Haida artist hits it big in Asia
Large retailer Seiju buys design to grace shopping bags
Ashley Ford, The Province
Published: Friday, April 06, 2007

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a bird of many feathers.

Formally trained in classical Haida design, the Vancouver resident has taken his considerable artistic talents along new paths with his unique form of "graphic narrative" called Haida Manga, essentially part-Haida and part-Asian.

He takes Haida design and narratives and transforms them into socially relevant art. The object is to advance the Haida design traditions "to combat the simplistic narratives perpetrated about indigenous people of the Pacific Coast."

He is already a big hit in Japan and Korea where manga -- Japanese for comic -- is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business.

And greater commercial success may just be around the corner.

Seiju, a large Japanese retailer with a major shareholding from U.S. retailing icon WalMart, wants to mount Yahgulanaas's Hachiridori, hummingbird design from one of his books with the English words "I do what I can" on its non-plastic, reusable bags.

Yahgulanaas says he doesn't know how enriching it will eventually be but is hopeful it will be enough for him to carry on his personal campaign of taking the Haida art tradition out to the rest of the world and not just in the traditional style.

Labels: can-con, cartoonists, international, manga, Vancouver