[.ca] Light at the edge of the world: A journey through the ... (ISBN 1550548484)

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Ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis has spent his career studying the world's remaining indigenous peoples, whose distinct cultures are being wiped out by the forces of globalization and modernization. Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures is a record of his extraordinary experiences in both photographs and text. Davis travels to Haiti to learn the secret of a drug that turns people into zombies, and ends up learning about the dynamic faith of Vodoun, with its belief in a reciprocal relationship between the living and the dead. He explores the plight of nomadic peoples like the Penan in Borneo, who are losing their forest homeland to invasive logging. The Ariaal and Rendille of Kenya, whose ability or unwillingness, respectively, to adapt their herding practices in the wake of drought, famine, and inter-ethnic war in neighbouring countries, are ensuring their own survival or their death. He traverses the length of the Andean Cordillera to locate the place of origin of the revered coca plant, and participates in one community's tradition of the annual running of the boundaries. He looks at the Tibetan people's resiliency and their determination to survive as a nation despite Chinese occupation. From Davis's first, life-altering contact with an old Gitxsan man in the Spatsizi wilderness of northwestern British Columbia, through his adventures in far-flung lands, to his experiences hunting with the Inuit in the newly formed Canadian territory of Nunavut, Light at the Edge of the World charts the intellectual and spiritual making of a scientist passionately concerned about the fate of this planet's diverse cultures. It highlights just a handful of the indigenous peoples whose subtly complex world views, formed within and in response to their own, often harsh, geographies, reveal the expanses of the human imagination. The book rings a cautionary note about the evils and arrogance of modernity. As Davis quotes one of his mentors, David Maybury-Lewis, as saying: "Genocide, the physical extermination of a people, is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of a people's way of life, is not only not condemned when it comes to indigenous peoples. It is advocated as appropriate policy." But it also touches on the adaptability of these ancient peoples. In the example of Nunavut, where the indigenous people have been granted self-government, Davis indicates a road back from devastation. Intimate, breathtaking photographs animate the intelligent eloquence of Davis's essay. It is a testament to the author's own storytelling power that the reader of this book feels as if he or she were sitting around a campfire with the anthropologist, entranced by marvellous tales, as Davis once listened to the old Gitxsan. --Diana Kuprel

Reflections in the distant landscape:
In his latest book "Light at the Edge of the World - A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures" Wade Davis is quite frank about the motivations behind his around-the-globe adventuring. He says he is driven to the ends of the earth by "simple" curiosity and a horror of boredom. A Harvard-trained botanist and anthropologist, Davis has spent 25 years finding his way into places that most of us don't even know exist . . . and would most likely hesitate about going to even if we did. From the high Arctic, to the Amazon, to Africa, Tibet, Haiti, Peru and Sarawak, Davis turns his camera and his intelligence. In his travels, the sciences of ethnobotany and anthropology have served him well. As an explorer he takes in the whole glorious panoply of data about people and plants, medicine, language, landscapes, history, custom, and creation myths. He records it painstakingly. Then, he deftly makes sense of it. The motifs of an astonishing array of human cultures dazzle with colour and clarity. Intricate patterns of thought, belief, myth and tradition emerge. Davis calls this body of knowing the "ethnosphere." The ethnosphere is about those peoples of the earth whose essential humanity has been defined by the landscapes in which they are nurtured. For these people of the ice, the forests, the river deltas, the jungle, the desert sands, and the high mountain plateaus, daily life is both a precise and a fully variant exercise of knowledge and understanding - a long-accumulated wisdom that this world stands much in need of. "When asked the meaning of being human they respond with ten thousand different voices. It is within this diversity of knowledge and practice, of intuition and interpretation, of promise and hope, that we will all rediscover the enchantment of being what we are. . ." writes Davis. Of course, it isn't just science that happened to Davis on his way to the edges the world. Like all true pilgrims Davis has continually encountered within himself that intense inner dimension of spirit that is the nature of a human journey. In the enigmatic photographs of this book and the accompanying text, a reader can trace the writer being touched by his subjects, being himself altered by those gestures of imagination, mystery and dream imminent in the people and places he so passionately studies. It is this sense of excitement and spontaneity of learning, eloquently shared, that makes the book such a good read. In the end, Davis' curiosity is more vast than simple, as is his capacity to absorb knowledge. As for his horror of boredom, perhaps his fears are more profound. As he tells the story, one of Margaret Mead's greatest nightmares was that one day we would wake up, look around and find ourselves all to be the same, and, what's worse, in doing so we wouldn't even remember what we lost. This book is much more than an exciting travelogue, or a romance of far away places and exotic peoples. Davis' underlying theme is urgent and challenges the complacency of daily life in an industrial and technological society. In Davis' view, the survival of the world's indigenous cultures is crucial to our communal creativity and resourcefulness, if, as he says, those "imperatives driving the highest aspirations of our species were to be the power of faith, the reach of spiritual intuition, the philosophical generosity to recognize the varieties of religious longings." Indeed, if we are to know ourselves to be who we are.

Timeless and Timeful Visions:
Traveling the globe requires more than a ticket, a room and a backpack. A traveler unlike a tourist is immersed. Traveling through time and landscapes through the writings of Wade Davis is a timeless and immersive vision. Reading " Light at the Edge of the World " is a spell bounding pilgrimage under Wade Davis' guidance. Never has the eye of the beholder held more meaning. As I gaze into the depth of his photos and ride with the resonance of his images, I am transported around the globe, immersed into the past and the future of our world. " Light at the Edge of the World " is Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Rudyard Kipling all wrapped into one epic poem. Even Herodotus would be provoked to wonder with envy at the worlds Wade Davis illuminates. T.E. Lawrence would ride into the desert night with adventurous hunger over this new book " Light at the Edge of the World " is a living treasure of our deepest and most cherished understandings of humanity, the stewardship of the planet, and a visionary quest for poetic diversity.

Plants and people:
Wade Davis' long career among isolated peoples and cultures has given him an enviable insight. He manages to connect with people at many levels. They are free and open with him, an obvious outsider. Their stories, legends, life modes all come to light under his gentle persuasive powers. In this outstanding account of his travels and his studies, we share much of what he and his mentors have learned. The primary message in this book is how cultures vary with their environments. Worldwide, Davis notes, only about five per cent of humanity live in areas relatively untouched by European intrusion. They are scattered, often living in what we deem as "savage" or "desolate", yet they survive and flourish when allowed. Hardly rigid in outlook, these people have learned well how to adapt to changing conditions. They have come to know just how to deal with what Nature has provided. Centuries of experience are put to use on a daily basis, following seasonal and other variations. Their knowledge of the local plants in particular has stood them well, and they have much to offer us. Davis describes how this has developed in many regions, with the Amazon basin an area of his special interest. Davis acknowledges two special influences in his work - David Maybury-Lewis, his tutor, and Richard Evans Schultes who had spent many years in the Amazon area. Davis followed them, but as his study interests grew, so did the range of his travels. North of the Amazon Basin, he enters the mountains of Columbia to learn the ways of the Kogi and Ika people. He takes us to Northwest British Columbia, where the Grizzly retains a meagre residual territory and meets Atehena \oAlex Jack\c to learn the ways of the shamans who formerly operated there. In lands once part of the Inca empire, he learns the uses of coca leaves - both social and medicinal. Haiti possesses numerous cultures, many with strong ties to the African homeland. That continent's sad history of imperialist intrusion probably created more artificial "national" boundaries than any other region of the world. Such intrusion causes displacement and Davis is witness to the shamanic rituals of a people only recently forced into a nomadic life. The author concludes his narrative by describing two areas as opposite as one could imagine - the Red Centre of Australia and the snowy reaches of the Canadian Arctic. He recounts the utter innocence of the European invaders in both regions. British explorers and colonists suffered heavily as a result of their failure to understand how "primitive" people could survive better than "well-equipped" Victorians with their advanced technology and ideals of superiority. As elsewhere, long centuries of experience taught the Aborigines to find water in unlikely places and the Inuit to travel lightly and efficiently. Only in modern times have researchers arrived at an understanding of what "primitives" accomplished. As he freely confesses, however, the work has only begun. This book is not only informative about how indigenous people have survived conditions deadly to us, but provides pointers about how to apply their knowledge for the benefit of us all. Medicines are but one step in what can be adapted for our use. And more Wade Davises are needed to do the tasks before us. Those new scholars, however, must go to those people to learn, not to change their ways to conform to ours. That would be artificial and self-defeating. \ostephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada\c

Timeless Visions:
Traveling the globe requires more than a ticket, a room and a backpack. A traveler unlike a tourist is immersed. Traveling through time and landscapes through the writings of Wade Davis is a timeless and immersive vision. Reading " Light at the End of the World " is a spell bounding pilgrimage under Wade Davis' guidance. Never has the eye of the beholder held more meaning. As I gaze into the depth of his photos and ride with the resonance of his images, I am transported around the globe, immersed into the past and the future of our world" Light at the End of the World " is Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Rudyard Kipling all wrapped into one epic poem. Even Herodotus would be provoked to wonder with envy at the worlds Wade Davis illuminates. T.E. Lawrence would ride into the desert night with adventurous hunger over this new book" Light at the End of the World " is a living treasure of our deepest and most cherished understandings of humanity, the stewardship of the planet, and a visionary quest for poetic diversity.