Wade Davis' Miniseries on the National Geographic Channel

Finding rays of light as world's cultures teeter on the edge

Modern-day explorer's miniseries illuminates problem of dwindling ethnic diversity

Feb 03, 2007 04:30 AM

Jim Bawden
TELEVISION CRITIC

Wade Davis, the British Columbia-born National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, produces and hosts the upcoming four-part miniseries based on his 2001 book Light at the Edge of the World. It begins Wednesday on the National Geographic Channel.

Q Discuss your reasons for turning your book into a TV miniseries.

A I say in my TV introduction that the year I was born (1953) there were 6,000 working languages in the world. Now? Fully half are no longer being taught to the next generation, meaning a vast amount will disappear. Unless there's a huge change they are effectively dead. And I wanted to show how this is reversible, contrary to popular misconceptions. National Geographic, my home, has done wonderful studies about ecological disasters such as rainforest depletion or pollution. This one is even bigger – that we must save our own diversity or much of our humanity is lost forever.

Q How did you get started on such a huge project?

A My title at NG is explorer-in-residence. It's a very select band including oceanographer Bob Ballard, Jane Goodall (she has left), the Leakey family. We are banded together so NG has our resources and experience to draw upon and be distinguished from such TV channels as Discovery. In return for all the NG support I could possibly want, I'm contracted to work as little as 15 days a year for the organization. That's how this one started – with my ongoing investigation into the collapse of cultural diversity.

Q So how did you start this one up?

A I wanted to show the erosion of the ethnosphere and then how it can be stopped. I'm very big on storytellers who could change the world by keeping their language going. I start in South America – it's an area I know very well – where I gathered my botanical collections (over 6,000 plant species).

Q First up you're in the Andes with Indians who have artfully blended the Catholicism of the Spanish invaders with their Incan ancestry to produce something quite spiritual.

A I knew many of these people from other trips. I'm godfather to one boy in another village. And I wanted to show how they work the land so very high up and approach it as Mother Earth, believing it will continue to provide them with crops. ... The terrain is so far up, I had some altitude problems the first day until I adjusted. You see how the farmers are teasing me during our breakfast of potato soup; that's what I wanted – to belong.

Q Episode 2 (Feb. 14) set in Polynesia is entirely different. Visually it is splendid.

A This wasn't a one-man operation; I had Andrew Gregg as director, Gordon Henderson as executive producer for 90th Parallel in Toronto and a truly superb crew. They had to get the visuals for what I was saying and that can often prove tricky. In Episode 2 we look at the magnificent achievements of the Polynesians who settled a great triangle in the Pacific that is a million square miles of what? Tiny islands and yet with their seafaring canoes they could pinpoint Easter Island and hit it without any of the modern navigational equipment.

Q Episode Three (Feb. 21) is your most personal statement about your own spiritual trek in Nepal and what Buddhism means to you. For me it was the hardest to watch although the scenery was magnificent.

A It's my most personal statement on the subject. I just felt so serene even when we were arriving by rickety Russian helicopter. I think we hit some high points, including the visit to one of the Dalai Lama's teachers, the remarkable monk Matthieu Ricard, and the remarkable nun who had never been photographed before. And the soaring scenery everywhere. But you're right, much of it is an interior journey.

Q Finally, beautifully, we wind up in Canada's farthest north. (Feb. 28).

A I've worked there more than once. The irony is that just as the people are turning back to their own ways, away from globalism, something else enters the picture – global warming, which could disrupt or shatter their whole world. We travel to Igloolik to follow local hunter Theo, who uses both modern and traditional ways of hunting. At Greenland's Qaanaaq community the people have even banned snowmobiles.

Q Can any TV series, however well intentioned, change people's thinking?

A The answer is yes, because our attitudes are shifting already. We look at the wars today caused by cultural dislocation. People are questioning so much, as they should. But some American networks have already passed on the miniseries, claiming it has too many ideas. Too many! This from a culture where many teens do not know where Iraq is and yet their older cousins could be fighting there tomorrow.

Wade Davis explores Earth's disappearing cultures

A trip to the Arctic to look at Inuit hunting techniques National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis

Wade Davis explores Earth's disappearing cultures

Updated Mon. Feb. 5 2007 2:27 PM ET

Andy Johnson, CTV.ca News

The planet is facing a cultural crisis that is more drastic than the threat of global warming and the loss of endangered species, says Wade Davis, Canada's only National Geographic explorer in residence.

After roughly five years of work, Davis' new four-part television series, "Light at the Edge of the World," argues that the world's cultural fabric is unraveling at a frightening pace.

"You know, the year that I was born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on Earth," Davis says at the beginning of the series. "And of the 6,000 languages spoken on Earth, fully half aren't being taught to children, which means that effectively, unless something changes, they're dead."

The message that culture -- the feature that adds texture and colour to our world -- is our most valuable non-renewable resource, comes out loud and clear in the series, set to begin airing Feb. 7 on the National Geographic Channel.

Davis, an author, anthropologist and ethnobotanist, treks to some of the most remote corners of the globe to tell his story. The four segments focus on Peru, Polynesia, the Himalayas and the Arctic.

In Peru, he explores the religious amalgamation of traditional spiritualism, such as mountain worship, and Catholicism -- that is embedded in the descendants of the Inca who believe that the land is alive.

In Polynesia, Davis delves into the ancient ways of the "wayfarers" -- world-class ocean navigators whose accomplishments more than 2,000 years ago, he likens to Western countries reaching the moon. From Hawaii, Davis sails in a traditional Polynesian ship with a man who has dedicated his life to carrying on the ancient traditions of his ancestors, and teaching the skills to a new generation.

In the Himalayas -- by far the most personal segment for Davis -- he treks deep into the mountains of Nepal where he sojourns with Matthieu Ricard. The once promising French scientist is now a Buddhist monk, and he takes Davis to visit a nun who has been in a meditative retreat for 45 years.

And in the Arctic, both in Canada and Greenland, he explores the effects of melting ice on traditional Inuit hunting techniques, and efforts to preserve indigenous culture in the face of rapidly changing technology.

The mission

In each of the segments, Davis, 53, is accompanied by both a local authority on the region, and an authority from the academic world, who shed light on the culture from different perspectives.

"This all grew out of my mission at the Geographic, which is to help change the way the world views and values culture, and it grows out of a conservation mission that recognizes that the loss of language and cultural diversity is as important a problem as the loss of plant and animal species, and if anything it's happening at a far greater rate," he told CTV.ca in an interview from Washington D.C.

Davis said he and director Andrew Gregg chose the four remote locations based on the incredible stories they found that illustrate the effect of human choices on cultural survival, as well as sheer cultural uniqueness that reveals "the diverse facets of the human imagination that become manifest in culture," Davis says.

The objective, he says, is not to freeze cultures or to isolate them from the modern world to ensure they never change. Rather, he wants to instill a deep appreciation and value for cultural diversity in those who watch the series or read his book by the same title.

"All you can try to do is change the way the world views and values culture, which doesn't mean freezing people out of the benefits of modernity. On the contrary. It's how do we find a way to live in a truly multicultural, pluralistic world? How do we find a way to ensure that all people in an ideal world can benefit from the genius of modernity ... without that engagement demanding the death of their ethnicity?"

In the end, Davis says, the message is a positive one. Yes cultures are being destroyed at a frightening rate, but humans are the agents of that change, and therefore humans can be also become the agents of cultural survival -- if they so choose.