Katajjaq and Cultural Appropriation

I am an Inuk katajjaq performer. Katajjaq, Inuit throat singing, the songs of our breath inspired by our guttural emotions, our tribute to the power of the natural world around us. There are many layers of feelings and thoughts to sort through in my own experiences learning and performing as an Inuk in 2020.

I think first about my earliest childhood memories, laughing with my sister in a canvas tent on the tundra, playing katajjaq together to pass the time. I think about my distant relatives waiting for the hunters to return from the floe-edge, inventing songs together, singing through a bond only surviving and thriving in an extreme environment can forge.

I think about the Inuit women who were shamed for singing katajjaq just a few short decades ago. I think of how they were regarded as offensive, immoral, evil for singing songs the women before them had sang for countless generations. I think about them being ridiculed, fined, even threatened with imprisonment for singing.

I think of the powerful Inuit women who have been working tirelessly to bring katajjaq back from the brink of extinction. I think about my own practice, how hard it was to learn, the joy of finally mastering sounds that were particularly difficult, the mimicry and mockery from non-Inuit children, the loneliness of being hungry to learn more and the long spaces of time between finding women to teach me.

I think about the non-Inuit who grab me after shows and frantically attempt to throat sing at me while begging me to teach them something before I leave the venue. I wonder why they are so desperate to snatch it up, to own something so many Inuit nearly lost and so many still have not yet had the privilege to learn.

I think about fellow Indigenous performers who have dabbled in katajjaq by mimicking videos of Inuit performers. I think about how strange it seems, how hollow, how it lacks context and purpose, meaning and depth.

I think about the time I practiced really hard to impress my cousin only to nearly pass out while showing off because I got too excited and didn’t breathe right. I think about that same cousin recording herself throat singing on cassette tapes and sending them in the mail so I could learn.

I think about the thousands of hours spent practicing. I think about being asked to perform for $50. I think about being told a standard fee is asking too much.

I think about non-Inuit performers in prestigious music collectives receiving opportunities, awards and other accolades to sing our songs without us. I think about our own Indigenous awards organizations and the recognition of non-Inuit as performers of Inuit katajjaq. I think about pan-Indigenization and all the confusion and loss of identity it brings.

I often feel both amazed and confused about this journey. Sometimes I feel angry. I feel sad for the songs that were lost before they could be preserved. I feel grateful for the ones that were saved and are being passed on. I feel incredibly lucky to have learned and to be learning.

I feel heartache for Inuit who wish to learn and have not yet had the chance.

I laugh with a warm heart thinking about the young Inuit in my life who come to me with their phones to record songs so that they can practice when they go back to their communities. I feel so proud of them. I wonder what their journeys will be like. I wonder how they will navigate their changing realities.

I hope those of them that become performers, that choose to share their gift with audiences, I hope they are treated with respect, paid properly for their time and not picked over for choice parts by big groups who have benefitted from the forces designed to keep them down.

I hope that katajjaq will fill them with joy, that it will ground them, bond them together, and help to heal wounds of loss. I hope they will have happy moments of singing where colonial contexts fade for a moment while they are transported into timelessness and their voices echo out alongside those before them in rhythm and laughter.