Tanya Tagaq

Anupa Mistry

The first time I saw Tanya Tagaq perform, she shut the house down. Everyone was on their feet. She got a really long standing ovation. Then I had to walk on the stage after her and mumble some words about Drake, and it was really awkward and I’ll never forget it. Because all I wanted to do was jump up and down and scream and freak out about what I had just witnessed, because it was amazing. I admire her so much. Please welcome to the Red Bull Music Academy in Montréal, Tanya Tagaq. (applause)

You were here last night playing a show with some friends of yours, in a band called Fucked Up. How was that?

Tanya Tagaq

We had a lot of fun last night. Who was there and is anybody here? Yeah, oh good, I’m glad most of you were there. Hi, Jesse and Alison. Jesse plays violin and viola, he was with us last night. (applause) That was fun, ripping it up a little, hey?

Anupa Mistry

Can you describe maybe for the few people who weren’t there, what transpired?

Tanya Tagaq

I can’t explain it, we played a show. I think part of the beauty of it is the inability to describe it. I think it drives reporters crazy sometimes.

Anupa Mistry

Thanks.

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah, good luck. (laughs)

Anupa Mistry

OK, well let’s talk a little bit about something that I think many people here won’t be able to witness, which is where you’re from. Can you tell people about where it is that you’re from and what it’s like there?

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah, I’m from Nunavut, my family is from Pond Inlet. Hi, Jeanie. Jean played drums last night. Nunavut is a territory of Canada by the North Pole. My family originated in Pond Inlet before my mother was relocated by the government to Resolute Bay.

They moved to Cambridge Bay where I was born and raised, and it’s a tiny little town. It was about 1,200 people when I was growing up. No roads out, no highways, no way to get off the island, and the nearest town probably 300 miles away, an equally small town. There was no access to the south, no internet.

I remember growing up I just thought it was so terrible because that wasn’t where the action was, but now that I’ve traveled around a bit, I realize how beautiful it was to be able to grow up there with… Nature is so prominent, the land owns us, we are part of the land, not us owning land, not foolish enough to think that we own the land at all.

It was beautiful there and schools closing out about -50, the little kids wouldn’t have to go to school. 24-hour darkness for three months in the winter and 24-hour sun in the summertime. It’s kind of like one long day, the year was like one long day. We’d stay inside in the winter and that’s when most people would get pregnant.

Then outside all summer – little kids playing even at two in the morning outside, we wouldn’t keep the children inside during that time. Massive abundance of life during that 24-hour sun period, we’d have birds migrating all the way from Mexico. Because everything was so frozen and it’s dark and no vegetation or anything in the winter. In the summer, it’s this huge burst of life, hence the time for harvest.

I go up every year for the Arctic char run. I go and get nice and fat off fish fat and eat fresh Arctic char out of the water. When they’re running out of the lakes into the ocean, it’s my favorite time of year. Just go chill out up there, and then come back down to this craziness.

Anupa Mistry

No roads in, no roads, lots of nature, not where the action is. How did you find out about the action? How did you know what the action was? What were you watching and listening to?

Tanya Tagaq

This movie is very like... That was the ’80s. I remember watching Beverly Hills Cop and being like, “Wow, look at that big city,” thinking it was like fantastical, and just not thinking anything was happening. In reality, going hunting and going fishing and having the peace of the land was worth anything that I could have had anywhere else.

Yeah, it was really beautiful growing up there, and I’m super happy I got to grow up there. There was no high school when I was growing up, so I had to leave to residential school to go to high school. It was different because that was a choice, the police didn’t tell me I had to go like previous generations of residential school, and it was only for high school.

I actually had a not too bad time in residential school. It was weird, it was like jail. I wasn’t used to the rules and minutes of my time in the chores, and everything being... all my time being accounted for. It taught me, it was a good stepping stone to get down to university later. It was actually not that bad of an experience for me, but, if you consider the legacy of residential schools, I’m not going to say it was a good thing.

Anupa Mistry

Can you maybe talk a little bit about that for the people who don’t know what residential schools are?

Tanya Tagaq

You’d be sitting in your house and police would come and take your children, and drive them away.

Anupa Mistry

Specifically, though.

Tanya Tagaq

You may not see them again. Like 50,000 children were put in residential schools – over that, throughout the last few generations in Canada and it was legal. You were legally obliged to do it and there was a lot of very terrible things. The government doesn’t really want to admit what’s going on and there’s always these inquiries, but you only have to ask indigenous people what actually happens.

They say between 3,000 and 6,000 children died in residential school, but I think the number amongst our own talkings is around 25,000 or 30,000 children. There were documented cases of electric chairs, children forced to eat their own vomit. Children beaten, children raped on a regular basis. Whipped for speaking Inuktitut or any of their own languages. Very terrible things and that was right before my time, so recently, not that long ago.

It’s a huge impact on the indigenous population in Canada, that a lot of Canadians aren’t really privy to this information. Because the government doesn’t want people to know how bad it was and what happened. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has done a massive amount of work and you can check it out, but it’s very sad. People I’ve talked to were raped, or they got pregnant from a priest and they just threw their newborn in the fire because they’re not supposed to be valued. People just dying, purposely making the children ill.

There’s mass graves all over Canada, but people don’t know about them yet. It’s our legacy, it’s our whole country’s legacy, it’s every single person’s responsibility to understand our history and why things are the way they are. People know about the statistics, people know that we live with unemployment, they know we live with addictions. They know we live with all of these terrible things but never see why. It’s because when you take an entire demographic, all these children and destroy them and rape them and hurt them... If they make it home, what kind of parents are they after ten years of that abuse? It’s a very, very important thing that Canadians understand, when you see us living under these conditions, it’s completely and 100% at the hand of our government. When we’re speaking out against the government, it’s coming from a true place. Why are we expected to trust this system when it’s the system that’s been done to us, that’s been doing these things?

There are so many, so many facets of this conversation that people are so uncomfortable discussing. There’s a reason that there’s poverty. If the constitutional treaties had been respected, indigenous populations would be very, very well off. We get blamed in this society for living in an impoverished way or blamed for having addictions. Addictions come from trauma.

One thing I’ve noticed statistically is that if you look at war veterans with PTSD and indigenous populations, the statistics are shockingly similar when it comes to addiction, homelessness, suicide. All these things come with trauma. It’s only by discussing these things and being aware that we can shift the perspective of the average Canadian to help push the government into righting the wrongs that have been done to us, because they didn’t kill us. We’re not dead. They didn’t kill us. We’re here and we’re not going away.

We’re the fastest growing population in Canada. I believe that we’re going to come up even stronger, and it’s going to be beautiful, but we all need to be aware and work together to make sure that that happens, and be responsible for those attitudes to be shifted, for the racism to be shifted.

It’s a little bit intense sometimes having to deal with the way people look at me or look at my children, and knowing that I’m more in harm’s way than you are. I don’t feel like that’s a good way to be living. I don’t think anyone in this room would want it that way either. It’s just our responsibility to make sure that we help each other. (applause)

Anupa Mistry

I think maybe something else that people might not know is that when kids were sent to residential schools, part of what happened there is there’s a loss of language and a loss of culture which came along with that. For what you do, that was something that you rediscovered. It wasn’t necessarily something that was passed on to you by your mother or someone immediately in your family; although she did send you music, but it wasn’t a traditional inheritance the way we might think of something cultural like that. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Tanya Tagaq

Sure. If you look at Nunavut, it spans across the entire country. If you think about someone from Newfoundland and someone from Vancouver, you wouldn’t expect people to be that bounded in culture, but circumpolar people have a lot of similarities, typically have a lot of similarities. Where we’re from, Pond Inlet, people are still speaking a lot of Inuktitut, and there’s throat singing, and it was less touched by the residential school system.

Where we moved to in Cambridge Bay – I was five when we moved there and was fluent in Inuktitut, and when we got there even the elders would say, “Speak English.” The other kids would say not to speak Inuktitut. There was no throat singing. Everyone wanted to assimilate. Everybody thought, “This is the way. God’s the way. English is the way. This is how we’re going to progress.” My community lost a bit of that for a long time. I didn’t grow up with throat singing.

It was really wonderful in my 20s to find that outlet to celebrate my culture, because it was very difficult. When I first went down to Halifax, there’s so many funny stories. (laughs) I remember we went down to Halifax, it’s a small city, but I couldn’t stand the smell of the car exhaust anymore. I couldn’t stand looking at people’s faces and they’d be telling me a lie. I couldn’t just say to them, “Quit lying. I can tell.” You have to pretend. I wasn’t used to that. I was really missing home.

I remember sitting in the park, there were ducks everywhere. I was like, “Don’t kill one. Don’t kill one. Don’t kill one,” because it was like, they were just sitting there, take one and pluck it. It was so funny. I just wasn’t used to seeing them around. I was used to hunting them, like all these little things. My friends were like, “No, you can’t kill the ducks. Don’t do that.”

The cultural differences were very vast. I was super lonely and getting upset at always being the only Inuk around, because every culture... That’s why I get mad when people are like, “I don’t see color.” It’s like it’s not about color, it’s about culture. Your color is attached to your culture. Everybody has a different culture, a different way of thinking, different language, different ideas on what is right and what is wrong.

I was really lonely. When my mom sent me a tape of some throat singing and I heard the land on it, I got so happy. It just came out of my mouth. I had no musical training. I never expected to be a musician ever. It just happened. I remember, with the cassette tape, listening to it and flipping it over and over and over and over again and then just feeling the vibration in my throat, and throat singing in the shower every morning. My roommates are like, “What the fuck are you doing in there?” Throat singing came and woke up my bones a little bit. It made sense. It was a way to take some of my culture and have it in me.

Anupa Mistry

What music were you into, though, growing up?

Tanya Tagaq

This is really, really awesome. In that remote high arctic community, Resolute Bay, my dad had a record player. He took us to Saint Lucia. There’d be these Inuit in the ’70s really into Peter Tosh, way before there was Bob Marley, way before they were listening to it here. My dad listened to lots of Jimi Hendrix and Beatles and Doors, and just all that, Janis Joplin. It was always playing in my house.

When people ask me, “How did you come up with the idea to mix these genres?” It’s like, “No, they were all just living in my body anyway. It’s not a decision that was made.” Whatever you grow up with when you’re a child, your environment, and just what’s happening around you, you’re absorbing. It’s later in life, when your body stops physically growing, I feel like you can start expelling a little bit.

Anupa Mistry

Let’s listen to something that you listened to growing up.

Tanya Tagaq

Which one was it? Which one are we playing?

Anupa Mistry

We’re going to play Willie Thrasher.

Tanya Tagaq

Willie Thrasher is so awesome.

Anupa Mistry

Do you want to introduce it?

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah. There’s a whole bunch of Inuit musicians from when I was growing up, when it wasn’t cool to be Inuk, that just got overlooked. Now people are listening to these old recordings. They’re so wonderful. This is sang by Willie Thrasher. It’s “Wolves Don’t Live by the Rules.” I just remember being away from home and feeling so uncomfortable having to follow these rules in this culture that I still sometimes don’t feel I belong in. He explained it well.

(music: Willie Thrasher – “Wolves Don't Live By The Rules” / applause)

Anupa Mistry

Why do you love Willie Thrasher?

Tanya Tagaq

He’s Inuk.

Anupa Mistry

Tell me about the other songs that he has that you love.

Tanya Tagaq

There’s a song that he sings where he sings like a lament of being in the city and it kind of goes like, “Lonely Eskimo, you’ll be free on the land soon.” Those aren’t the exact words, but just when you’re lonely, you’ll be home soon, you’ll be home soon. That’s actually one of my most biggest fears is not dying on the land at home. I want to make sure that I perish and I’m buried where my body originates from. It’s important.

Anupa Mistry

Why is it important to you?

Tanya Tagaq

I’m made up of the same stuff from the same place. I belong there, and when I’m on the land at home it’s the only time I’m not afraid to die at all. We’re just part of it. It’s so weird in cities, I don’t feel that connection at all. It’s so easy to disassociate, detach, be uninvolved with myself, lose myself, become scared, become afraid. None of that exists when I’m on the land at home.

Anupa Mistry

Do you make music in the cities though?

Tanya Tagaw

Most of the ideas come when I’m at home and I carry them around until we go into studio. We have a lot of fun in the studio. Jesse produced the album that’s coming out in the last... and I swear, him going through producing an album is so funny it’s like watching a woman in labor. (laughs) Just pitiful, he’s just in so much pain and the contractions, there’s no epidural, then we have this album.

Anupa Mistry

Why is it painful?

Tanya Tagaq

He’s nuts. (laughs) He’s crazy, he’s a perfectionist. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without him producing because I kind of just float around and he has a precision in sound, he has an ear that can hear things that I cannot. I tend to just be so lackadaisical about what’s happening around. I’m very chill, and he can pinpoint the smallest of sounds and make it loose, too. It’s a very, very difficult thing that Jesse does and he puts so much work into it. I mean, I just love you, thank you. You too, Johnny, I love you. (applause)

Anupa Mistry

I want people to get a bit more of a sense kind of, of the history of throat singing. Can you tell people how it originated?

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah, throat singing is so awesome. It’s thousands of years ago like [inaudible] is one of the oldest songs known and it goes back so many generations and traditional Inuit throat singing is done with two women face-to-face. It’s a friendly competition. It’s not meant to be this big spiritual thing. It’s a vocal competition, a mental competition to see who has the most lung capacity and the quickest mind to switch back and forth. There’s usually a split of sounds and they fit together like puzzle pieces. Like the river song [throat singing], like when one person is doing, the other person is doing, so it sounds back and forth, there’s always this [throat singing]. It’s the tradition. You switch the songs quickly too, you can switch from leader to follower. It’s really fun. When people are watching and sometimes they don’t understand why it ends in laughter, but when you’re this far from somebody’s face making these sounds...

My cousin, she purposely, if you want to win, you can eat garlic or make faces and trying to throw the other one off to win the competition. That’s where it originates from. It’s very friendly and very joyous. It’s a mimickery of a lot of the land and animals and circumstance. Some, sometimes telling stories that... [inaudible] is about one of the small husky pups watching the sled dogs run away and it wants to go with them but it’s too small. It’s trying to follow but the ice, it keeps slipping on the ice. Its little legs are slipping on the ice. It’s a really endearing song. It’s so cute.

Anupa Mistry

You learned this on your own, you didn’t learn it at, with a partner or with someone else?

Tanya Tagaq

That’s the thing, without that loss of culture, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now because I was self-taught, and then learned the traditional songs later via fellow throat singers as the years went by. I can do the traditional throat singing, but I was initially self-taught. We’d always be listening to music and I’d find myself throat singing along to it and I realized it was so percussive that it could go with almost anything. It can be a vehicle for almost any tone or feeling. It’s just, I’ve heard people singing it with Celtic songs and at raves, anything. It can just go with anything.

Anupa Mistry

Early on you did throat singing with Björk. Do you want to tell us about that?

Tanya Tagaq

Well, she was just the catalyst for me becoming a musician. I was at a festival – I’m trained as a painter and I was teaching at the Inuvik Arctic College and I had all these paintings and I brought my paintings to the Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik. I was really excited to be this painter and very happy with my paintings that I had put work into. I felt like I was going somewhere with them. Then we got drunk around the fire with the festival director and a bunch of people and I did some throat singing for them. The next day there was weather where the plane was cancelled and one of their acts couldn’t come in and the festival director asked me to get up on stage and do this throat singing, improvise with just whoever was there.

Anupa Mistry

Had you performed in public before that?

Tanya Tagaq

No, not really, no. I had at my friend's wedding. I was so scared and then I got on stage and I was like, “This is where I belong” (laughs). I found my home, I just took to it. How was I not doing this for the first 27 years of my life or whatever? I was having so much fun, and then these people came up to me afterwards and said, “Do you mind if we record a bit of what you do?” I was like, “OK, no problem.” I gave them some vocal recordings, and then two weeks later I got a call from Björk saying she wanted me to go down to New York City and meet her.

Turns out these guys that recorded me had been her friends and they were there just checking out the festival. They showed that recording to her and then I ended up going on a world tour, on the Vespertine Tour. It was like, “OK, I’m a singer now.” If I’m good enough for her, then I can make this happen. It was really kind of fluke-y.

Anupa Mistry

That’s the craziest fluke of all time.

Tanya Tagaq

I know. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life.

Anupa Mistry

Were you a fan of Björk?

Tanya Tagaq

Of course. It’s hard not to be. Then I got sick and had to come off the tour, but she said, “We’ll work together again.” A couple years went by, and then I was living in Spain and she called and flew us to... my baby Naya was only four months old. She flew us to the Canary Islands. We were in the volcanic mountains, recording. It was so nice. There’s a lovely story about the song “Ancestors.” She put me on five songs on Medúlla. We had been recording for three days over her stuff, and I asked her if I could give her an improvised piece with no music behind it. So I gave her a 20-minute piece and she asked us all to leave the studio and said, “Hey, come check this out.” She had recorded a song years and years ago and never used it. She took a segment of the improvised piece and placed it on top of the song. That’s what it is. There’s no chop up, it just happened to fit exactly. When you listen to the song “Ancestors,” every time we’re getting loud at the same time, we’re singing in the same way, that’s just completely by chance.

It’s another chance thing. I really really believe in surrender. That you can ask the guys I work with. I don’t tell them what to do or how to play or anything. The video we just released with Chad VanGaalen, we had a phone call. I just wanted him to do what he wanted to. There’s just this attitude at home, my brothers both live less than five minutes away from my mom’s house. When they haven’t visited for a long time I get so jealous because I can’t visit my parents all the time and my brothers are there and sometimes I’ll be talking to my mom, and she’ll say they haven’t visited in... I go, “Why aren’t they visiting? They should visit more.” She’d say, “I don’t want people to visit that don’t want to come.” (laughs) Don’t control other people, don’t control what they’re doing. If I want to collaborate it’s because I want the people I’m collaborating with, I want to taste them. I want them to be present. I don’t want people to fall into my ranks. I want to share equally. I find artistically that’s the best way for me to work.

Anupa Mistry

Because there is so much gravity and there’s so much importance to what you’re doing. Is there – not a vetting process – but a bit of an educating process that you go through with some of your collaborators when you’re working with them?

Tanya Tagaq

No, I learned to trust myself. I don’t work with people I don’t totally understand and like right away. If you’re fucking sketchy or weird I just don’t care how famous you are. Fuck off (laughs). Really. I don’t care how rich you are. I don’t care how poor you are. I don’t care. It’s because this is sacred to me. It’s like sleeping with somebody. You don’t sleep with somebody you don’t like. When I’m working with people there’s never this question mark or me schooling. I think it’s just, “Oh, this is happening, this makes total sense.”

For example, with Shad. I love ’90s hip-hop/’80s hip-hop, but I’m not that into it now. I find I want to like it more. I really want to like Drake and I like him, I like him and his person, but sometimes his music is kind of... I’m sure he doesn’t get mine, either. We’re working with Shad, he’s hip-hop. I just really enjoy... I met him at Polaris [Music Prize] and we just instantly were friends. When you find somebody that you’re friends with and you already know you can trust them, then that’s a good indication to work together.

The regrets I have in my life are always sharing time, energy, or creativity with people that are using it for ego or to hurt or aren’t healthy inside or are going to try to take advantage. Sometimes people will be very angry that I’m not going to work with them. For example, this man, this composer, he flew all the way from Italy. I won’t use names, but we had signed this contract, we were going to work together and put on this opera at Pavarotti’s Theater and it was going to be really awesome. I was so excited about it. He flew to Winnipeg, where I was living at the time, just to connect with me. Right away when I walked in the room. Just a little bit of the way he was posturing with me. He was doing something, you know, doing something (laughs). I was like, “OK.” Turns out, he was trying to penetrate the concepts of good and evil as human constructs. I agree with that. When a wolf kills a caribou, it’s not evil. It’s hard to find the true idea of good and evil, but he was so into this idea and so removed from his thought process. I respect him as an artist, but I just don’t work that way.

He wanted to see what the most evil thing in the world was that humans do. He went and interviewed all these women who had gone crazy and killed their own children. He wanted me to say the words of these women and sing while these words went behind me. I just thought, “Are you fucking crazy?” I’m a mother, I’m a mother. What would it be like if my kid saw me performing this, why would I invite this energy into my children, into my life, into my psyche? Those women that did that are sick people and I’m not inviting that sickness into myself or my children. He was so upset, really angry with me. “Well I flew all the way from Italy.” “So? Fuck you, who cares?” People can get really strangely demanding when it comes to their ideas of art, their ideas of ego. Other forms of art that I don’t agree with can be fantastic and good, it just doesn’t mean that I have to be part of it. People are just strange.

Anupa Mistry

Let’s play a song by some collaborators who don’t make you do any weird shit.

Tanya Tagaq

My friends. My delicious friends, yeah. I love them.

(music: A Tribe Called Red & Tanya Tagaq – “Sila” / applause)

Anupa Mistry

That was a collaboration you did with A Tribe Called Red from their new album We Are the Halluci Nation. That track is called “Sila.” Did I pronounce it correctly?

Tanya Tagaq

“Sila.”

Anupa Mistry

“Sila.” Tell me about making that song and why you wanted to make that song with those guys.

Tanya Tagaq

It was kind of the same thing. I met those guys years ago and right away it just made perfect sense to hang out. We attempted a couple times to record and finally they sent me a very bare bones beat and we sent them a whole array of sound and then they processed it and made something more complex. It was a very back and forth thing and just really respectful. I love their work, I love who they are and what they stand for.

Anupa Mistry

Who are they and what do they stand for?

Tanya Tagaq

A Tribe Called Red, they’re just aware and strong and they hold knowledge and dignity responsibly, I think so. I know they want to make changes as well. We live in the same sphere of intent. That’s why we get along so well. I was saying when I’m with them I just feel the most protected in the world. These three great, big giant men. I just always get ballsier around them because I’m like, “What are you going to do? Nothing.” Last time we were in Montréal, we were at a talk and this guy had to be escorted out, it was scary, he was trying to rush up to the stage and he was screaming and freaking out. Sometimes I just think, “You’re lucky those Tribe guys weren’t here.” You know, I just feel very protected around them and that’s so nice, and respected, completely. I don’t have to explain anything to them about, well of course our history, but how to act, how to treat each other with respect. I don’t have to teach.

Anupa Mistry

Do you feel like your work and their work is part of a bigger narrative of, kind of a new cultural movement for indigenous artists around the world or in Canada or specifically North America, Turtle Island?

Tanya Tagaq

I’m hoping that because we come from the same platform and we’re almost the same, we’re saying very similar things. It’s just lovely because our music is so different from each other and obviously we’re different cultures, different genders, different people but coming with the same intent and the same hopes and the same wants. Hopefully we can piggyback on each other as much as possible to get the messages out to help facilitate change.

Anupa Mistry

I want you to talk a little bit about some of your messages, but I think first we can play the video of that Polaris performance, because then we can see a little bit of what you do. Also, I think there were messages, many messages that came out of that performance. So let’s watch you perform at the Polaris Music Prize in 2014, the year you won. The one you had to go on about dog this and dog that after.

Tanya Tagaq

No, I didn’t say dog... probably did, yeah.

(video: Tanya Tagaq "Uja" and "Umingmak" live at Polaris Music Prize 2014)

Anupa Mistry

What happened after that? Well, OK. The first thing that happened was, you won the prize. That was cool. It would have been weird if you didn’t win the prize after performing that in front of a room full of people, but you did. There were screens behind you with names on the screens, and you were trying to say something there. Can you tell us what you were trying to say with that performance?

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah. Since the ’80s, there’s been 1,800 missing and murdered indigenous women, and it’s – I’m four times more likely to be murdered, and my daughters are four times more likely to be murdered than any other racial demographic in Canada. We go missing, and people like to spread lies and myths, like saying it’s sex workers, or only our people doing this, but we’re being hunted, too, and it’s dangerous, and it’s very scary, so I think in the collective of Canadian consciousness there’s just been this numb-out of caring, of just, “Oh, Canada’s so great, it’s a great country; it’s so peaceful here, so multicultural.” Sorry, so bitchy! It’s not like that at all, not when you’re indigenous. Not when you’re many things. I wanted names. I got sick of saying, “missing and murdered women.” I wanted names, and recently Annie Pootoogook was found dead.

Anupa Mistry

A prominent Canadian visual artist.

Tanya Tagaq

Really awesome Inuk lady. I wanted the names. I wanted people to see the list, and it scrolled and it scrolled and it scrolled and it scrolled, and just for... People started realizing, as the performance went on, just in particular, the list of Jane Does. Very heartbreaking; where there’s no name attached. Their family will never know these violent deaths, that we’re expected to just endure; that the families are expected to endure, and that we’re supposed to so peacefully protest. “Oh, turn the other cheek.” Every time. “Educate.” We’re supposed to tell people about how it is and why it is the way it is. Not only do we have to live under these conditions, but we’re supposed to be so polite about when we talk about it. That’s what makes me the most mad, is when we’re supposed to – “Don’t be angry! Why are you being so hostile? You’re being rude!” That’s when I get something inside of me that isn’t nice at all. It’s not good, and I’m very lucky I get to express this onstage, because I almost get... The things that come up inside of me when I think about these things, when I think about my own family and what we’ve been through and my friends and people I love, and what we have to go through every day in comparison to the lives other people get to have. I don’t feel like – not that everybody doesn’t go through strife, but I just don’t feel any more like it’s my responsibility to take one more drop, one more ounce, one more sentence of bullshit from anyone ever again. I don’t want to be pulled out of a river, you know? When Annie was pulled out of that river, this policeman from Ottawa made all these remarks. Did you see that?

“Oh, indigenous people have short lifespans, anyway.” “She was drunk and fell in the river; this isn’t missing and murdered women.” This is a police officer, and a lot of people don’t understand that. “Why don’t you call the police?” For the majority of you in here, calling the police means somebody’s going to come help you, but quite often, the police force is – That’s who’s doing stuff to us, too, so it’s kind of hard. Where do we turn? We had this discussion yesterday. This is the kind of thing I think about a lot. Animals get very dangerous when you corner them, and when we were forced off the land into communities and relocated, forced, our own judicial system was taken away and replaced by a foreign judicial system, and the foreigners were the ones doing these terrible things to us, and then also forced into an economic system that we weren’t accustomed to.

Consumerism is a sickness, by the way. Here we are, not in control of our non-renewable resource development, so we go, “OK, what are our options?” We have these renewable resources, we have the land, we have seals, we have the animals that we’ve lived alongside with and taken care of and lived with and been part of for thousands of years. Until the ’70s, we were happily selling our pelts of the seals that we eat anyway, right? They’re our cows. Because there’s no vegetation in the wintertime, we live off animals; a diet of souls. Whether or not you’re eating plant or animal, we live off life. We live off the freshness of life. When the seal ban was implemented in the ’70s, the suicide rate spiked because people were not in control of their environment, or able to provide or buy more snowmobiles to hunt or buy rifles. Or the food is very expensive, because it’s all flown up by jet. The seal hunt... there’s only like 42,000 to 47,000 Inuit. The seal hunt is vitally important to our health, physically and economically, and spiritually even. Because to provide is... to be able to provide is a beautiful thing, and so I have always talked openly about being very pro-seal hunt, because I know the animals, I know the land, I know where we’re from.

We’re already cornered, and then you have a bunch of people from fucking California eating their organic avocado telling us not to eat meat. Can anyone comprehend how fucking mad I am? It’s just... I can’t believe it. We’re cornered in one way, cornered in another way, and then we try to sell our own resources that are the only thing left available to us.

You have these judgmental pricks with fucking slaughter houses ten clicks from their house, judging us for eating, judging us for living. It just feels like people just want us to die. I posted this photo, I wanted... I love this picture it’s so cute, I should have brought it but... A thing I always found very interesting is a lot of people that eat meat, they’re happy to put their hamburger... a certain part of the animal can touch only your hands and the inside of your mouth. If you saw a dead cow and someone said, “Touch it.” You’d go, “Eww.” It’s so fucking ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous like that’s... you’re eating it. How can you look at a dead animal and be disgusted with it, and then at the same time put it in your mouth? Anyway, so we were at this elder’s camp, beautiful elders, camp tents and bannock and tea. One of the nephews came up on the boat with a seal, and my baby was small, Anuya was not even one year old. I thought, “OK, this is a good message to meat eaters to respect your meat and understand where it comes from.” If you’re too bullshit to touch a dead animal, you shouldn’t be eating meat in the first place. I put my baby, this elder said, “Oh wouldn’t it be cute if baby could [inaudible] from the, or breast feed from the seal?” Because their milk is really rich. I put baby next to the seal, touching side by side, the seal was still warm. Just kind of to show, “Look, these are equals, these beings are, they’re equal to each other. They’re the same, we’re all flesh.” It was a very beautiful message from an Inuk perspective.

I posted it online – so naïve. I posted it online. For three-and-a-half months I was abused by these animal rights activists. One man even photoshopped my baby being killed. I’m so mad, I am so fucking mad, I want to find the man who did that and, “Be in a room with me, fucking coward.” I wish I could find him. “Be in the same room with me. Fucking challenge you to do that in front of my face. You’re not going to walk out of the room, that’s for sure.”

I don’t know, it’s people... The judgment that comes from all around, from the world, that’s why we’re in a difficult place. Culturally, I think it’s very important to be very awake before you start judging other people’s culture. Because if you’re not living in it, you don’t know it. You shouldn’t place your judgments on it, because our own culture is full of so many flaws, you know? Sorry, well I’m so mad... (applause)

Anupa Mistry

Just to complete the thought... You’re talking about missing and murdered indigenous women, and having these screens with all of these names. That entire message, that statement was lost because people were fixated on the seal.

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah, people are more worried about the seals than they are about us dying, being killed. The animals at home live a much better life than any of us could ever dream of living. That land is the most beautiful, pristine land. You live in a calm, clean, perfect way.

If you’re a good hunter, you kill an animal in one shot right in the head and they don’t even know you’re there. Because if an animal starts running and gets agitated, the adrenaline can taint the taste of the meat and make it hard. It’s best to kill an animal without them even knowing you’re there, and with one shot. It’s the most humane and beautiful way to go, and humane and beautiful way to live, they have incredible lives.

Nothing compared to how terrible it must be in a slaughterhouse, and being raised in that way. That’s what I mean, next time you hear anyone saying anything about seals, please remind them to take a look at themselves. That people are dying at home, because if we had more financial resources to build rehabilitation facilities, and to pay good doctors to come to have better health care. My mom couldn’t get a mammogram for years. If we had the resources, if we had more at our fingertips to raise the quality of life, then that would help with the statistics.

Really you’re the bad guy, if you’re against the seal hunter, you’re the bad guy. I think I just want people to know that, and to remove their judgment, because it’s... Even, I don’t know much about the East Coast, but I know that they’re not rich there either. They live off the ocean as well, and it’s not a high population of people.

A lot of propaganda out there says that we’re... Yeah, the things that were being tweeted at me, “Savage Eskimo c---, I hope you drown and die on Mother’s Day.” Just for months and months, “Little Eskimo slut, fucking Inuk bitch, just die, die. You’re going to get your karma, you’re going to die.”

It’s... these people are so drunk on suffering, so drunk on animal suffering. They know that they can’t have power with the big corporations like McDonald’s. They know they don’t have power, so they take their passion and try to execute it where they can. In effect, you end up this big giant bully to a very impoverished population that’s having a lot of social difficulties right now due to the ripple effects of colonialism. It’s very important that we spread this message, and I really wish that more people would wear seal. I was giggling, I was like, “All of these colonialists are visiting, aye, Kate should wear a sealskin coat.” (applause)

Anupa Mistry

You’re talking about the royal visit?

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah. Yeah look, royals are here, how can we... Oh I don’t know, feudalism.

Anupa Mistry

I think sometimes people who come from marginalized groups often feel like it’s a burden to have to talk about this kind of stuff when they’re making art as well. Obviously, I know you don’t feel like that, but do you feel any pressure at all to represent your community in a specific way?

Tanya Tagaq

I’ve removed myself from worrying about what I’d say or do as a representative for an entire group of people. I am not the voice of Inuit people in entirety, because plenty of them were upset with me for breaking tradition. To throat sing alone, right? There’s an older generation of Inuit that are very infected by Christianity. There’s different groups. Like I said, Nunavut spans across that entire continent, so I can’t possibly claim to represent everyone. I know that everything I say and feel comes from a place of wanting safety for Inuk kids and people.

I don’t feel bad, I just don’t... I’m not going to feel like I can’t be an individual and have my own opinions and say what I want to say. I’m also hoping that people can glean that I’m benevolent. I’m not coming at this for any reason. I’m not in politics, I just want kids to be okay, I want things to be a little better for people.

Anupa Mistry

I think that’s a nice note to end on. (applause) We’ll take some questions from the participants. There’s a mic.

Audience Member

Hi, I just want to say thank you. This was so inspiring, thank you so much. I have a question. I missed your show last night, but I’ve seen you perform in Montréal a few years ago in a small theater and I’ve seen the video. You are so strong and badass and powerful. I hear your anger and why you’re frustrated and angry and you have all the reasons in the world. At the same time, you’re such a peaceful person, and you’re full of like... you’re beautiful and I just want to know if you have any advice on how... I feel like you’re really good at both, and you seem not split. You have such a positive energy and at the same time you’re able to communicate and express very heavy stuff. Would you have anything to say about this?

Tanya Tagaq

I make sure to celebrate a lot. I have two beautiful daughters, and I make sure to tell them how wonderful they are, and how clever. I make sure to hold my friends close to me, and my family and be kind to anybody who wants to receive kindness. Anybody even in the street, anybody around that wants to be kind. I spread kindness and share kindness as much as I can, and that is perfect healing.

I also like to watch lots of comedies, I love laughing. I love being ridiculous like it’s just... You cultivate goodness. You don’t just expect things to be there. That’s what I noticed a lot about people that lived very privileged lives, they get more and more upset over smaller things that aren’t their way.

My ancestors, it was so difficult to live. If it’s the 24-hour darkness and you have a baby, and you have no milk, you have to just put it on the ice so it doesn’t suffer and starve. Elders, sometimes if they couldn’t help anymore, they’d ask to be left and you leave them. Or there’d be some time suicide Igloos just so... Life was so hard, and that’s what’s interesting about that movie, Nanook of the North that we play with. Flaherty is our laughter and our love as being naïve. There’s been a big mistake in this society in assuming that cynicism is intelligence.

Audience Member

I don’t think it’s naïve at all...

Tanya Tagaq

No, it’s just having love, giving it and owning it as much as possible. Celebrating every little bit of happiness helps to balance.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah.

Audience Member

Hi, can I give you a hug? That’s all, that’s my question.

(audience member and Tanya hug)

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah, come. That was a nice question.

Audience Member

Hi, you mentioned about how the elders of your community feels like you’re breaking the tradition and they’re more or less frustrated about that. What do you feel? Have you seen about the younger ones, do they look up to you or are they following the elders? Because I feel like if you’re the one person who goes out of the community and become who you are right now, if me personally, if I have someone like that in my community, I would look up to her and want to be like her even more. So do you have like, yeah, in your community?

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah I’m happy to say that in my community now, throat singing has been totally revived, so everybody’s throat singing again in the area that they didn’t before. Many of the elders love me and always love me. The elders in my town that knew me when I was a little freaky growing up – I’ve always been weird. They all support me, but it was just people from different communities that were confused over my intention.

I feel that with children all the time. I recommend especially little girls come to the shows, see what different ideas of what femininity is. Yeah, I am completely unashamed of my sexuality, of my body, of my voice and of my fierceness. I think that little girls in particular are very happy with that, so I’m happy to break that, yeah.

Audience Member

Do you intend to collaborate with the younger throat singers that you personally know, or just generally like throat singers that you know?

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah I love that, but what I’m doing is, they were... Throat singing was locked for a while, you had to do the traditional songs in this way, and you stood like this and you did it like this, and you made these sounds and that was it. I’ve been doing this for so long now that more and more throat singers are being more and more open, and releasing the kind of tightness. I’m waiting for this next generation to come and I want to make a choir of throat singers, it would be so fun.

Audience Member

OK, thank you.

Tanya Tagaq

You’re welcome.

Audience Member

Hello.

Tanya Tagaq

Hi.

Audience Member

Hi, I’m from Australia and I work a lot in remote Aboriginal communities, and I might cry, for everything you’ve been saying is like, “Oh I’m going to...” It’s so parallel, it’s insane.

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah, it’s the same.

Audience Member

Yeah, it’s just...

Tanya Tagaq

When I went there, it’s unbelievable how we’ve been hurt. Thank you for doing that work.

Audience Member

It’s my honor and... I guess I was going to say, so I make music with the ladies out there and it’s really good. Because it’s been really good for a lot of the younger ones, relearning language. I guess I’m just interested in using art and music as a way of... I guess through your work people are getting to know the Inuit culture and some of the traditions. You were saying before, do you think it’s a burden to have to talk about it? Do you also think it’s quite a privilege and an honor to be able to have that platform to share that culture, your culture?

Tanya Tagaq

I think that’s what’s happening in this, there is a revolution happening in Canada right now, because we’re all freaking out that we have a platform. I can’t believe you guys are here with open ears and minds, thank you so much for coming. It’s amazing because when I was a young girl, if you talk about indigenous rights, people would just roll their eyes. Right now, there’s people that want to listen and want to hear and want to help, and it’s the most beautiful thing in the whole world.

We’re excited. The Tribe guys and I were excited. This is all so powerful, everything’s happening like the Black Lives Matter movement in the States and around, it’s all happening. People are understanding, well enlightened people are understanding that it’s not about taking rights away from anyone else, it’s about giving rights to other people. It’s human rights, it’s life. It’s love, it’s giving, it’s good. Thanks.

Audience Member

Hi.

Tanya Tagaq

Hi.

Audience Member

Thank you very much. To move away from the emotions a little bit, it’s very emotional. A technical question. You suddenly started singing like this in your 20s, early 20s. Maybe I misunderstood it, but what is actually going on in your throat when you sing? How do you do it? How do you rehearse it? Who can do it? Can anyone do it, could I do it? Could you talk about the technical aspect of it.

Tanya Tagaq

Yeah everybody has the same throat, every single person has the same throat. Inuit don’t have something weird, different to make throat singing happen (laughs). What it is, is the technical capability to make a deep sound on the way in the inhalation or the exhalation. Or a high sound on an inhalation or an exhalation.

You’re always breathing and the song continues, even though you’re maintaining breath. Using your nasal cavities and your epiglottis to switch between high and low notes. You just start and do it for a while and get used to it. Then it happens on its own, and then it becomes more creative and it’s very fun singing with beatboxers. We have a lot of fun playing with that because there’s a lot of similarities, and they can use their mouth in different ways I don’t know how.

On the new album there’s a Tuvan throat singer as well, which is a wholly, totally different kind of throat singing where the men do it, and it’s long exhalations. Then there’s joiking, there’s all different kinds of ways of expressing yourself vocally. It spans across all of humanity and culture I think.

Audience Member

Thank you, it sounds very wonderful.

Tanya Tagaq

Thank you.

Audience Member

You are very wonderful, thank you very much.

Tanya Tagaq

Thank you, you too.

Audience Member

Hi, how are you?

Tanya Tagaq

Hi, good.

Audience Member

I just wanted to say thank you for what you spoken about. I had no idea what was going on in Canada. I don’t really have a question, but I was really touched but what you said. I want to ask you also if you would like to do maybe later a little jam because I do beatbox also and...

Tanya Tagaq

You do?

Audience Member

...a bit of throat singing.

Tanya Tagaq

You beatbox?

Audience Member

Yeah.

Tanya Tagaq

Come up.

Audience Member

OK. (walks on stage)

Tanya Tagaq

Ready?

Audience Member

Let’s see.

Tanya Tagaq

Don’t fuck it up.

Audience Member

OK.

Tanya Tagaq

You start, I’ll follow.

(audience member and Tanya jam on stage)

Thank you. That was so fun, thank you.

(applause)

Anupa Mistry

Does anyone else beatbox?

Audience Member

I think you guys deserve a standing ovation.

(applause)

Anupa Mistry

That’s it, thank you guys. Thank you so much, Tanya.

Tanya Tagaq

You’re welcome.