October is Women’s History Month in Canada. Throughout the month we are highlighting remarkable women through history to the present day, and featuring some of their works in our library collection.
This week we are showcasing Tanya Tagaq. From the Government of Canada on Women of Impact in arts: “Tanya Tagaq is an Inuk throat singer-songwriter and avant-garde performer. Born in Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, on the south coast of Victoria Island, she left home at 15 to attend high school in Yellowknife. It was there that she first experimented with throat singing, a traditional art normally practiced by two women. Later, as a student of visual arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, she developed her own solo form of throat singing and soon gained popularity as a performer, both nationally and internationally, through collaborations with Bjork, the Kronos Quartet, Buffy Sainte-Marie and others. Tagaq has won numerous awards, including the 2014 Polaris Music Prize and the 2015 Juno Award for Aboriginal Recording of the Year. In 2016, she was named a Member of the Order of Canada. She is an outspoken advocate for environmental reform and protection of Inuit communities.” (Read more here)
Tanya Tagaq’s book Split Tooth can be found in the First Nations University Library collection here.
A general search of items by and about her can be found here.
Tanya Tagaq’s website (including videos of her works) can be found here.
More historical trivia!!! (Women in Canadian History: A Timeline):
1914-1918: “First female officers served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps.”
1993: “Jean Augustine, first Black Canadian woman elected to the House of Commons.”
2019: “Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was released.”
Tanya Tagaq Photo: Image Source