Northern reflections

For many of us living in urban Canada during the 1990s, our first introduction to Inuit culture was through the songs and videos of Susan Aglukark. The four-time Juno-Award winning musician had her first breakout success in 1995 with the re-release of an album called Arctic Rose. The hit single O Siem turned the humble singer into the first Inuit performer to achieve a Top 40 hit.

Yet as Aglukark’s musical career grew by leaps and bounds throughout the ‘90s and early aughts, her private life told another story. She was waging an internal battle against trauma after losing a friend at a young age to suicide — an unfortunate theme that would underscore much of her early adult life — and the unrelenting loneliness that stemmed from being an adolescent sent hundreds of kilometres away from home just to stay in school. As a kid growing up in the Kivalliq Region (now known as Nunavut), there was no other choice but to move to Yellowknife if she wanted to earn a high school diploma.

Further, the forces behind Aglukark’s love of music was also once a relentless source of bullying. Her parents were preachers in a community unaccustomed to Christianity, and while the gospel music that filled her home may have influenced the talent that would propel her to stardom, it also made her school days a living hell.

“Our religion made us a bit of a target,” the 57-year-old artist recalls in her new memoir Kihiani: A Memoir of Healing, co-written with Andrea Warner.

In this beautifully written story, Aglukark also recounts the life-changing event that happened when she was eight years old — and no one knew how to help. Sexual assault stole her innocence, but it was the community’s silence that made her feel isolated. Even her own family became estranged after being unable to support her in ways she needed, causing her to flee the family home and take a job in Ottawa at the first chance she got. While working at an entry-level job at Indian Affairs, she shared a poem with her boss that she had written as a 15-year-old trying to come to terms with suicide. That poem turned into a song that ultimately launched her career.

“The circumstances in which we created and recorded ‘Searching’ were stranger than fiction,” Aglukark writes. “Less than a year after I basically ran away from Arviat, I was sitting in a recording booth in Indian Affairs with two sixty-something white guys who also worked with Indian Affairs and we’re developing a piece of jazz music for a short documentary that turned into a music video that wound up on high rotation on MuchMusic. You couldn’t make it up.”

From then on, Aglukark would turn to songwriting and singing for solace and healing. Three decades later, she’s still writing. This time, it’s in the form of a book that is part celebrity memoir, part recovery story and that also offers nature writing at its finest.

Throughout the story of healing is a celebration of the natural world that shaped Aglukark’s love and respect for the land.

Years ago, Aglukark had decided to dedicate her creative talents to educating people about northern life and her faith. It is a pattern that continues in this profoundly honest and moving memoir.

Rochelle Squires is an avid reader with a passion for memoirs, drawn to real-life stories and personal journeys.