The focused determination of Sculptor/ Psychotherapist, Michael C. Irving, Ph.D. guides his vision that art and cultural activities can bring about meaningful understanding and effect substantial personal and social change. He feels the healing and transformative qualities of his art and poetry are much influenced by his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage. In youth he had a deep connection to nature and created a wide variety of native arts and traditional regalia. Dr. Irving received the Aboriginal name, Little Buffalo Child, at the same time as he received an eagle feather in honour of his commitment to the wellbeing of children.

Dr. Irving has a private psychotherapy practice, working with a wide variety of issues.

His stone and bronze sculptures are in private and corporate collections and have been exhibited internationally. He has received art project grants in the $10,000. to $400,000. range from individuals, foundations, government agencies and major corporations. He has won awards in art, community peace building and for his work with children. In 2007 he received the “Stand Up for Kids Award” from a coalition of Children’s Aid Societies

Dr. Irving has published and lectured on art, myth and psychology, been featured in newspapers and magazines and has appeared on radio and television. Dr. Irving is currently working on several major public memorials.

His design of the Wakinyan Awasis/Spirit Island sculptural site and his introduction to Elder Vern Harper were each the outcome of two sets of four day vision experiences in 1999. For Dr. Irving, Awasis is, in part, a means to address the legacy of the Choctaw and Cherokee Trail of Tears and the beauty and suffering that greeted the Choctaw and Cherokee way of life. The unfortunate consequences of several generations of child abuse, neglect and dysfunction in his family were partly an outcome of this historic native tragedy and loss.

His most recent past work, the Child Abuse Survivor Monument Project, was conceived by Dr. Irving in 1990 as a millennium project that would be an expression of community compassion and a form of social acknowledgment and remembrance. Hundreds of survivors and community volunteers were actively involved in carrying out the project.