Tanya Tagaq takes the stage and begins to speak softly to the audience, giving something of an introduction to the coming evening's performance. She describes throat singing as a traditional Inuit pastime. She speaks about Robert Flaherty's 1922 silent film Nanook of the North almost fondly, acknowledging the respect that the director had for the Inuit he filmed. She does this while also pointing out the film's significant fault lines, the stereotypes that it produced and perpetuated. She interrupts her narrative to ask the audience not to take photographs or record the evening's performance, and invites them to simply be in the space together, in the moment, "just for us" and not for social media.

A traditional game in Inuit culture, throat singing was always an intimate affair. Usually sung between women in the home or another domestic setting— sometimes as a form of lullaby-this pastime, like many other Aboriginal cultural traditions, was suppressed by the church and by state powers for generations.

Tagaq revives this tradition of sound-making and works with it to generate a new practice, a new mode of employment of old customs. And this resurgent knowledge is put to new political use. By layering her powerful voice over the silent film Nanook of the North, she literally embodies and harnesses the power of her ancestors, replacing dominant stereotypes with incontrovertible agency, domination with acts of self-determination, and defeat with acts of resistance, crafted with great care and generosity.

As her first performance in the U.S. Southwest, Tagaq performs Nanook of the North at Santa Fe's Lensic Theater as part of SITElines.

- Pip Day