Brought up in Vancouver among the Kwakwaka’wakw Indians, Wade Davis studied at Harvard and then became an anthropologist and an ethnobotanist. Also a photographer and a writer, he works on worldwide indigenous cultures, most especially in Haiti, Amazonia and the Andes.

First published in 2009, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, his most recent work, has just been published in French.

Wade Davis (Photo : Ryan Hill)

Working up the acknowledgment that human cultures are disappearing faster than animal or plant species, the author is concerned with the impact of such cultural loss in terms of knowledge, ways of thinking, and artistic and spiritual expression.

From one side of the planet to the other, French Polynesia to Mali, the Andes to Tibet, he pays a tribute to these people said to live in better harmony with their environment – for Davis, every culture, including that of very small human groups, also tells the story of its own adaptation to its environment. It is no accident that the ever-faster extinction of microcultures matches a phase of unprecedented extinction and decrease of biodiversity – both are related.

Along the way Davis mentions modern issues such as global warming, globalization, sustainable development. He pushes forward a few alternative solutions that could help man not destroy the planet, without necessarily vilifying technical development:

Change is the one constant in history. All peoples in all places are always dancing with new possibilities for life.  Nor is technology per se a threat to the integrity of culture.  The Lakota did not stop being Sioux when they gave up the bow and arrow for the rifle any more than a rancher from Medicine Hat ceased being a Canadian when he gave up the horse and buggy in favour of the automobile.  It is neither change nor technology that threatens the integrity of culture.  It is power, the crude face of domination.

Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, House of Anansi Press, 2009.

Wade Davis, Pour ne pas disparaître. Pourquoi nous avons besoin de la sagesse ancestrale (Translated into French by Marie-France Girod), Albin Michel, 2011.