Jaj by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

With gorgeous imagery, visual artist 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.

Yahgulanaas uses a blend of traditional and modern art, eschewing the traditional boxes of comic books for the flowing shapes of North Pacific iconography. The panels are filled with colourful and expressive watercolour paintings. The panels of each page, if removed and assembled into one whole image, form a large image reminiscent of a woven robe.

The story follows several historical figures, including Johan Adrian Jacobsen (JAJ), who comes to the Haida village of Masset to collect specimens for a German museum, through a time span that includes first contact, the devastation of the smallpox epidemic, and the mass resettlement of disenfranchised peoples, both Indigenous and European. (FromDouglas & McIntyre)

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Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is an artist who blends Asian manga with Haida artistic and oral traditions. His other books include War of the Blink, Red and Carpe Fin.

Interviews withMichael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

The Next Chapter5:34Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas takes the Proust Questionnaire

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, author of the Haida Manga comics War of the Blink, Red and more, takes The Next Chapter's version of the Proust Questionnaire.