Photograph by Wade Davis
Photograph by Wade Davis
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence who was recently honored with the prestigious Explorer’s Club Medal for 2011, Wade Davis has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” He has dedicated his life to studying endangered cultures and preserving the totality of traditional languages, beliefs, myths, and dreams that constitute humanity’s cultural inheritance—a legacy that he calls the “ethnosphere.”
Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology, and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. His work has taken him around the world, through the Amazon, Tibet, the Arctic, Africa, Australia, Mongolia, Polynesia, and New Guinea, living for extended periods among indigenous communities. He is the author of 15 books including The Serpent and the Rainbow, Light at the Edge of the World, and The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (2009), based on the CBC Massey Lectures, Canada’s most prestigious intellectual forum. His latest books, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest and The Sacred Headwaters: The Fight to Save the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass, were both released in October 2011. In 2012, Wade will be awarded the David Fairchild Medal, the highest award for plant exploration.
Wade’s ongoing project is a campaign to protect the Sacred Headwaters in British Columbia. In 2013, Wade and fellow National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Mike Fay will walk across British Columbia and the Sacred Headwaters as part of Fay’s next Megatransect.
Popular Presentations
The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in a Modern World
Indigenous human cultures are going extinct faster than many plants and animals. Fully 50 percent of the more than 6,000 languages spoken today will cease to exist in our lifetime. With them will go the knowledge, stories, customs, and footprints of entire cultures. Davis leads us on an enlightening and gripping journey through ancient worlds, demonstrating how our world is richer for their presence and contributions.
Into the Silence
Wade Davis tells the story of the legendary and ultimately tragic 1924 British Everest expedition. Linking Mallory and his comrades’ determination to gain glory in the Himalaya to their bitter experiences in the trenches of WWI, Davis offers a compelling fresh take on history.
The Sacred Headwaters
Imagine for a moment one of the largest oil companies in the world drilling in the Sistine Chapel under the Vatican or building a giant oil and gas complex on the temple mount in Jerusalem, it would be inconceivable. But that is exactly what several multinational companies have in mind for the alpine meadows of the Sacred Headwaters, the birthplace of three of British Columbia’s greatest salmon rivers—the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass. Davis leads a visual journey through the Sacred Headwaters, from the mountains where the rivers are born to the sea.
Learn More About Wade:
IMAX: Grand Canyon Adventure Film
Video: Light at the Edge of the World
“With only the simple instruments of his voice and his passion, Davis weaves a cloak that allows us to imagine for a moment the world as it might be seen through the indigenous imagination. It’s a deft feat and it transforms the literature of grievance, so familiar now, to a literature of love and almost celestial appreciation. He is our very own Massey shaman, breathing life into fragile worlds that are rapidly growing extinct, worlds that mark the boundary of the human imagination.” – CBC Radio
Listen to Radio Interview With Wade Davis
Boyd Matson Interviews Wade for NG Weekend Radio Show
Wade Davis is the author of Into the Silence, which tells the story of three expeditions to conquer Everest in the early 1920s.
Wade Davis describes the Sacred Headwaters—where three of British Columbia’s greatest salmon-bearing rivers are formed.
Watch Wade Davis address a sell-out audience in the 2009 Massey Lecture in the Convocation Hall, Toronto, October 31, 2009.
With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world’s indigenous cultures, which are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate.
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