Aglukark’s path brings honourary doctorate, food for the North
By Laura E. Young
SUDBURY – The act of writing led Susan Aglukark to commercial success in her music career and now sees her building a charitable foundation to help Northern communities
Laurentian University awarded the Inuit artist and keynote speaker a doctorate of letters on June 2 during Convocation Ceremonies.
“It means so much to me because the writing is the path. That’s what has healed me the most,” Aglukark says. She has been writing since she was 13.
Whenever she speaks, Aglukark reflects on looking for what eludes us and to not fear the unknown. “Don’t let what’s eluding you prevent you from truly engaging in your path. There’s never going to be direct answers. Just your path. You really don’t know when you’re going to end up.”
For Aglukark, it’s been a journey from her home in Arviat, Nunavut to Ottawa where, while working a 9-5 job, Aglukark pursued an opportunity in music. In 1993 she released her first album, Arctic Rose. She lacked formal music training but followed when her creative muse beckoned.
She has since created won three Juno awards, received the Order of Canada, and played for worldwide audience that have included the Queen and the late Nelson Mandela.
The career comes with a commitment to social justice and charitable work, something she is currently taking to the next level with The Arctic Rose Project.
That first album Arctic Rose, set the tone. There is a big crisis in children and youth in the communities, with abuse, high school drop outs, and the reasons behind the crisis, she says.
She looks to create safe places for children and youth and to develop morale in the Northern communities, beginning at the roots levels and supporting local programming.
“Hopefully by extension, homes start getting healthier, and we can find programs to directly help our youth,” she says.
The seeds were sown for this work over three years ago, after a woman in Montreal had collected food to ship to Northern communities. She was aghast at the shipping costs and contacted Aglukark. Then painting, she auctioned one of her works, raising the funds necessary to ship the food North.
In 2014, she went public with the multi-faceted problem of food for the Far North and raised $4,000 for food banks in Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet. Canadian North Airlines shipped the 1,000 pounds of food purchased.
The plan is to hold four, quarterly campaigns per year. A flash mob event in the three largest centres in the North will be a choreographed, traditional dance to her song Hinan Na Ho (Celebration) and is set for September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day in Canada.
Christmas time is the food bank campaign which aims to put 100 per cent of donations to purchasing food for registered food banks in Nunavut.
Of course there will be an arts element to the project/foundation, which will include a writing competition.
Aglukark feels “a responsibility” to her fans who connected the personal, private songs on that first album. “A lot of them are victims of sexual abuse. I couldn’t then go and have this successful commercial life and just abandon them.
“Part of the yang to the ying is that I healed as a result of this career from my own experience,” she adds.
“I need it as much as anyone else who is taking from it because it is my path, my journey, how I continue to sustain the art and stay on the path of healing. One can’t work without the other.”
She hopes the foundation’s work will expand one day to other Northern communities across Canada. Now she is waiting on registration of a charitable number for the foundation.
Links: www.susanaglukark.com https://laurentian.ca/convocation