Listen to tracks of throat singing and drumming dance music while admiring artwork in various mediums created by renowned artists such as Annie Pootoogook, Karoo Ashevak and Pitseolak Ashoona. This is what offers, with TUSARNITUT!the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in a very first Inuit exhibition produced in collaboration with the community.
The exhibit, which runs until March 12, 2023, showcases a wide variety of Inuit music and art from diverse communities in the Arctic circumpolar region. There are also various activities, such as traditional music listening circles, which allow participants to interact with Inuit musicians, as well as two educational conferences on the different aspects of this type of music.
Nina Segalowitz, an Inuit musician, was among the guests at the first listening circle, which was held on November 19. After a few minutes of listening to the musicologist and workshop leader, Claudine Caron, the lady insisted on speaking. An oversight, in his eyes, had been made at the beginning of the workshop: that of the recognition of the territory. “First, I would like to acknowledge that we are on the unceded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, who are recognized as the guardians of these lands,” she said.
A recognition that is dear to her, she who was a child of the 1960s roundup and who was torn from her mother at 9 months to be adopted by a Filipino mother and a Jewish father from Montreal. Raised in the religion of this adoptive father, it was not until the age of 20, during her studies at Concordia University, that she found her roots by discovering throat singing. Long banned by the clergy, this art form has survived thanks to its clandestine practice. For meme Segalowitz, this form of music — where two Inuit women face each other and sing until one of them laughs — was, and remains, a visceral experience that helped her reclaim her culture of origin. She has been practicing it for more than 30 years now.
Throat singing has been protected in Quebec since 2014, but its survival remains threatened. Hence the importance for M.me Segalowitz to practice it and make people discover it through records, concerts and encounters.
The musician, however, refuses to teach throat singing to non-Inuit, citing the theft of Inuit traditions without cultural recognition. Kind of like kayaking, she says. “When I tell them that, they feel insulted. They feel entitled to learn something that exists so precariously, because it was forbidden for a long time, she says. But for me, throat singing is my link to my ancestors, a link that has almost been lost. When I sing with my daughters, I close my eyes and imagine my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and all the women who preceded them around us, celebrating together that this art was not lost. »
Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk, anthropologist and co-curator of the exhibit, agrees. “Art was a way to express things that we were forbidden to express,” says the specialist, herself having been encouraged by her father to learn throat singing to avoid her disappearance. To properly reflect the diversity of Inuit communities, Ms.me Koperqualuk used his perspective as an anthropologist and his experience to select the works for the exhibition. “I shared my lived experience as an Inuk with my non-Inuit co-curators, a perspective that is lacking in a large institution,” she explains. The link with the community is important. »
She is very proud that this exhibition was put together in collaboration with Inuit artists. “Traditionally, museum institutions exhibited Inuit works without collaborating with us. To be part of the movement towards decolonization that shows the beauty of Inuit culture is also to decolonize conservation practices. »