Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: The Wayfinders

The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World by Wade Davis 2009

This is the text of the 2009 Massey lectures, a project that, since 1961, has sponsored an annual cross-Canada series of lectures by a noted Canadian or international scholar, to explore the important ideas of our time. Over the past four decades, Massey lecturers have included John Kenneth Galbraith, Martin Luther King Jr., Noam Chomsky, Stephen Lewis, Ronald Wright and Margaret Atwood.

The 2009 Massey lecturer was Canadian Wade Davis, ethnographer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, and Explorer in Residence for the National Geographic Society, and “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all life’s diversity”.

Beginning with an introduction to how humanity and its cultures emerged, spread and diversified, he takes us on a global tour ranging from the San Bushmen of the Kalahari to the seafaring people of Polynesia, through the Amazon, Tibet, North American and Australian aboriginal cultures and others. Throughout, he highlights the unique view each has of the relationship between humans and our planet, and how its knowledge of how to live in harmony with nature is indispensable to the modern world.

The Wayfinders brings together a lifetime of his research and thought to discuss the impending loss of at least half the world’s cultures, and with them the ancient wisdom that’s needed to confront the challenges the world faces today.