Nunavut’s Tanya Tagaq to release new album: Retribution

The cover of Tanya Tagaq’s new album, Retribution, which is scheduled for release Oct. 21.

Nunavut performer Tanya Tagaq will release a new album, on Six Shooter Records Oct. 21, entitled Retribution.

Retribution, a concept album, will talk about the “rape of women, rape of the land, rape of children, despoiling of traditional lands without consent,” said a news release.

The album, led by the track “Aorta,” first released last year, concludes with a cover of Nirvana’s “Rape Me.”

Tagaq is no stranger to taking a strong political positions.

Recently, Tagaq told Nunatsiaq News that she is “fed up” with the negative stereotypes and the heavy burden that Inuit carry because of behaviours like those admitted to by Nunavut MP Hunter Tootoo, who resigned as a minister and a member of Liberal caucus in May to check himself into an alcohol addictions treatment program, later admitting to a “consensual but inappropriate” relationship with a staffer.

Tagaq’s new release follows Animism, which picked up the 2014 Polaris Music Prize.

Later this month she starts a tour which will bring her to 10 concert venues, including performances in the United States, in Santa Fe, Fairbanks and San Francisco, as well as in Canada, at halls from Corner Brook, Nfld. to Ottawa’s National Arts Centre.