By Jim Barber
Susan Aglukark has lived a life, of this there is no doubt. Hers is a story of cultures clashing, battling through feelings of isolation and unbelonging, memories that can swing wildly from blissfully beautiful, to tragic and traumatic. As an artist, she has scaled the heights of the music business, been feted and honoured for her work, but also come to understand the crashing lows and disappointments that are part and parcel with a career in the entertainment business. Her life is, ultimately, one predicated on perseverance, on resilience, on self-belief and on constantly grasping for happiness, love and success on one’s own terms.
Earlier this fall, the multiple-Juno Award-winning Inuit singer/songwriter, visual artist, public speaker, educational advocate, non-profit founder and administrator, released her memoir Kihiani, co-written with her friend, author/journalist Andrea Warner, published by Harper Collins.
As the promotional material aptly captures, Kihiani, ‘captures both the disruption and the milestones, the devastation and the healing, that define Aglukark’s life and career. It is her profoundly honest story of navigating pain, reclaiming identity and finding strength through song.”
Yes it is, and masterfully so.
The book is neither a ‘click-baiting,’ salacious account of youthful horrors and adult injustices, nor is it a sugar-coated, pop-psychology, overly-jargoned self-help-type celebrity account of life.
It is measured, but still filled with emotional and narrative dynamism. It is direct without being sledgehammer blunt. It is revelatory, but relatable. Aglukark opens her heart and spirit but tempers what could be gushing sentimentality and oversensationalization with a firm, strong, deliberate sense of perspective and balance. There is a beautiful sagacity and sensibility to her story, with a through line of hopeful, forgiving grace through even the most tumultuous, most gripping and most painful of memories.
As stated in the press material quoted above, Kihiani is a story of struggle, reclamation and healing, one that is inspirational to readers and transformational for Aglukark herself. Now 58, she looks back on her life and career as a singer/songwriter, community leader and advocate from the point of view of a wife and mother of many years, someone who has lived outside of her Indigenous community for most of her life, but who is still deeply, passionately connected, visiting often to see her family, friends and to help run her Arctic Rose charity.
“The decision to write the book was two years ago. And it took that long to get it started and then to finish it. There was, you know, little hurdles along the way that that neither I nor anyone on the team anticipated, which I imagine happens quite frequently. So it took longer than I thought. One of the reasons why I decided to write the book and to share the story was because we don’t know what we don’t know. I realized partway through my career that there’s actually quite a lot that many Canadians didn’t know about, for example, Inuit and living in Inuit communities or on reserve in First Nations communities. And so I started to understand in the early part of my career there was this disconnect, because there was always the assumption that I had always wanted this life, that it was a dream and a wish to be a singer, and tour the world and win Junos. In fact, the story was very different. So the reaction from people has simply been ‘we didn’t know,’ but that they really appreciate the context and the story that I tell in the book,” she said from her home in Oakville, which she shares with her husband Jacques.
“Over the pandemic, there was a second major, major ‘aha’ moment for me in terms of that part of my healing journey up to that point. The first one occurred in 2012 [which she talks about at length in the book, a time of burnout and creative inertia]. The second one was during the pandemic, I knew it was time to share the story because I knew then absolutely that I was okay, you know, my life is fine. I’m living an incredible life. But there’s always that undercurrent of something and you always worry that you’re going to be found out, or something’s going to happen in your life. You’re always just anticipating this and not so much in a doomsday sense, but more of something’s coming. But with this thing that occurred over the pandemic, I finally understood the difference after that and that it’s all about living your best life. Now it was time to write the book. It was I felt like I was at a point in my life personally and professionally where I’m going to be okay.”
It comes down to the notion of the oxygen mask on the airplane. Fliers are instructed to put the mask on themselves first before placing one on their kids, because they are no good to anyone else until they help themselves. It’s the same for healing from trauma. It’s harder to help others when you haven’t been able to help yourself. Aglukark knew if her book was going to have the resonant impact she hoped with audiences, that she had to approach it from a position of strength – emotional strength, strength of character, but also the strength that knows testing times are ahead, that the process is going to be neither seamless nor straightforward. She realized she needed the strength to stand up and take back her voice, her power and her narrative.
“When we do our keynote presentations, there’s a piece I do called, Correcting the Narrative. And in there, you know, I focus on us doing the work we need to do for ourselves first. There’s Inuit for Inuit, First Nations for First Nations, Métis for Métis. So, talking about what we are undoing, unlearning to relearn and process in there. We have work we want to do for ourselves first because we became invested in a narrative that wasn’t true. The narrative that came from outside our community, outside our language and culture. Correcting that narrative becomes a priority. And so the hope with the book is for everyone, Inuit, non-Inuit, all readers, if they take away one thing, it’s that we have to spend some time as Indigenous folks from our respective Indigenous groups to do a lot of our own healing for ourselves first. We need to reconnect with the truth in our stories. We need our stories. And so this is one story that I hope the reader realizes you don’t know what you don’t know,” she explained.
“And I didn’t know a lot when I first started this career about myself, about the industry, about any of it, really. My hope for the reader is to understand it when we say we need time. Here’s why we need time. We’re unlearning and relearning and rediscovering self in this new world, in this new context, and then on top of that with all of the traumas that we have been through as Indigenous people. I was just at a book event, the International Authors Festival in Toronto, and sat on a panel with David Robertson, another Indigenous writer. And, you know, he said exactly the same thing. We have to heal ourselves first, work on ourselves first, otherwise, we’re useless to the process.”
It also explains her focus on balance – balance in her own life, balance in her career, emotional balance and the balanced way she deals with the complexities of familial relations, the rocky shoals of the music business and personal inner peace. As she said earlier, she needed to be in a position of strength to even contemplate writing this book, and she needs to be in that same mindset throughout the vagaries of her performing and songwriting career.
“I couldn’t have stayed in this career as a singer-songwriter if I hadn’t found personal peace in my life, in this career, in this life that I have chosen. Which is very hard to do because, as advocates, we’re constantly triggering audiences and ourselves in our concerts – every night that we perform, we’re triggering ourselves. If I hadn’t made a conscious decision to stay in the career, to keep getting better as a songwriter, to keep getting better as a singer and as a performer, I have to find personal peace inside of me somewhere. And I think when we talk about success while mentoring Indigenous musicians now, when we talk about what does success look like, especially as Indigenous artists, in the social-political climate we’re living in as Canadians, for example, the reconciliation conversation, I feel like we have to be sure that we share what works for us, keeping ourselves healthy in our life choices. And for me, reconnecting with some peace and joy inside of me, I have to protect that. If I successfully protect it, I can share that with the audience, whether that be artists or fans in the audience. And I really wanted the book to be read and felt that same way. There are truths and hard truths to share, but do you know what? We still want to live and keep building our best lives possible and finding that balance was important in the process.”
Growing up, as written in the book, besides the isolation and day-to-day challenges of living in the far north Aglukark was bullied as a child because her parents were, at times, itinerant Christian preachers, and the family moved a number of times throughout what was part of the Northwest Territories and is now Nunavut. She has also had to deal with what is known now to be generational trauma, passed down through her ancestors because of two centuries dislocation, disparity and outright violence inflicted by colonizers, settlers and the imposition of their governance processes, institutions, including the diabolical residential schools, and other direct policies of assimilation and cultural erasure. On a deeper level, she continues to manage and mitigate the long-term effects of a sexual assault perpetrated on her by a community member in her small Inuit community when she was just eight years old, which in its immediate aftermath, and for years later, manifested as suicidal thoughts.
The trauma is deep for Indigenous people, held in common almost like a hive mind by so many individuals and embedded into the very fabric of many Indigenous communities. So Aglukark knew when she started talking and singing about her own trauma and working towards helping those in her community work through their own trauma, that the scab of those wounds would be picked. Even writing this book and speaking about it, runs the risk of re-victimization for not only people in the audience listening to her story, but for her herself.
“I’m always, always cognizant of, even now in a keynote situation, re-traumatizing myself and the audience. But the fact of the matter is, sometimes, quite often, in fact, it’s going to be impossible not to trigger someone or self. And this is a fact that we’re going to live with for a while because, you know, if we wanted a statistic in terms of how many have trauma, 100% of the Indigenous community has trauma. So it’s always a concern, you know, because I will still get attacked by fellow Inuit or fellow Indigenous. I will get at least once a week a note saying, you know, ‘you have no right to do this.’ And I’m thinking, ‘I do. I’ve been there. I’m from there. I understand it,’” Aglukark said.
“I share it only because we can’t let up until, for example, we create better protections for children in our communities that haven’t even moved in 30 years. And that’s baffling to me. You know, until that happens, guess what? I’m not going to shut up about it. You know, so there are situations that are, to me, necessary for us to use our voice in that way. But I do worry about it. The intention is never to cause harm. But you never know. You never know what’s in the audience. And so you find the balance. You learn to read the room.”
She said once she started singing about the historical abuse on her early albums, specifically her first record, the independently released Arctic Rose (1992) the difficulties and deprivations faced by Inuit people, and later talking about it, and publicly advocating on behalf of her community, there was blowback. And even to this day, there is still a segment of the population who would rather ignore the real heritage of colonization, and who just don’t want to hear the horror-stories inflicted upon a minority people who are supposed to be their neighbours and co-residents of the shared land.
“I mean, I’ve got 30 years of doing this. I’ve been fortunate. And for the most part, a large majority of the career, it’s been really good relationships and feedback, for the most part, from audiences. In the beginning, there was a lot of discomfort from audiences and primarily white audiences. You know, before the commissions, for example, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and then the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Inquiry. Before any of those, there was a safe and comfortable kind of a status quo in the country. Everybody thought, ‘it’s all good. We don’t have to hear about it.’ But when [her album] Arctic Rose came out, and of course, Arctic Rose is all about anger, trauma and fear. So when you’re singing those songs and introducing them, you can’t sugarcoat the story. And so, often in the beginning, there was pushback from audiences. People walked away. Occasionally it still happens today. So, for the beginning of the career until the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, there was always pushback. There still is, but not as much now since the commissions, because now the evidence is there. You can’t deny the evidence. And so, we’ve got allies now in the audience, which makes doing this work a lot easier,” she said, adding that people should also not be surprised that she continues to also receive pushback from members of the Inuit community. It comes not from shame or wanting to cover it up. It comes from emotional and psychological fatigue. It’s not dissimilar to how someone spending the entire four years of the First World War in the trenches of Belgium would feel, their feet mired in the muck of past storms, their pathways blocked by shell holes, barricades, barbed wire, their every waking moment filled with the sounds of shelling, screaming, and the stench of death, when someone back home wants to talk about the war.
“Collectively, the Indigenous community is exhausted. But the fact of the matter is, we still have to get up and we still have to do that work. And sometimes people are just upset and they do react, and I get it. They react to trauma, and you have to let them. We have to let them. I do. That’s why I do so much art because it helps me process my own trauma. But, yeah, I think really the reaction often and the pushback often is, ‘can we stop for a while? Can we just take a break from this?’ Which, you know, I wish we could. I really wish we could. But the fact of the matter is, every day there’s trauma in a home, which often involves children or youth. And until that changes, we can’t stop. We can’t let up.”
Arctic Rose was a revelatory, powerfully honest collection of songs that, for the first time, gave voice to the troubles and trials happening under the noses of the authorities in Inuit communities. It eventually gave rise to another part of Aglukark’s legacy of hope and healing – the Arctic Rose Foundation, which works closely in schools in Nunavut to help students in all facets of life and career.
“The program runs for a month long, all throughout the school year on school days. Artists visits are once a week each month. So when I do an artist visit to a site, I’m spending those four or five days after school with the participants. And in those four or five days, one of our pillars is consistency where the artists are consistent, location is consistent, program approach is consistent. When I can do that and you see the light come on in their eyes, you see there’s a connection, there’s hope. It’s like when I started painting in 2012 and this light came on in my soul. I knew that I had just reconnected with my childhood joy that I had lost. When that happens in their eyes, yeah, that’s what it’s about. Now we’re going to do the real work from here on. But when that moment happens, I know I’m on the right track with the work that we are developing with Arctic Rose,” she said.
The word Kihiani, translated as accurately as possible into English, means something that you ‘must do,’ something that compels you, that pushes you forward to do that thing that you need to do. It is a sort of mantra or mission statement for Aglukark, one that she’s inculcated into every aspect of her life, her career, and even with regards to the writing of this memoir.
“What I’ve come to appreciate is in the early years, my first albums Arctic Rose, This Child [her 1995 breakthrough album, which included the massively successful crossover singe/video ‘O Siem’] and even the follow up to This Child, Unsung Heroes, I was kind of coasting. I was in a bit of a daze because so much was happening so fast. But during that time and shortly after Unsung Heroes, the world changed. Napster came along, and the old-school music industry way of doing things had shifted so much that I found myself having to choose. It was still scary because there’s still a lot I had to learn in the music business side of things. And I was pretty much self-managing at that point that there was a whole other kind of fear that came along. But what came with it was asking the question for myself, ‘do you want this?’ And I understood that I do want to be a singer. I want to be a songwriter. So I’m coming to understand that fear is a part of pursuing your dream. And Kihiani just simply means it had to be done. I had to do it. What else would I do? You know, I am a singer. I’m a songwriter. I’m an artist. That’s what you are. Do this for as long as you can. You know, there’s a really great thing, great philosophy – feel the fear and do it anyway. That was that decision at that time – Kihiani.”
Kihiani, the book, also gives a stark reality check to those who think that her life must be all champagne and caviar because she has four Junos and countless other music industry accolades. The music business is not for the faint of heart and has been known to chew up and spit out those it had previously held aloft, without a second’s notice, or a second thought.
“We still have those conversations when we do our workshops, and I say we because I do the creative side, and my husband Jacques, who was my mentor from the beginning, does the industry side, the record label side, because he’s a sound engineer, and the business side, because he manages the business of my company now. And always, without fail, I get asked ‘are you rich?’ And I will say, ‘do you know what? I’m not rich, but I have a lot, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve been working for 40 years, and trust me, if you work for 40 years, you can have what I have. No, we’re not rich.’ And then we tell them the brutal truth,” Aglukark said.
“We’ll break down a tour budget, and we have the best example – Canada’s 150th. We had this incredible offer to tour the East Coast for three weeks and do 21 shows, I think it was, or three and a half weeks and 21 shows, with a budget of $80,000. At this workshop for Inuit artists, Jacques broke it down, starting at the top with the $80,000. Then he went down the list: there’s the commission, there’s the travel, and there’s the band fees, and at the end, the bottom line was $200 net profit for Aglukark Entertainment for Jacques and me. And the young folks are like, ‘wait, how do you make a living?’ Well, here’s what we’ve learned to do. Jacques is managing this, so there is no commission. So we put that down here, and you break it down to a daily fee, and we’re lucky if we each get $300, $400 a day each, which is peanuts for the two of us for food and accommodations. But we wanted to share the brutal truth about the cost of touring. Do it if you love it, and we love it. I mean, Jacques and I, we love what we do, and we’ll do this for as long as we can. But it’s like I said, we burn out. We burn out. We love what we do, but we burn out. We figure out how to recover from burnout to keep doing this.
“And there were several times, and I think I mentioned it in the book, where I thought I was done and it’s time to move on. I actually even started applying for college programs in Nunavut to get back to some kind of a government job [which she was doing as she began her music career, based in Ottawa]. That’s a reality that we have to be honest about because it’s a brutal industry. But I’ve loved every part of it. I’ve learned so much from my former label. I mean, if there was ever the best possible home for me as that young person 30 years ago, it was EMI. They were wonderful people. And I learned about the brutal truth about the industry because I was safe to navigate it with them. Those kinds of things I’m very grateful for.”
One thing that, hopefully, readers will also get a sense of is just how dizzying and discombobulating Aglukark’s proverbial rise to success was. Practically overnight, when ‘O Sien’ raced up the charts, garnering massive mainstream airplay and video play, as a young woman in her early 20s, she went from a community that numbered in the hundreds of people, surrounding by the starkly beautiful, but sometimes treacherous landscape of the Arctic, to swanky industry red carpets, awards shows, and singing in front of audiences numbering in the thousands, not dozens. There was confusion, imposter syndrome and an internal back and forth from ‘I deserve this,’ to ‘what is going on?’
“It’s why the work with the Arctic Rose Foundation is so important to me now, you know. There was this moment early in my career when I think it was just after This Child had been released, this really foreign feeling started to bubble up. And it was just, ‘I think I love this. I think I belong here.’ I realized later on what that was, and it was that we don’t nurture dreamers. We disconnect from dreaming. And dreaming isn’t living in this la-la land world, but it’s a gateway to hope. So when this success started to happen, I understood. ‘I like this.’ And I make sure to share that, especially with our youth workshops, because there’s an important balance between living and wishing for your dream life and the reality. Here’s what it’s going to take. It’s going to take a lot of hard work. And you can absolutely do it. But be ready for the dark side of it – which is that it’s exhausting. It’s all of this stuff. But it’s well worth it. I mean, I can say that now, 30 years later,” she said.
“But yeah, it’s important to share the truth and make sure that we’re clear about finding that balance. It’s funny, just after Arctic Rose and just going into the EMI record deal, I was offered a book deal – I was 24, maybe just 25. And I’m looking at my then manager and said, ‘we can’t do that. What am I going to write? This is still so new. And I don’t even know myself yet.’ I absolutely couldn’t write this 20 years ago. I don’t think I could have written it even five years ago. I wasn’t there yet.”
Aglukark offered a little practical insight into the life of a very busy human trying to write a memoir. As stated above, from decision to begin work to release date of the book, it’s pushing three years.
“Well, it was a little bit of everything. Because, as you know, life in the music world is pretty hectic. And when you’re an independent artist, you’re wearing all the hats, so it’s even more hectic. So it’s the boss, not you. Going into the writing of the book, Andrea was the perfect partner for this because she gets the music industry. In the beginning, it was a little bit of going through all the notepads and the sticky notes and some of the diary entries and all the parts of my writing from the start of my career that we kind of just kind of put together. We sifted through everything, with Andrea organizing things in a way that worked for us. From then on, it was almost weekly, biweekly conversations, on the phone for an hour or two at a time, she would prompt me with questions, and I would write something and send that to her,” she explained.
“So it was a little bit of everything. And the plan was to have the book ready last year. But again, life happens, and we just got so busy with other things that it gave us time to do quite a few reviews of drafts. And actually, some really interesting conversations with home as well, because there’s parts of the story, and very important parts of the story, of ancestors that I didn’t want to go to deeply into without imposing on that part of the family’s story. You know, that’s their story. I’m not going to tell their story. But also, it was important to share the intergenerational piece, where I come from, how recently that world has changed. Going back to that and tracing that becomes important in the process. So having someone like Andrea sifting through and navigating and keeping things on track was pretty important. But it was engaging all the processes, existing diary entries, little notes here and there, short stories here and there, lyrics here and there, all of that. It’s really a narrative from beginning to end of the career up to now. And so, Andrea just did amazing keeping things on track.”
Balance. Doing what needs to be done. Being unafraid in the face of inevitable dark memories returning. Working hard and working with a greater purpose. If these are the only life lessons readers glean from Aglukark’s life as portrayed through the vehicle of Kihiani, then they have done well. But it’s also important for folks to know that this is just a waystation – a very compelling, heartfelt and impactful waystation – on a journey that continues to be full, rich and productive. Aglukark said she is in the middle of writing and recording a new album, following on the heels of her 2022 release, The Crossing.
“My life is equal parts music, making art and writing, and the foundation. A third, a third, a third. So there’s a balance there. I released my 10th album a couple of years ago and we’ve been in the studio since working on new songs, most of which are done. We’re going to release maybe an EP of new songs in January. We’re always writing and creating something, or collaborating on other projects now,” she said.
“One of the new songs is called ‘For You,’ and it’s going to be released in three languages: English, Inuktitut and a dialect of a First Nations near Kamloops. It’s a song for the children being recovered from the sites of the residential school. I included Kamloops because that’s where the first 215 were recovered. That will be the first song from the new album when it comes. But there’s another song coming out after that called ‘Disco Ball’ which I’m really, really excited about. I’ll tell you why I’m really excited about it. I mentioned that I’ve been a burnt-out songwriter for quite a few, for over 10 years now, and I get high anxiety going into a studio situation. With ‘Disco Ball,’ we’ve been writing it for a couple of years now my producer and I. And there was a moment in this process where I thought, ‘oh, what a relief. I’m glad I persevered as a writer in studio because I, I can feel when I beat that, that, that anxiety, and it’s an amazing feeling.’ And it happened with Disco Ball, so that’s a special song to me.”
As well as the memoir, a special 30th anniversary remastered vinyl edition of the triple platinum This Child album has also been released.
For more information on the Arctic Rose Foundation, visit https://arcticrose.org.
For more information on Kihiani, which is available at most physical and online book retailers, and other creative endeavours from Aglukark, visit https://www.susanaglukark.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
