The Wayfinders: Wade Davis - 2009 CBC Massey Lecture
Chan Shun Concert Hall
The CBC Massey Lectures 2009
With host, Paul Kennedy from CBC Ideas
Recently, many of us have been alarmed to learn of accelerating rates of extinction among plants and animals on our planet. But how many of us know that human cultures are going extinct at an even more shocking rate? While biologists estimate that 18 percent of mammals and 11 percent of birds are threatened, and botanists anticipate the loss of 8 percent of flora, anthropologists predict that fully 50 percent of the 7,000 languages spoken around the world today will disappear within our lifetimes. And languages are merely the canaries in the coalmine: what of the knowledge, stories, songs, and ways of seeing encoded in these disappearing voices?
In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis offers a gripping and enlightening account of this urgent crisis. He leads us on a fascinating tour through a handful of indigenous cultures, describing the worldviews they represent and reminding us of the encroaching danger to humankind's survival should they disappear.
Wade Davis is the bestselling author of several books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow, Light at the Edge of the World, and The Clouded Leopard. He is an award-winning anthropologist, ethnobotanist, filmmaker and photographer, and his writing and photographs have been widely published. Davis currently holds the post of National Geographic Explorer in Residence, and divides his time between Washington, D.C. and northern British Columbia.