On December 1, 2023, Anishinaabe rapper and community activist, SouFy, released a new track called “Futursitic Ndns.” In the hook, SouFy raps, “Natives in the building feeling futuristic, spaceship to Turtle Island travel through dimensions.” While academic discourse surrounding Afrofuturism and its intersection with music exhibits a substantial body of scholarship that centers Black futures (Parmar 2009; Brock 2020; Kubatanna 2023), Indigenous futurism remains notably underexplored within the realm of music studies. Anishinaabe author Grace Dillon first used the term “Indigenous futurism” in 2012, contending that, “all forms of Indigenous futurisms are narratives of…recovering ancestral traditions in order to adapt in our post-Native Apocalypse world” (Dillon 2012). Adopting an Afrofuturist framework, Indigenous futurism interrogates the binary between tradition and modernity, insisting on direct connections between past and future. I argue that Indigenous hip hop futurism roots itself in liberatory and technological contexts, connecting Natives to ancestors and future generations while strengthening relationships to land and decolonial pursuits within the Indigenous technosphere. As exhibited in SouFy’s hook, spaceships, time travel, and notions of the multiverse bridge futuristic technology and ancient knowledge through Native slipstreams (Dillon 2012). Drawing on Indigenous conceptions of time, space, and place, I contend that SouFy and other Indigenous hip hop futurist artists are storytellers that reside within the traditions of both hip hop and science fiction (Little Badger 2020; Whitehead 2020; Minosh Pyle 2020), building the infrastructure amongst future generations “from the city to the rez” (SouFy 2023).

Inuit in Canada often identify three arts practices that are integral to their culture: katajjaq (vocal games), qilautiqtuq (drum dancing) and ajaja (personal songs with drums). However, contact with European whalers beginning in the 1800s, the arrival of missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century and the establishment of Indian Residential Schools in the 1950s added multifaceted layers of Western influences on Inuit music. Furthermore, the convergence between Indian Residential Schools and access to the radio in the 1960s and 1970s intensified Western influences. To further disrupt cultural connections between Inuit children and their communities, residential school administrators encouraged Inuit to listen to the radio. As a result, many adolescent Inuit (now elders) were exposed to and consumed Western popular music from a young age; so much so that many Inuit consider country and rock and roll to be just as essential as katajjaq. While scholars have written about Indigenous popular music, Inuit contributions remain under researched. This paper examines how Indian Residential Schools and the radio deeply affected Inuit music making between the 1960s and 1980s. I argue that the emergence of Inuit rock during this time is an early example of Inuit resistance. Through close readings of songs by Willie Thrasher and William Tagoona, I contend that Inuit rock allowed residential school survivors to scrutinize their lived experiences of settler colonialism. In so doing, they challenged assimilative practices by strengthening and forging new connections between their experiences, culture, and community. This research then, furthers knowledge about Inuit popular music.

In this paper, I present a close reading of Inuit experimental vocal artist Tanya Tagaq’s music video “Tongues” (2021), putting it in dialogue with the work of Anishinaabe thinkers and creators. I propose that Tagaq creates a productive site of refusal wherein she rejects the settler gaze and centers Indigenous philosophies of relationality. Rather than allowing settler audiences to consume her art passively, Tagaq participates in what Dylan Robinson terms “structural refusal.” From this refusal, Tagaq creates a generative space where she enacts Indigenous ways of being and relating.

Tagaq communicates a specifically Inuit soundscape through katajjaq (Inuit throat singing) and Inuktitut (language). Nevertheless, the English lyrics of her song and the music video’s imagery resonate with broader Indigenous audiences. Putting Tagaq’s work in dialogue with Anishinaabe musicians (Tall Paul, Samian), visual artists (Chief Lady Bird), and scholars (Geraldine King), I show how Tagaq’s underlying message resonates with efforts to restore Indigenous ideas of the body, sex, and love as central to reclaiming sacred relationships to land and community.

“Tongues” performs an entanglement of land, language and body, uniting them through the tongue. The video’s human Earth-mouth makes human-environment relationships explicit, and the climax of the music video stages the reclamation of sexuality unburdened by shame. In her construction of identity as a modern Inuk woman, Tagaq centers the body and sexuality; the grotesque imagery of the tongue refuses objectification. Rejecting the settler gaze, Tagaq centers Inuit lifeways, echoing broader efforts to reclaim Indigenous ways of being and relating.