Inuk electronica musician dj madeskimo to retire his name

Electronica musician Geronimo Inutiq has performed for years under the name “dj mad eskimo,” but he decide recently to stop using it. (PHOTO BY DAVID MURPHY)

DAVID MURPHY

MONTREAL — Electronic musician Geronimo Inutiq is ditching his dj madeskimo moniker

“I feel a little like Prince. You know, ‘the artist formally known as…’ Maybe we’ll work with a symbol for a while,” Inutiq said, sitting in a Montreal café March 1.

Less than a week before a scheduled gig at the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s annual Taste of the Arctic event in Ottawa, the Iqaluit-born 37-year-old says he’s changing his name because he wants to stop using the term “Eskimo.”

So much so, that he’s even scrubbed the word off his equipment.

“I have these tapes that I’ve made and I’ve printed out the labels but I’ve gone and crossed out the name,” Inutiq said.

“I’m going to censor myself.”

Inutiq first got the name “dj madeskimo” in the early 1990s while performing with Quebec City rap group Presha Pack.

“I’ve always tried to break out of it since then. I’m kind of glad to break away from it,” Inutiq said.

“Now I can just be myself,” he said, adding that for now at least, he’ll be playing under his birth name.

Inutiq said he thought about changing his name in the past, but only decided recently to act on it.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve reflected on the morality of representing those words. It’s loaded language and I’d like to disassociate myself from that loaded language,” he said.

“I see myself progressing at the same time as society is changing.”

For Inutiq, the word “Eskimo” represents Inuit, as a group, low on the world’s socioeconomic scale, facing poverty and hardship.

And it was the recent public debate about the term that got him thinking about it again.

Natan Obed, president of ITK, published a letter last December asking the Edmonton Eskimos football team to change their name.

Last week, Inutiq posted a 1,000-word statement on his Facebook page about the idea of changing his name.

Inutiq also discussed the name change with close friends and said that gave him cause for reflection.

“I feel I have a certain responsibility there and I’m going to use my position to engage in that conversation further,” Inutiq said — despite never really wanting that responsibility in the first place.

“No I don’t want to take that responsibility, but I am doing it for myself in terms of being honest to who I am,” he said.

And he’s not purposefully seeking the kind of political attention he might get for taking a stand against “Eskimo.”

Inutiq said he wants people to experience his art — whether it’s with one of his electronic compositions or a video in an art gallery — and to think about that art, not about him.

But what the public thinks of him does factor into the equation.

“I’m interested in having a positive social reflection on having a good healthy identity — myself or anyone else. I’m invested in that as much as I can,” he said.

Plus, walking into ITK’s March 7 Taste of the Arctic event as madeskimo might have been a little awkward.

“I think I might endanger myself professionally by continuing to use that name, because it’s not a reflection of the group,” he said.

As for what musical projects are coming down the pipe from Nunavut’s creative son, he’s not prepared to give that away.

“I actually like to stay anonymous and not have anyone expect anything really. I like to not saturate the market in any way. I like to remain kind of inaccessible, inasmuch as avoiding the public eye,” he said.

Inutiq was most recently part of the Arctic Noise Project in 2015, where he created new media artwork with archived materials from Isuma and the National Gallery of Canada.