I realize that birds see in a completely different way than we humans do. We are slow and lumbering, our language is deep and muddy. Our confinement to the ground elicits pity. They look at us as we look upon the trees, slow but full of longevity. The trees look at the rocks that way. Rocks look at the mountains that way. Mountains look at the water that way. Earth looks at the sun that way. Everyone has an elder.

"If you miss musicians who stand for something, look north. Tagaq is my hero."

Tagaq occupies a curious, uniquely Canadian stratum in the creative industry, in that publicly funded cultural institutions pay her to flagellate the wrongs of colonialism. In 2012, the Toronto International Film Festival invited her to sing a live score to the 1922 silent documentary Nanook of the North, about an Inuit community in northern Quebec, which is often criticized for its staged scenes and patronizing attitude. In October, she sang in Going Home Star, a Royal Winnipeg Ballet production about residential schools written by the novelist Joseph Boyden and produced in conjunction with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Like many artists of colour, Tagaq is expected to mean something larger than herself—an expectation that comes with a symbolic weight rarely placed on white artists. Upon Animism’s release, the Globe and Mail called it “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.” Although Tagaq speaks proudly of her Inuit heritage, she does not want to be boxed in as an Aboriginal artist. “I’ve worked very hard not to be Pocahontas’d,” she said.