachays Lodge in Vancouver where he lives and works.

About The Reader

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a visual artist, author, and mischief-maker. His art lives in public spaces and private collections around the world, including the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Humboldt Forum in Berlin, Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, and Vancouver Art Gallery.

His work has been transformed into an opera, The Flight of the Hummingbird, for which he was the librettist and designer, and a new full-length version of this production is currently in the works for a wider audience. He is also at work on a commission for the Vancouver Art Gallery.

His publications include Flight of the Hummingbird, RED: a Haida Manga, Carpe Fin, and War of the Blink. In 2021, UBC Press published a catalogue of his work, Mischief Making: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Art, and the Seriousness of Play, by Dr. Nicola Levell. His most recent book is the critically acclaimed JAJ, published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2023.

Yahgulanaas creates art inspired by almost four decades of political experience in the Council of the Haida Nation, a decade as a trustee for a philanthropic foundation, and an upbringing in a lineage of accomplished artists and hereditary leaders.

He has traveled extensively through a wide geography of diverse Indigenous, pastoral, and resilient communities. Brimming with curiosity and ideas, he carries a traveler’s ticket in one hand and a sketchbook in the other.