'We're fumbling': Tanya Tagaq on capitalism, speaking up, and the need for more memorials

Tanya Tagaq is finally catching her breath.

Shortly after the world froze in its tracks during the early days of COVID-19, the Inuk artist was struggling. Twenty years of touring, life kept her on her feet, but in Toronto's lockdown, she felt physically and spiritually trapped.

"The city just wasn't cutting it for me," the Juno winner recalled in a recent interview.

"I grew up on the tundra and if I can't see the horizon or trees, I get a little bit squirrelly."

So after months of isolation, Tagaq plotted her escape. Along with her husband, she travelled to more remote areas of Ontario to reconnect with nature and, most recently, indulge in the snowy "dreamland" that winter offers.

Finishing her fifth studio album Tongues, released last month, offered another welcome distraction.

Inspired by her 2018 book Split Tooth, the project was largely completed before the pandemic with New York slam poet Saul Williams as producer. But with months of isolation, Tagaq and her mixer Gonjasufi started tinkering — until the sound was darker, grimier and almost unrecognizable.

While on a getaway in Simcoe County in Ontario, Tagaq spoke to The Canadian Press about her album, finding her voice online, and Canada's shameful record on residential school atrocities.

What follows has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CP: Using your book Split Tooth as the groundwork for Tongues was a twist, but having Saul Williams help shape the album was a bigger surprise. How did that come about?

Tagaq: I have an excellent record company and they went: 'Who's your dream person [to work with]?' I threw it out there almost as a joke, [thinking] this probably won't happen. But I have to give him a lot of credit because I was taking baby steps into language, having never incorporated a lot of comprehensible lyrics into my work. I prefer to stay in the abstract. But with the release of Split Tooth, and the recording of the audiobook, I thought it'd be a real shame not to marry these two. Saul Williams pointed me in the right direction. There were a few nights where we were just cry-laughing. Once you get silly with someone, it's very easy to work with them.

CP: On the opening track you proclaim: "You can't take our tongues." Since winning the 2014 Polaris Music Prize, many have turned to you as a voice for the Indigenous community and on Twitter, you seem comfortable doing that. Do you feel an obligation to speak up when an Indigenous issue makes headlines?

Tagaq: I tweet when it feels right to me. And if I don't feel like I know enough about the topic, I don't speak on it. But my husband says I'm broken because I have an inability to care about what strangers think. Say you're in a mall, for example; how many people in that crowded mall do you think you would get along with? A few, right? So why on Earth wouldn't you apply that to social media? Either you pick up what I'm putting down, or you're just not my type of person.

CP: We live in tumultuous times for any number of reasons, but can you talk about how you see the future?