Echoes of the arctic
Kihiani: A Memoir of Healing
by Susan Aglukark and Andrea Warner
Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2025
$36.99 / 9781443472944
Review and interview with the authors by Cathalynn Labonté-Smith
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Susan Aglukark’s book, co-written with Andrea Warner, music journalist and author of several books, is a privileged window into the struggles of a modern Inuk. Aglukark and her contemporaries were removed from the traditional way of life of the Inuit by the government and put into settlements with the empty promise of a better life.
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Love books that have a soundtrack? Kihiani is one of those. You can listen along and watch the music videos to Susan Aglukark’s stirring and beautiful songs as you read about the lonesome, shy, self-taught musician’s rise to fame from her humble youth. Aglukark is one of seven children—middle daughter to preachers, from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut.
The first destination of the musical roadmap of this recipient of four Junos, and a Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award life, is “Searching,” derived from a poem Aglukark wrote in a residential school in Yellowknife at Akaitcho Hall. She wrote the song in 1989 when she was a twenty-two-year-old Inuit translator in Ottawa’s Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Her debut song was made into a music video that ended up on playing on MuchMusic.
“Searching” is goose-bump inducing—sung in both Aklukark’s first language, Inuktitut, and English. She writes of both the fascinating back story of how she fumbles her way through the production of her first music video, but also the trauma that it caused as it triggered memories of the trauma she suffered. “That first day of shooting was when I discovered that being filmed and photographed was a trigger stemming from my childhood sexual abuse. I hadn’t known it would happen until that moment.”
“E186” is a chilling song about how the government gave Inuit identification numbers.
The government established an “Eskimo Identification” system, which essentially gave out dog tags and reduced every Inuk to a number. . . The letter represented your region—E for Eastern Arctic, where I was from, and W for Western Arctic—and the first number showed the district you were from and then the next set of numbers were your place in the family order or community. This dehumanizing process was also essential to getting our social benefits: we couldn’t receive them without our disc number.
“Anger and Tears” from Arctic Tears is a poignant heart-rending song from a child’s point-of-view of the aftermath of sexual abuse. Aglukark not only shares her personal story, including her private grief about the suicide of her ex, but also recounts the history of the Inuk at the hands of the settlers since the 1500s. The beginning of residential schools and settlements isn’t pretty. However, her account of her early life is as joyful as the arctic winters were brutal.
In Arctic Rose, she shares a love song to the north in “Song of the Land.” She expresses her resentment of having to move from her home in “Still Running.” The anchor song on the album is “Amazing Grace” that she translated to Inuktitut and sang in memory of the loss of her cousin, Kathy, to suicide as well as some friends.
In Arctic Rose, she shares a love song to the north in “Song of the Land.” She expresses her resentment of having to move from her home in “Still Running.” The anchor song on the album is “Amazing Grace” that she translated to Inuktitut and sang in memory of the loss of her cousin, Kathy, to suicide as well as some friends. She wrote another song for her cousin, called “Kathy I” in her album This Child. As you read the traumas of her young life, you keep hoping that life will get better for her.
Yet, her resilience shines through her glossy memories of playing in the snow despite the extreme temperatures. Although southwestern Alberta where I grew up wasn’t nearly as cold as where Aglukark spent her childhood, I was reminded of how I had to dress in endless layers of warm clothes also to go out to play in snow that piled over the rooves of our autos, sheds, and in some years houses. It was fun sliding, digging tunnels, and building Igluit in all of that fluffy stuff, but the double-digit cold could be deadly if not the cause of agonizing frostbite.
We didn’t think of the season as dangerous, really. We dressed for it and we didn’t know any different. It was part of our fun, walking to and from school in this weather. Lunch was more rushed, because we only had an hour and we had to put on all our layers at school, get home, take everything off, eat, put all our layers back on again, and hustle back to school.
Aglukark’s resilience in the face of oppression is astounding. Unfortunately, Susan, her six siblings, and parents were bullied because of their religious practices.
They chose ministry and they were bullied for choosing ministry, mocked and belittled for their values. My child heart would break because these were my parents. What was wrong with what they’d chosen to do? Yet they carried on doing the thing that they felt compelled to do and they chose ministry as their best way to help people.
But despite the persecution, her beliefs were a guiding force in her life and a continual source of strength. She needed this courage to survive being sexually abused by a family friend at only nine years old. The attack has had a lasting impact on her life.
After I told my mother, nothing was done about it, and it became even harder for me. It was still a weight that I carried, and I had nobody else to talk to about it, yet I felt like everybody intuitively knew. I started to hate myself more, and the confusion around all of it became even stronger. I felt stifled, silenced.
My happy-childhood period was before the assault and while living in Rankin Inlet; my awkward, being-bullied stage began when we moved to Arviat and my parents became more involved with ministry work.
The next traumatic event came when she, like all other adolescents in Nunavut (then called the Northwest Territories), had to move away from family to attend high school. Her residential school in Iqaluit was on an old military base with prison vibes. She lasted one term.
I told my dad, “If you send me back in January, I will come back as an addict, because that’s what everybody is doing.” . . . Seeing what was happening all around me with the drugs only made it more frightening. Thank goodness my dad believed me and said, “Okay, then you stay home.” I had to drop out of high school just to protect myself from all the stuff that was going on.
Next, she attended a massive residential school in Yellowknife to complete her secondary education, where she found solace from homesickness in playing piano and watching MuchMusic. Her dreams for her future took seed there.
Through her honest and open diary entries the reader learns details of her mental health struggles, early career moves, the court trial of her abuser and, how she ran away from the painful memories and shame to Ottawa, and her ever-present state of loneliness. “I was utterly alone—no family, no furniture, not even a phone for the first while. I didn’t have my sisters with me, I knew nobody there, and I had no way to call anybody.”
I relate strongly to the difficult phase of her early adulthood. When I was nineteen-years-old I moved to Kelowna where I knew no one. I worked as a waitress on night shift, so I had no social life as I slept much of the day. Without a telephone (this was before the invention of cell phones in the early 1980s) I used my tips for the closest pay phone located on the highway in West Bank.
I wrote poetry and short stories on an electric typewriter and typed manuscripts for other writers for extra income. One of the books I typed was written by an Indigenous woman who suffered terribly at a residential school when she was burned in the kitchen. It was the first time I’d heard of the inhumanity of residential schools, but Aglukark had to live it.
Loneliness and poverty gnawed at my bones. I ate from the greasy buffet at the Chinese restaurant which was free for servers. I barely kept from freezing in the winter by stripping the ugly wallpaper off the walls of my trailer and burning it in the potbelly stove. I was unable to afford filling the oil tank to heat the trailer, until my dad surprised me by filling up the tank. But I returned to post-secondary in Vancouver and fulfilled my dreams.
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Aglukark’s career burst through the icy layers of isolation with her song, “O Siem,” which emerged from her experience with the Coast Salish nation at a conference where she was a keynote speaker.
Two gentlemen from the Coast Salish nation welcomed and honoured the guests, and they had this beautiful hand gesture. I learned it was a part of the traditional practice of the Coast Salish to welcome and honour all the guests that come to their territory. They used the Halkomelem words “Huy ch q’u siem”—“Welcome, honoured guests.”
I was the first Inuk to have a top-ten hit in Canada. I was on a cross-country promotional tour doing thirty interviews in Vancouver, BC, alone, and the New York Times ran a profile with the headline “With Her Songs, Eskimo Bares Her People’s Pain.”
“O Siem” became the number one hit of 1995. At last the reader can breathe a sigh of relief that the narrator’s life will turnaround for the better. This Child became a triple platinum album selling 300,000 copies.
Throughout the length of the memoir Aglukark gives the backstories for more songs and shares multiple joys going forward. However, more challenges lay ahead in her healing journey for the reader to weather, including postpartum depression, running out of money to record more albums, her abuser reappearing in her landscape, and the losses that the pandemic brought.
(NOTE: The above quotes are taken from the Kindle version. But the print book with its beguiling cover of a bluebird Arctic sky and the title in brilliant colours reminiscent of the northern lights is worth purchasing, as it contains historical photos going back three generations of the Aglukark’s family and is a wonder to behold.)
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CLS: Susan, how did you and Andrea Warner become co-authors?
SA: The first step was to read books that my agent recommended. I decided that Andrea was my perfect match. Her approach was gentle.
CLS: Andrea, how did you react with Susan Aglukark first approached you to co-author her book? Is this the first book you’ve collaborated on?
AW: I was thrilled and honoured when Susan and her team first approached me. I was also a bit nervous because I’ve never worked like that before. Co-authoring was completely new to me, but once I read Susan’s writing and had a conversation with her, I knew it would work. I loved her natural inclinations as a writer and her approach to journaling. She’s so thoughtful and descriptive, so that’s half of it. Together we collaborated and made a space of trust and creativity, where Susan could dig deeper and really believe in the power of her own story.
CLS: Susan, what was the process for co-authoring with Andrea Warner?
SA: We started communicating over the phone, then virtually, in person. We’d chat and record some of it. There were prompt questions. She started with early life questions, “What year were you born? How many siblings do you have?” It was an organic process. The connection was important.
I felt that faith was to tell my story the way it needed to be told. The responses to the prompts are mine. Andrea pieced it together, but there wasn’t much piecing together because it was organized as my life before and after the assault.
There was a clear moment in 2012 when I knew I was going to be okay. Prior to that my only form of expression was songwriting, then I tried therapy. I heard Shaun Coleman’s song and it gave me complete release.
I found painting. I paint intuitive abstracts and have them on my Etsy site (www.etsy.com/shop/susanaglukark/?etsrc=sdt). I give a lot of them away. I also work with fabric.
(NOTE: Like her songs, Susan’s paintings are inspired by her northern upbringing.)
CLS: Andrea, what was the experience of co-authoring with Susan like?
AW: I loved working with Susan. We had a lot of emotional and difficult conversations, and I always wanted to honour the extent of the work she was doing. She’s one of the strongest, bravest, and most creative people I’ve ever known. I knew that already from her music, but it filled my heart to work with her in this way and have it reaffirmed constantly throughout the process.
CLS: What was it like for you retelling the tremendously difficult parts of your past for the book?
SA: (She sighs deeply.) Moments of sharing were a relief. Moments of sharing were a bit scary. It’s a complex thing—healing when so many are still stuck in the cycle. I would overthink. I knew it was time to write.
It took about eighteen months of back and forth writing before we were both happy with what we had and it was peaceful. I knew it was true to write it. Arctic Rose was frenetic for me. It was an incredible experience but it was a lot of new experiences.
CLS: Andrea, what was it like for you listening the tremendously difficult parts of her story and putting them into the book?
AW: It’s emotional and it’s hard but it’s so important to talk about childhood sexual assault. There’s so much shame attached to it for the survivors and the shame belongs on the perpetrators. Talking about it, being a witness when one can, it’s letting a little bit of light into some of the darkest moments of a person’s life. Mostly I’m just honored when people trust me enough to be so candid and vulnerable.
CLS: Andrea, do you have any advice for authors who wish to co-author?
AW: It’s a powerful thing to help someone tell their story, and I think it’s important to always be aware of that. Whenever I go into an interview situation, I want to be aware of the power dynamic in that moment. It’s a vulnerable thing to be the subject of an interview. Make space for that and acknowledge it and never forget that it’s a lot harder to be the subject of a memoir than the co-author.
CLS: Susan, what’s it like being perceived as a representative for the Inuk?
SA: I was more so seen that way in the early years, but now there are many others. I don’t live my life as if I were [an Inuk representative]. I did my part when I wrote for This Child and discovered two paths as a singer and a healer as it turned out.
I found that abuse occurs to all women and men everywhere and all the time. I still get abuse stories. We all need a place to put these stories. It started with Arctic Rose. I hold their stories and them myself.
CLS: Susan, have things improved for the current generation of Inuk? Tell us about your Arctic Rose nonprofit and its goals, please.
SA: They still need improvements in food, housing and mental health. They have higher education, there are more artists from the north, and the utilize their voices.
Arctic Rose introduced and expressive arts program in Ontario and in the north for youth to improve their mental and physical health, and express healthy emotions for Indigenous youth. It runs from September to May in the form of after school programs with paid youth workers for middle to high school students.
The students create Messy Books, or journals, where they write, draw, paint, and as well as create with all forms of multimedia art, as well as dance.
CLS: Susan, does the haunting beauty of the north continue to appear in your current pieces, like your paintings, or has your work shape-shifted?
SA: Absolutely. The Crossing, returns to the early years of our ancestors and what their life was like in a deep dive. They not only lived in the north they loved it. They lived their best lives in their environment.
CLS: Susan, are your early struggles that you describe in your book, such as low self-esteem from being bullied by your peers and community, feeling disconnected from your family from going to residential schools, and PTSD from being sexually abused as a child improving because of the accolades and recognition you’ve received for your creative work?
SA: Enough to do this work. I love the life I’ve built. I consider myself am extroverted introvert.
CLS: Susan, do you have any advice for moms experiencing post-partum depression after experiencing it yourself?
SA: It took five years to return to normal. Now menopause feels exhausting like post-partum. Be very gentle with yourself. There are the physical symptoms but then are the mental symptoms. Give yourself time to feel it.
CLS: Susan, what would you like your readers to take away from your book?
SA: You don’t know what you don’t know. We’re asked what the goal of reconciliation is but it takes time to discover ourselves. It takes time. This is just one story of those possibilities.
CLS: Andrea, what would you like your readers to take away from your book?
AW: I want them to be inspired to listen to Susan’s music and rediscover her discography. I hope they also consider her activism and are inspired to work towards their own healing and connecting with their own creativity.
CLS: Andrea, are you currently working on another book?
AW: I’ve been dealing with cancer, unfortunately, for the last year and a half, so while I have other book ideas, I’m not currently working on anything right now. I’m just focused on the fight and taking care of myself and spending time with my loved ones.
CLS: Andrea, is there anything I didn’t ask you that you wish I had?
AW: Susan and I did the bulk of all the interviewing via Skype, and it was a lot of long conversations every week, sometimes twice a week, for months. And then last year, just as we were supposed to work on the first revisions from the publisher, I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. Susan waited for me to have surgery and, luckily, at that time, I was able to resume working on the book after four months. Susan flew to Vancouver so that we could have face-to-face time and do 2.5 days of interviewing and it was really wonderful. Our second draft was so much stronger for our time together. My cancer recurrence came earlier this year in February and I’ve been dealing with various treatments since then and (I’m still deep in it) but I’m so happy to be reunited with her next week for our event at the Vancouver Public Library and to celebrate Kihiani together.
Susan and Andrea will be doing a book launch together: Tuesday, September 23rd , 7 pm, Vancouver Public Library – Central Branch, 350 West Georgia St., Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 6B1
Also, Susan will be presenting Songs & Stories: Saturday, September 27th, Reception at 6 pm, performance at 7:30 pm, Gibsons’ Heritage Playhouse, 662 North Rd, Gibsons BC V0N 1V9.
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Cathalynn Cindy Labonté-Smith grew up in the Lethbridge and Cardston areas of Alberta and moved to Vancouver, BC, to complete a BFA in Creative Writing at UBC. She later taught English, Journalism, and other subjects at Vancouver high schools. She currently lives in Gibsons (and North Vancouver), BC, where she founded the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society, including the annual Art & Words Festival, the Book Awards for BC Authors, and a literary map. Her previous book, Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue (Caitlin Press), was a bestseller in BC. She has a new book, I’m Not A Mormon (Anymore), to be released in Winter 2026, available for preorder from Caitlin Press or Amazon.ca. [Editor’s Note: Cathalynn Labonté-Smith recently reviewed Rob Fillo and PJ Reece, interviewed PP Wong and Bob McDonald, and profiled the Sunshine Coast Tale Trail for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster