On Tuesday, April 12, Wade Davis, a former Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, will deliver the Maytum Convocation Lecture, “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in a Modern World,”
The 3 p.m. lecture in King Concert Hall is free and open to the public, but tickets are required and available in the Fredonia Ticket Office in the Williams Center. Students can obtain a free ticket with their student ID, and the general public is limited to four tickets per person.
The presentation will allow Mr. Davis to engage the campus and community in a discussion of foundational but complex questions, like “What does it mean to be human and alive?” Davis was named by the National Geographic Society as one of the Explorers for the Millennium and has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” His work as an anthropologist and botanical explorer has taken him throughout the world.
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| Amazonian Child, 1977 by Wade Davis | Kenya, 1998, by Wade Davis |
Accompanied by stunning photography, the talk will lead the audience on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world’s indigenous cultures. In Polynesia, sailing with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ, and in the Amazon, meeting the descendants of a true Lost Civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. The journey continues to the Andes, to the far reaches of Australia to experience Dreamtime, the all-embracing philosophy of the first humans to walk out of Africa, and to Nepal, to encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from 45 years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. The trip ends in Borneo, where the last rainforest nomads struggle to survive.
The presentation has been described as a wild and moving celebration of the wonder of the human spirit, as expressed by the myriad of cultures Davis has encountered in a lifetime of travel, exploration and ethnographic research. It was noted that of the world’s 7,000 languages, fully half may disappear within a generation. Davis noted that at risk is a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, and rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time.
Fredonia senior English major Zachary Beaudoin expressed his enthusiasm for Davis’s visit, noting, “I first learned about Wade Davis in my Global Affairs class and his message resonated with my passion for sustainability and environmental stewardship. I apply his profound messages about life’s diversity and indigenous cultures to everything that I do. When I was in Paris for the United Nations’ climate talks, the type of work that Davis and National Geographic do was an important undertone in the overall discussion about how to save the world.”
Davis’s visit to Fredonia caps off a year of Convocation events at Fredonia centered on the theme, “Rediscovering the Diversity of the Human Spirit.” Throughout the academic year, faculty and staff have presented the campus and community multiple opportunities to engage with seminal questions, like “What role can the university play in developing and supporting the human spirit?” and “How can we best respect and interact with persons whose human spirit leads them to adopt very different values?” Campus events were sponsored by the Office of the President and the Faculty Student Association. Davis’s lecture is sponsored by the Maytum Lecture Endowment and the Williams Visiting Professorship Endowment, both of the Fredonia College Foundation.
Davis is the author of 17 bestselling books including “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” which was later released as a feature film, and “Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest,” which won the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize, the top literary award for nonfiction in the English language. Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Outside, Harpers, Fortune, Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, and many other international publications.
His many film credits include “Light at the Edge of the World,” an eight-hour documentary series produced and written for the National Geographic, “Grand Canyon Adventure” (IMAX 3D), and “Earthguide,” a 13-part series on the environment produced and written for Discovery. As a photographer, Davis has curated several major exhibits including “The Lost Amazon,” for the Museum of Natural History Smithsonian, and “No Strangers: Ancient Wisdom in a Modern World,” at the Annenberg Space for Photography. His own work has been widely published and exhibited.
A professional speaker for 25 years, Davis has lectured at more than 200 universities and corporate clients such as Microsoft, Shell, Fidelity, Bayer, Bristol-Myers, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials and many others. His four TED talks have been seen by millions of viewers. In 2009 he delivered the Massey Lectures, Canada's most prestigious public intellectual forum. Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Gold Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Explorer's Medal (the highest award of the Explorer's Club), The Lowell Thomas Medal, the David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration (the most prestigious award for botanical exploration) and the $125,000 Lannan Foundation Prize for Nonfiction.
