![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes the narrator’s voice shifts to philosophical musings and words of wisdom that may seem far beyond the years of a teenager. ![]() Her animistic view of the universe helps her cope with these everyday problems in terms of spiritual warfare. Her astral flights are a reclaiming of her spiritual heritage and the “shaman’s way” as well as a means of escape from the drunks at home, school bullies, and the roving hands of her teacher. I too am a predator.” This empowering initiatory experience is the catalyst for a series of bizarre and delicious excursions into the spirit world which occur throughout her teen years. Despite the threat of possession, she says, “I am not afraid, only curious. In “The First Time it Happened,” the girl describes the experience of falling into a trance, being attacked by a supernatural being, and the sensation of her “spirit self” leaving her body. Wielding words as sharp as shale rocks and ice, Tagaq narrates the story from the unnamed girl’s perspective with poems woven in between prose vignettes. In 1975, a fierce and tomboyish 11-year-old Inuit girl growing up in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut discovers her shamanic powers at the onset of puberty. This debut from acclaimed Inuit throat singer Tagaq (her album “Animism” won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize) is a shamanic coming-of-age journey through a haunted and mystical Arctic landscape. ![]()
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