The Aboriginal Turn: Analysing Tagaq’s Animism and the Changing Relationships between Canada and its Aboriginal Populations

By Alex Polley

Please note that this was originally a term paper submitted in

December, 2014 for a graduate-level seminar in my MA in Music

and Culture.

Aboriginal and First Nation communities across Canada have

been mistreated for over four-hundred years (Atleo 2008, 31).

Lack of respect for treaties, the creation and continued use of

the Indian Act of 1867, and the current conditions of many

aboriginal communities, which have been described as “third

world” by some, all support this claim. Marlene Atleo’s

assertion of negligence by the Canadian government is most

accessible in the following quote:

Over more than a hundred years, federal Canadian government policy favoured

settlers and excluded Aboriginal people from legal, social, political, and

economic life in ways that privileged the Canadian majority while

disadvantaging and assimilating Aboriginal people (Atleo 2008, 32).

Such disadvantaging and assimilation of Aboriginal people, Atleo

further argues, created a sense of fear and helplessness (Atleo

Polley 2 2008, 33-4). Similarly, in a panel discussion in 2005 by John

Kloppenborg, Cora Voyageur argues The Indian Act deprived

Aboriginals of enfranchisement, land ownership, and movement.

Additionally, it made employment difficult, transforming reserves

into ghettos (Calliou, Voyageur and Kloppenborg 2005, 88-89).

Moreover, I argue that by prohibiting Aboriginals from exercising

their rights and forcing them to live in ghettoised communities,

the Canadian government took away their voices at the individual

and community levels, inasmuch as their opinions and the issues

relevant to them were marginalized. Entire populations of people

were no longer heard until they received the right to vote in

1960 and arguably remain unheard in comparison to the majority of

Canadians who do not live in the above conditions today.

In recent years, a movement called Idle No More was launched

to end such mistreatment of Canadian Aboriginal people. In their

“Manifesto”, they demand that the previous treaties be upheld and

that they receive appropriate funding for housing

(Idle No More 2014). Furthermore, Daitsman and O’Brien have

argued that, “Idle No More has successfully encouraged sharing of

information about sovereignty and environmental protection and

Polley 3 galvanized people to stand up for themselves and the land”

(Daitsman and O'Brien 2013). This is also reflected in

contemporary music by

Aboriginal musicians such as the group A Tribe Called Red (ATCR)

and soloist Tanya Tagaq. Animism, an album by Tagaq, protests

previous actions against First Nations and Inuit communities, who

have lost aspects of their identities and large swaths of land

due to government control and appropriation. This is supported

by Robert Everett-Green from the Globe and Mail, who reviewed

Tagaq’s album when it was first released in May 2014:

She hopes to make [the strong political aspect of her music]

a bit more obvious with Animism, which is both a hymn to

the spirit in all living things and a manifestation of the

indigenous activism that gave rise to the Idle No More

movement (Everett-Green 2014).

He also points out that Tagaq’s family was one of the many

relocated in the 1950s from Quebec to Resolute Bay. He also

discusses Tagaq’s time in residential school, where she separated

Polley 4 her from the experience of throat-singing until adulthood

(Everett-Green

2014).

The Idle No More movement has received attention from large

media companies such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

(CBC) and CTV Television Network, as well as public support from

politicians and community leaders, and others, which is

indicative of changing concerns amongst the Canadian population.

This is supported by recent advances in popularity by Aboriginal

artists including A Tribe Called Red (ATCR) and Tanya Tagaq, who

have secured Juno Awards and the Polaris Prize, respectively over

popular white artists (Kinos-Goodin 2014) (Newman 2014). In part

because of Idle No More and the attention it has received, I

believe we are witnessing a changing relationship between the

Canadian government and the Aboriginal communities within its

borders. For example, the current Canadian government has begun

installing new water treatment plants, a project that I took part

in advocating last year, since the movement’s inception in 2012.1

1 I was involved in a project called the “Take Action Project”, which sought to facilitate the lives of Aboriginal people on reserves, many of whom lacked access to clean water, public facilities, and schools of comparable quality tothose off reserves.

Polley 5 Furthermore, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has apologized for the

boarding schools that Aboriginal children were forced to attend,

where they were often physically, emotionally, and

psychologically abused (Government of Canada 2010).

As mentioned above, this transformation in

Canadian/Aboriginal affairs is also reflected in contemporary

music by Aboriginal musicians. For instance, Everett-Green

argues Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq brings many aspects of Inuit

culture to listeners and challenges a variety of Canadian beliefs

(Everett-Green 2014). This can be seen in her most recent album

Animism where she questions our separation from nature and our

acceptance of extracting oil through use of pressurized steam,

known as hydraulic fracturing, colloquially shortened to

“fracking”. Her most recent album, Animism, also won the Polaris

prize, an award for Canadian musicians bestowed upon a musical

artist by a large number of journalists and media critics. This

is important because it thrust issues relevant to her into the

national spotlight and meant an increased awareness of Inuit

spirituality and culture. The messages conveyed by Tagaq’s

Animism are indicative of the changing relationship between the

Polley 6 Canadian government and Aboriginal people, because the music

requires listeners not only to hear her opinions, but to hear

them through the utilisation of a medium that is culturally

relevant to her community – throat singing. By using throat

singing she challenges our previously-colonial government and

amplifies the voice of many by expressing her opinions on her own

terms. This is also apparent in “Fracking,” a piece that

questions a contentious topic among Canadians, particularly in

Aboriginal communities. I will explore the conditions created by

legislation such as the Indian Act, which lead to a loss of

spirituality and voice for many Aboriginals on both individual

and community scales. Subsequently, I will explore pertinent

aspects of Tagaq’s Animism, including how it restores the voices

of Inuit communities and how that is reflective of the goals of

the Idle No More movement. Finally, I will conclude with an

analysis of the song “Fracking” in order to support my arguments.

The Idle No More website claims the intent of the originaltreaties between

Aboriginal communities and the British Crown was to share the

land now known as Canada, while retaining the rights of

Polley 7 Aboriginals to access to land and water, among other things

(Manifesto 2014). The website also points to the Canadian

government’s use of resources and the resulting pollution poured

into local rivers and lakes.

Furthermore, the authors argue that the government requires

permission to allow construction on Aboriginal lands and that the

people of those lands are entitled to compensation. These

measures along with those mentioned above, Idle No More points

out, are what the group seeks to change (Ibid).

Amanda Morris writes, “Idle No More exposes the problems

with the legal and political relationship between First Nations

and the Canadian government…” which includes but is not limited

to exclusion, assimilationism, and discrimination, all of which

are acts that may alter one’s identity (Morris 2012, 247). For

the Inuit, a people whose spiritual beliefs are comprised of

reverence for the spirits of animals and the Earth, our western

practices of exploiting the resources of our surrounding

environment in excess and assimilating or discriminating against

those who do not creates a dichotomy of “high” and “low”, or “us”

Polley 8 and “them”. This divide is exposed in Richard Middleton’s essay

on “Western Belongings…” in which he defines “high” music as

intellectual and bourgeois while “low” music is often exotic,

invokes folk sensibilities, and is unreflective (Middleton 2000,

59-63). He also points to the assimilation of musical aspects

from folk or a popular genre, by analysing simplicity and the

folk in Mozart’s Magic Flute (Papageno) and blackness in Gershwin’s

Porgy and Bess (Ibid, 69). Although Middleton points to folk and

“blackness” as traits often attributed to the “low” musical

category, he does not speak of “nativeness”, nor of Aboriginal

music.

One type of Aboriginal music in Canada is Inuit throat-

singing. Beverley Diamond explains that throat-singing occurs as

a competitive game between two women:

Two women face each other at close proximity, often grasping

the forearms of their partner and rocking with the rhythm

of the game[…]They perform a series of short motifs in a

tight canon: one woman imitates her partner one “beat” (or

about a half a second) later. The motifs include both

breathy (unvoiced) and throaty (voiced) sounds, audible

Polley 9

rhythmicized intakes of breath, pitched and non-pitched

sounds. After a short while, the lead singer changes the

pattern and her partner must follow. […] In some areas the

games are competitive to see who can continue the longest.

[…] Most often the games imitate the soundscape of northern

life: a puppy, polishing sled runners, the river, the wind,

a mosquito” (Diamond 2008, 50-52).

She also points to Jean-Jacques Nattiez, a semiotician from

l’Université de Montréal, who describes the lyrical topoi as

follows “…meaningless syllables and archaic words, names of

ancestors or of old people, animal names, toponyms [names of

places], words designating something present at the time of the

performance, animal cries, natural noises, and tunes borrowed

from petting songs, drum-dance songs, or from religious hymns”

(Diamond 2008, 49). The ‘throaty’ voices, archaic words, names,

animal cries, and natural noises are all present in Tagaq’s work.

This is most easily exemplified in the songs, “Howl” and “Uja,”

which refers to a portion of seal skin (Inuktitut Computing: The

Iqaluit Project 2012). Moreover, “Tulugak”, meaning raven,

presents corvid calls throughout, while “Umingmak” (Ellesmere

Polley 10 Island) is used as a short motif within a canon comprising of

vocals, percussion, and electronic dance music (EDM). One might

notice how Tagaq’s themes consist of animals present in the

arctic, as well as an island within the territory of Nunavut. As

the album title suggests, each topic represents something of

spiritual importance within her culture, including the animals

that surrounded her and the island on which she lived.

Throat-Singing’s Challenge to Contemporary Canada

Inuit throat-singing would generally be categorized as “low”

music when using the descriptions provided by Richard Middleton.

This form of singing invokes the “exotic” as it derives from a

non-European culture and uses neither non-European instruments,

nor techniques. Likewise throat-singing invokes folk

sensibilities as it is traditionally performed as a game rather

than art. As such, it is seemingly unreflective. Lastly, throat-

singing also comes from a native people who have in the past been

considered ‘savage’ by European colonists. However Tagaq uses

throat-singing in order to voice her opinions and the opinions of

many others who have previously been disenfranchised through our

government and our cultural biases. Moreover, it is

Polley 11 hyperreflective due to its topoi, which focus mainly on culture

and spirituality. Lastly, using a form of expression from her

own culture and expressing herself on her own terms, Tagaq

challenges our perceived image of ‘savage’ low-music and our

patriarchal attempts to tame its people, as seen through the

Indian Act and residential schools. If we therefore accept the

“high” and “low” dichotomy of musics, Tagaq invalidates it by

using “folk” and the “exotic” in as non-European music in order

to create an intellectual and reflective music.

Personifying/Amplifying the Earth

Tagaq’s throat singing and her evocation of the spirits

significant to Inuit animist beliefs return certain aspects of

power to a traditionally marginalized population. One of the

more contentious issues within many communities is the act of

fracking, a subject on which Tagaq has spoken quite a bit. In an

interview with Sarah Rogers, Tagaq says the following:

Basically, I wanted a song to be unlistenable, so ugly and

disgusting, so I imagined my whole body was the Earth and

that someone was doing fracking on me … I wanted to

sonically shove that in people’s faces (Tagaq 2014).

Polley 12 The above quotation raises a number of questions. Firstly, what

is fracking and what does it sound like? What might it sound like

if it was done to someone? Lastly, how does Tagaq recreate this

sound? Hydraulic fracturing, as I explained above, is the process

of extracting oil from rock using pressurized steam. I would

imagine such a process would including the droning of machinery

such as drills and boring machines, the sound of water breaking

rocks, and the dense, busy sounds that result.

Fracking also creates wastewater that may include dissolved

metals and naturally occurring radioactive materials, according

to the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Furthermore, it draws large amounts of water, has the potential

to pollute underground sources of drinking water through

spillage, and burns diesel causing further CO2 emissions (Natural

Gas Extraction - Hydraulic Fracturing 2014). It is thus

unsurprising that this process causes concern amongst individuals

whose land has previously been expropriated for government use:

fracking may not only pollute the water, but also the air and

those living nearby. Tagaq has therefore created sounds that I

believe are representative of this pollution. Indeed, as I will

Polley 13 argue below, the Earth is moaning, crying, and surrounded by

sounds of droning contrabasses and col lengo tratto violin bows

creating chilling, foreboding resonances through extended

techniques.

Regarding what committing the act of fracking to an

individual may sound like, it would obviously include a great

deal of pain and one can therefore assume it would involve

moaning, screaming, and crying. This is what Tagaq presents her

listeners in “Fracking”: an individual or spirit in great pain,

suffering at the hands of what sounds reminiscent of machinery.

The work begins with a wordless moaning by Tagaq, interrupted

only by intermittent gasps for air. Tagaq is joined by a droning

double bass at thirty-three seconds, which remains on B1 (the B

below the bass clef) for a large duration of the piece. The other

members of the string section enter at 1:08 col legno tratto –

meaning the bow is drawn across the strings using the wooden side

as opposed to the side with horse hair – until the first violin

enters, playing a tremolo countermelody twenty seconds later.

Tagaq’s singing is reminiscent of crying and gasping throughout

the work until 2:10 when she begins to sound in a more guttural

Polley 14 fashion similar to a growl. At the same time, the strings

increase in rhythmic and tonal intensity until they suddenly

withdraw, except for a select few who continue their droning

notes. It is also important to note that at no time do the

strings create a unified rhythm and that the chords created

throughout the work are tone clusters.

Similar to Olivier Messaien’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps –

“Louange à l’Éternité de Jesus”, much of the accompaniment does

not provide a pulse indicative of continuous time. This evasion

of time is an effect created through recurrent alterations within

the accompaniment in regards to rhythm length, especially in the

continuo drones played by the double bass. As time is an

invention of humanity, other natural beings do not necessarily

require it – perhaps with the exception of day and night, or when

they should awake and when they should sleep. The meaning behind

this sense of

Polley 15 timelessness is two-fold: firstly, it represents the natural.

For the Earth, a celestial body over 4.5 billion years by our

count, time has very little meaning. Secondly, we may view the

piece’s absence of time as a waking from sleep. Indeed, one

interpretation of the work might find it is an account of the

earth waking up after its importance was forgotten, post

European contact. This is reflective of Idle No More’s

‘awakening’ of Aboriginal rights movements, which have remained

quite silent for a long time.

The col legno tratto (the act of drawing one’s bow, using

the wooden side, across the strings of the instrument) violins

support Tagaq’s attempts to portray the pain she recreates how

the Earth must feel. The extended technique in its more basic

form – col legno, or of the wood – has been used for nearly two-

hundred years to represent things which we find discomforting or

even scary. Examples of col legno and the grotesque include the

“Witches Sabbath” in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, resurrection

in

Mahler’s Second Symphony, and the unknown and frightening in the

movie score for Alien. Col legno tratto is an extension of the

Polley 16 above technique whereby you no longer merely strike the string

with the wood of your bow, but instead draw the bow across,

creating a thin, eerie sound similar to running one’s nail

across a hard surface.

This technique may also resemble a whine or a crying sound.

Where the string ensemble plays seemingly alleatorically and

certainly only together at a macro scale (they come in

approximately together doing something similar), we may view

each violinist as a voice which has been harmed due to colonial

domination. Whether the voices are to represent suffering

individuals or the ignored spirits of traditional Inuit

Animist beliefs I will not look at here. Rather, the imagery

created by the background violins of a group of voices suffering

together along with the crying Earth and the droning drill of

fracking is what I will continue to analyse.

Although it has not been explicitly stated by Tagaq, the

droning B1 present throughout the work is reminiscent of a drill

or other forms of machinery used for the purpose of boring holes

or digging into the Earth. Whether Tagaq intended to use such

Polley 17 precise imagery is unknown at this time, but where she has

argued that her intent was to create the ugly sounds of pain she

imagined the Earth must feel (see the above quotation), such an

assumption is not unreasonable. For instance, note that the

vocals are instigated after the bass’ entrance. As Tagaq

amplifies the complaints of the spiritual Earth, she must

exhibit the pain felt by being ‘drilled into’ shortly after it

begins.

If “Fracking” is supposed to sound ugly, disgusting, and as

if it was happening to an individual, then could she be giving

the spirit of the Earth a voice? I argue that the above

statement explicitly describes Tagaq’s intention to make us hear

the Earth’s voice, but it does not necessarily create one. The

question of whether Tagaq is returning or creating the Earth’s

voice or whether she is amplifying an already-existing one is

difficult to answer and I am not, as a descendent of white

colonists of French and British heritage, capable of doing so

satisfactorily. However, for the sake of concision, I feel that

it is important to point to the fact that many Inuit have

continued to practice their traditional beliefs, albeit in

Polley 18 smaller numbers after colonial Europeans arrived to North

America. As their beliefs have continued, so too have the

spirits in which they believe. If this is indeed the case, then

the spirit of the Earth did not lose its voice; rather, it was

quieted through our colonial practices. Through recording her

voice and disseminating her beliefs, Tagaq therefore amplifies

those characteristics or feelings that she believes the Earth

has and magnifies its voice so that others may hear it. I must

reiterate that this is not a complete argument, nor is it

necessarily correct, though it is consistent with colonial

histories related to Inuit communities: European colonists did

not wipe them out like they did the Beothuk, nor did they

assimilate the Inuit as successfully as they did Aboriginal

groups of Latin America.

Conclusion

Traditional spiritual and personal beliefs of the Inuit –

preserving and respecting the earth and those inhabiting it –

are not only reflected within the album, but also amplified by

Tagaq’s recorded voice. Similar to Animism, Idle No More’s

intentions, in distilled form, are to create a method through

Polley 19 which concerns of Aboriginal populations may finally be heard.

Tagaq, through dissemination of her music and her recent Polaris

Prize win, has amplified the voices of many much in the same way

Idle No More has become a national movement and received

international attention through the media.

Furthermore, Tagaq is well known for her political views

and has been outspoken on many occasions, particularly about

missing and murdered aboriginal women, as well as PETA and the

annual seal hunt in northern communities (CBC 2014). This is

best exemplified in her Polaris prize acceptance speech, in

which she added “Fuck PETA,” due to the organization’s attempts

to eliminate seal hunting and their reaction to

Tagaq’s “sealfie” where she posed her baby next to a seal that

had been hunted for food (MacNeil 2014). In her interview with

the CBC, Tagaq explains that the picture was not meant to be

disturbing or upsetting, but rather to expose the separation

between nature and humans. She uses the example of a recently

killed cow, which is used to create a burger: the former we

would find disturbing while the latter we consume readily (CBC

2014).

Polley 20

Idle No More is a protest movement seeking equal rights and

access to land and water as promised to Aboriginal communities

by the British Crown prior to

Confederation in 1867. It is also a method by which those

affected by the subsequent Indian Act may express their

frustration, anger, and hurt due to mistreatment via several

attempts to assimilate as well as segregate Aboriginals from

colonial, white society through residential schools, familial

relocations, and reneging of previous agreements by the Canadian

government. Tagaq’s Animism is reflective of this movement as it

amplifies the voices of Inuit, whose spiritual beliefs were

suppressed or forcefully altered through government-run

exploitation of Aboriginals and their land. Of course, Tagaq is

not alone in creating music reflective of the movement: Kinos-

Goodin refers to recent years in which a large number of

Aboriginal musicians have received popularity as the “Aboriginal

Renaissance”. To conclude, Tagaq’s Animism was successful in

reflecting the Idle No More movement by expressing her beliefs

in her own way, using a mode of expression distinct to her own

culture and thereby challenging Canadians and their government,

Polley 21 and I expect we will continue to see music reflecting Aboriginal

beliefs for a long time to come.

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