Book - JAJ: A Haida Manga

Product Code: 9781771623537

With gorgeous imagery, visual artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas brings to life the tumultuous history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples and the early colonization by the Europeans of the northern West Coast.

Yahgulanaas uses a blend of traditional and modern art, eschewing the traditional boxes of comic books for the flowing shapes of North Pacific iconography. The panels are filled with colourful and expressive watercolour paintings. The panels of each page, if removed and assembled into one whole image, form a large image reminiscent of of a woven robe.

The story follows several historical figures, including Johan Adrian Jacobsen (JAJ), who comes to the Haida village of Masset to collect specimens for a German museum, through a time span that includes first contact, the devastation of the smallpox epidemic, and the mass resettlement of disenfranchised peoples, both Indigenous and European.

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is an internationally renowned artist and award-winning author. His previous Haida Manga include Red (2009) and Carpe Fin (2019). He is from the North Pacific archipelago of Haida Gwaii and now lives on an island in the Salish Sea with his family.