Sharing Space with Dr. Roberta Bondar

Episode 6: Susan Aglukark, singer/songwriter and healer

• Dr. Roberta Bondar • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Singer/songwriter and healer Susan Aglukark talks to Dr. Bondar about harnessing the way her brain works through the creative process, destigmatizing mental health, climate change in the Arctic, and reconciliation.

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Roberta Bondar:

The celebration of the 30th anniversary of my historic spaceflight continues back here on earth with this podcast series Sharing Space with Dr. Roberta Bondar. Now this is an opportunity for you to join me while I explore life, creativity, flexibility and change with my guests, some of the most famous and globally well respected Canadians. In each of these podcasts, we will hear a special guest express personal views about the present and the future. And if you have a deep passion for exploration and inquiry, whether it's through the arts, sciences, or athletics for example, the storytelling in this series is for those who wander and those who wonder. Join me now to explore how some of the most notable Canadians exercise their creativity and curiosity in a wide array of fields. Unlike those of the night sky, these stars are within reach. So let's tap into their energy as they enlightened us. Depth of thought with technical precision that is layered over a calmness transcending a single culture describes the songwriting and singing of our Susan Aglukark. Arctic Rose was the beginning, a masterful album drawn from her life of uncertainty, and released the year that I flew in space in 1992. More albums have followed right up to the present day. Susan does not shy away from difficult societal issues, having experienced dark days in her own past. A multiple Juno Award winner, and recipient of the Governor General's lifetime Artistic Achievement Award. She writes and sings with themes of hope, inspiration and encouragement, and infuses our lives through the expression of love and connection to Inuit culture and tradition. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Susan Aglukark reaches out to youth in the North, addressing complex health crises of food security and supply and suicide, while promoting the environment and education. She believes and encourages calmness and healing as approaches to improving one's mental health. Her laugh and smile are infectious, and she has much to teach us. Let's begin. Hey, Susan, welcome to the podcast Sharing Space. And I think it's just fantastic you're able to join us today. And, and I haven't seen you for a few years now, what have you been up to in the interim?

Susan Aglukark:

Well, during the pandemic year, I've been using the time to sink my teeth into the things we've put on the back burner. So I've done some writing, I've done a lot of art, a lot of painting, which is my kind of free time hobby. So I've spent a lot of time on that. But also, it's given me some time to really have real focus time on my own charity. So we've spent the last year and a half, just finishing up a few things that we needed to finish up with that work. So and it's all connected, all the work I'm doing is connected. So it's been it's been good time with the pandemic. Leading up to that we were working on a new album, which we've of course, finished, and it's ready to go and started the next one. So yeah, we've been using our time.

Roberta Bondar:

What's the name of your new album?

Susan Aglukark:

So the new one, new one, that's the one that's been done for a while, is called The Crossing. And that one slated to release January, early February. And then the second one, I'm simply calling [word in Inuktitut], which is Collaborations because it's this year's been an interesting year of people reaching out to, to, to do some collaborations, and I've never done that, so this is kind of a new area for me.

Roberta Bondar:

That's it's impressive. I mean, your, your command of the art sphere is so impressive how you've been folding different types of art into your life to communicate certain ideas and feelings. And before I get into some of your paintings, I'm really fascinated by that. Could you tell us a little bit about your charity and the kinds of things that you've been doing? I understand a little bit about it, because we've been we've been in touch about food in the North. But could you give us a, some broad strokes about it, or maybe give us some examples of the kinds of things that you feel are important that you've been working on?

Susan Aglukark:

Yep. So our work with the Arctic Rose Foundation, essentially, is exploring ways that we can create better and accessible basic mental health supports. One of the one of the ways that I launched this, this idea and in our first project we call the Messy Book Project, is how I came to understand the basics of my own career and belonging to it. A lot of the early years of my career were very scary because there's a lot of pieces I didn't have, which I learned later are basic things that we should all have equal access to. And I didn't and very fortunate that I ended up with really great friends and really great moments of meeting wonderful people, a lot of little snippets of things I learned from those connections and how they changed. Fundamentally, my perception of the industry and my role in the industry, the potential career in the broader industry piece. And so there's a, there's a thing that I took away from that experience, and it's called[word in Inuktitut] is the root word for Fear, Emotional Fear. And so when I came to understand this fear, it became one of the major turning points in my relationship with myself as a writer, songwriter, artist, myself on stage all of these things. So I take that basic concept now and apply it into the development of all the different parts of our Messy Book Program of our work in the Arctic Rose Foundation. So essentially, what we do is in the Messy Book Program, we explore expressive arts therapy. And we're introducing, for example, emotional intelligence disconnects, and how do we reconnect them in in in their children and in their relationship with themselves in their learning, or education, for example, or their relationships with their friends, all these things. So that's the Messy Book Program, where it's expanded to, is to run the Messy Book Program, we've had to explore and create capacity locally. And that means we partnered and hired high school students, we've trained them to run the, the Messy Book Program, which is an every day after school program. And so in the training of these high school students is in and of itself, a basic mental health support. So all these things are turning into these other really great exciting side projects and explorations. And so that's, that's happening also. So it's, um, yeah, and it's really stemming from I knew several years into my career, I want to be a singer, I want to be an artist, I want to do this, this is what my heart's calling is, and how lucky am I that all these early opportunities have brought me to this, this place of knowing and then sharing what I've learned from from, from that experience, and turning it into this, these programs in the Arctic Rose Foundation.

Roberta Bondar:

Wow, that is impressive. I mean, there's so many bits and pieces of that, that we could delve into. But I do want to talk about the various things that come out of having an idea that one works forward, because one has this frame of reference that you start with, and then gradually things come in that actually make it a larger principle that to work on. And then it has all this way of, of going to areas that that one wouldn't have thought about. Now, for example, when when you talked about painting, what kinds of things are in your head while you're painting? Is it a, like is it a cleansing time for you? Or is it a time when when you when you focus on things that you've been thinking about?

Susan Aglukark:

So what I learned in the early years is I have a frantic brain, as I'm sure you figured out by now.[Laughter} And it doesn't rest easy. And there was a time when I thought that there was something wrong with me because I can't rest my brain. And then about about 10 years ago, I came to look at it from from a different place to to attack it, if you will, from a different place and and harness it what why is your brain like that? And why don't you just figure out how to use that energy. So I started the painting. And what I've discovered in researching the different artists and painters is we're not all the same, thank God. And so I landed on abstract painting. And I love I love everything I've learned about abstract painting, because even my painting is frenetic. And in the process of discovering the different types of painting is my quiet place. I found that the more I explored abstract painting, for example, and it starts off very frenetic. And then I realized that then you add another layer and you start finding a picture in there, that my life is very much like that. And that's why abstract painting appeals to me so when I look at the way that I'm painting, I don't I don't I don't approach it anymore in that I'm looking for the calm place. I'm just getting there just get in there and and put it all out there and then you'll slowly peel back the layers and you'll find the thing you're looking for in that in that process. So I you know there was a time when I and I still do to a smaller degree, certainly not when I the way I used to even in the approach of songwriting just because English is a second language, for example, I would just practically write, write, write, write, then I would go to my, my producer/collaborators and say does this makes sense, does this, can I put these two English words together, or do they work. Versus now and I realize, in I'm collaborating on another song and another project right now. And even in those conversations, I realized this other writer whom is an incredible writer, is the same as I am in terms of I just put it all out there, and then we'll just, we'll just clean it up. So I've learned all my approaches, in all the work, I do have that one thread, I am fanatic, and that's okay. And you'll find a calm place in the process of finding and peeling back those layers. And I, I've learned to do that with my painting. And it's really just, it's, it's really just finding that that calm place in all the frenetic-ness of our world. And that's what I've learned to do with my painting.

Roberta Bondar:

And with that, in that calm place, when, when you're painting, do you consciously, or is there a conscious or subconscious singing in your head of music, or humming? Or bringing that kind of energy that are in some of your pieces into into the art do you find? Do you find your brushstrokes are different when you do that? Maybe you could, could you just talk a little bit about because I it's fascinating.

Susan Aglukark:

Yes, and no, sometimes I will put music on. And I'll just sit in the space. And, and not that I let the music guide me but I, I let the music create the tone of the room. And depending on I guess where I am that day, personally, then then that will, that tone of the room or myself will guide the painting. But it's it you know, more often than not, what I do is when I know I have a project deadline, I will use the morning to either paint or create a space get the space ready. So there's two things I do, I'll either go and finish a painting I've started and that clears up my mind to go to my deadline. So it could be a writing deadline. Or because painting has become my incentive, what I'll do is I'll prep the room and get a canvas ready or get a project ready, set it aside and say you don't touch that until you've met that deadline. [Laughter] It's become my starter or the place that I finish and it sets it sets the space up in my mind to go back to the. And it clears the mind. So pieces fall into place on this deadline, while I'm painting.

Roberta Bondar:

I find it interesting that I, when people have asked me with the photography I'm doing, well have you ever thought about painting. Well there was a point many, many years ago where I did a painting of the cottage because I knew my parents always wanted to have a normal painting of the cottage. I must say I was very, not very good at it.[Laughter] But at least I enjoyed being out of out of doors and I enjoyed looking at things and trying to look at shapes and colors and all that. That adds to an, the abstract view that that we have. And I sometimes think about when people use the term mental health sometimes use it in a very negative term. But mental health means our health, in terms of how we view things emotionally and express things. I look at any form of art, maybe not so much science, I could speak from that that field with some knowledge. But I think with art, it does provide us a way of breathing, a way of trying to connect some of the pieces as you say, the calm space to try to pull us together. It leads me to go back to what you were speaking to earlier about mental health and some of the things with the Messy Book Program. Whether there are these pathes that that you see that move off that that some of the people who were involved some especially some of the young people, maybe even not so young people I find there are people, every age group I speak to certainly from my medical standpoint and look at how people cope with COVID that there are new things that they're finding or needing that someone needs to actually show them that it's okay to do these things. It sounds to me like the Messy Book Project is a way of opening people to different avenues they may not have approached before.

Susan Aglukark:

Absolutely and you you know what I've learned to do in our approach. I was just recently in Rankin Inlet. And when I came back home, I, I left there understanding that we always have to be open going into our work. Right now, the Messy book Program is being primarily utilized by middle school aged children and early teen youth. And so I go in there, and I realized that even in the way that we use our language, facilitating language has to be very intentional. So when when we say mental health, the stigma around mental health is that oh, no, they think we need we have where we have problems, and we need help with those mental health problems. And so my takeaway from this last trip, for example, was well, we have to do work in destigmatizing mental health, normalizing our approach in how we create relationships, and supports around mental health. My, my health, for example, and I use my story as an example so that they don't, participants or workers don't feel like they need therapy, as we know, therapy. So when I tell my story, I talked about the the franticness of my brain, and that some of us are just built that way. And that's not a bad thing. But Messy Book offers basic tools to calm the frantic brain. So you don't necessarily have, if you have levels of mental health needs, and they're one to 10 and 10 being the worst, you may be a one or a two, I was certainly one or two for a time, I was five for a time, I was eight for a time. And then I came back down to level five or two or one, and that that's mental health support. But the point being, that we have to destigmatize mental health, especially in our Indigenous communities, and normalize it, because in that language is how they receive it. And they realize, okay, this is normal, I what I'm going through is not a bad thing. It's a normal phase, or a normal stage in my life. And this, these are the tools that will help me cope with my mental health, daily challenges, whatever they are. So that was my takeaway from Rankin and that specific demographic, that age group, and again, the approach is going to be different for grade 12 students, and we're going to have a different approach for young adults, because they are asking for support. And it's going to be different by how we collect that information. And how we create programs from the information we're collecting through observation is very important. And it's different for Indigenous groups.

Roberta Bondar:

And with Indigenous languages, are there traditionally ways of approaching this kind of issue in terms of mental health, is that something that that you can share with us that that has some Indigenous words or basis.

Susan Aglukark:

In the Inuit community, being Inuk, there are traditional Inuit ways of supporting people who needed that extra support. There is a challenge in terms of and we're learning this, what's exciting about what we're creating, in our relationships with the foundation, there are challenges in abstract thinking and abstract approaches versus literal, we take things very literally. So what we're learning and in our learning teaching is in our relationships in in, say, the Messy Book Program and expressive arts therapy, a lot of the work is abstract work. It's abstract thinking, it's, it's being in this space, not necessarily so that you walk away with a tool, but that in the moment that you're there, it's okay, if something happens, it's okay if nothing happens, it's okay if something connects or disconnects. So we're learning to have those relationships with them teaching them how to walk away with okay, being okay not walking away with something. Abstract relationships versus literal, if they come to the room and they need therapy, they think they're going to get a professional in that room that's going to therapize them, I mean, doesn't have to be that way at all. So we're learning this but teaching it as well in these spaces. So it's, it's an interesting place to be, there isn't language per se, it's there. It's being developed, now, as we are experiencing it. As we are creating those relationships. The language is being developed. But traditionally groups of Inuit families, camps before settlement's, would know if somebody needed a little extra support, they would they would offer that extra support. Was that a mental health situation? We don't know? Possibly, most likely it was. And they understood that that person just needed some extra support. And let's figure out how to support them within the means that they had at that in that time. So it was understood. And then they did their they did what they could to create that support. But that's that's changing now that I think what's what's been a challenge is that the need to create those supports has grown exponentially and very fast that we're not keeping up with creating those supports and the language around it. But that's happening now.

Roberta Bondar:

Climate change, could you speak a little bit about maybe the influence that climate change has on the doesn't have to be traditional life in the North, but just life in the North, just living on on some of these pressures that that that people have. I mean, I, I know myself, if a situation changes around the physically, one has to be able to to cope with that somehow. But if it's on a mass scale, like a warming climate, it seems to me that it really can precipitate a very great and very fast increase in some of these needs.

Susan Aglukark:

Right now, watching what's being documented on Facebook, for example, I have access to family in two parts of Nunavut. So the Baffin region and the Qikiqtaaluk region. And lots of friends in the western Arctic as well. We know that we are a month to a month and a half behind, in in our seasonal change. So where we should be feeling well, the ice apparently in one of our lakes, for example, is just now about two to three, three inches thick. That should have been the case a month and a half or two months ago, in this one community. What that means is the effect of that changes the the timing of when a hunter can go hunting, the migration of the caribou, of the fish, everything that Inuit have and need as as sustenance for feeding families, very basic needs. So they don't know what's what's safe right now as hunters to go hunting and what traditionally would have been a hunting space. Is it safe? So everybody is hyper aware that changing. And is it safe? When is it safe? The other challenge right now is because of this delay in the season, in this part of the season, it delays the rest of the seasons as well. So come winter, like December, January when a hunter would go hunting at that time, because there are times of the year when it's safe to hunt the caribou, for example, there are times when it's not. Does that change? And how does that change? So you know that the climate change has definitely affected the Northern communities. And we're talking about communities that are already challenged in terms of basic supports for housing and food insecurity issues. They need the hunter to go hunting, to supplement that food insecurity. And now that's challenged. So it's you know, it has these these triple effects all along the hunting season, the rest of the year, the planning for their year. So there's, there's all these effects right now that everybody is looking at, because the season is a month and a half late, that that's a real reality up there right now.

Roberta Bondar:

I think certainly down here in southern Ontario when I speak to some of my friends, they talk about climate change in the North. The one thing that people are talking a lot about is the water issue in Iqaluit and the kinds of problems that permafrost melting and things leaching back out of the ground water has been frozen, the devastating effects that it can have on a community, it's I think there are things that we're going to find in the years down the road that we wish in this year that we had an answer to so wouldn't happen as badly that that somehow technology, it's not the savior, but if there's some way that we could empower ourselves with a little bit more technology, whether it's trying to assess water quality or assess the delivery of water. I mean I look at all the water bottles that were being delivered to Iqaluit, all the plastic water bottles and think there's got to be a better way. And certainly a lot of other communities that have not had had safe water. It's just the just the things about daily living that we take for granted. When we're in a place, we're surrounded by technology and supposedly safe water here. I think the average Canadian probably just feels that that's everywhere. And I think one of the things that we've been faced with is this reality that no, it's not like that everywhere. But it seems a shame that it has to take something very, very bad, to bring it to people's attention to try to, to grapple with it. Whereas you come from a mindset and a place where you've seen it, and you you feel it and you experience it, and you're trying to, to help with the sequela of it in the communities just in terms of people feeling somewhat about themselves and their place in life and what they what they can do with their lives, that is not going to be shortened because they drink some water that's toxic chemicals in that normally wouldn't be there. I think all of that. I just, I just feel that a lot of us would like to do more than we're doing. Can you help us think about. I'm not separating people in the North, from people in the South. We're all Canadians, as we know, politically right now in the country, that where we all are trying to help each other. But are there things that you could share with us that you feel would be important things that that that we could all do to to help Canadians who are having some issues?

Susan Aglukark:

You know, all the all of the places that we'd go to reactively are, you know, we need we need to keep advocating. And so that means we write letters to our elected officials, I think of Dr. Cindy Blackstock, who successfully managed to get Jordan's Principle, which has been a great funding source for the Arctic Rose Foundation. Why don't we look at more of that kind of and that level of advocating at the federal level? Why don't we spend more time the work that we do Aglukark Entertainment does, in our, in our presentations, an area of focus for us is called correcting the narrative. And at the core of that conversation is when we say and we have these these ongoing conversations surround reconciliation, and this is a word bandied out so much, and we're all kind of like, what does that really mean? So for me, what that means is, I come back to the word[word in Inuktitut], which is the root word for to [word in Inuktitut], to be emotionally afraid, to be in the grips of this emotional fear that I spent all my early years deferring to the ones who know more or better, which were always the white people the [word in Inuktitut] and not used in, in ever, in a in a derogatory way. But that was our reality. And so in the grips of emotional fear, we just defer to the ones who know more, that doesn't mean that they knew better. So they were making, you know, they were making these decisions on behalf of our grandparents, for example, that in the long run, were detrimental to, to their mental health or the way that they live in their community or the habits we've developed in our community. So back to your comment about plastics. I remember really, really clearly I was 12 or 13 years old in Arviat, walking home from school. And there was an elder woman, Mrs. Anuit, who lived on the same block we lived on. So there are six houses on this road. They had the first house we had the last house and she was walking home from the store. So I grabbed one of her shopping bags, and we were walking together and she just simply and matter of factly out of the blue says in Inuktitut "I don't know what the Earth is going to do with this plastic." This is 40 years ago, you know that our seniors and our elders knew that what we were introducing into our lands was not good for our land. And so why didn't we listen to them? 40 years ago. What should we have done differently 40 years ago? I think we are in the grips of a system that was introduced to us early early on, and we don't know how to reverse this. So advocating has to be done meaningfully, effectively and constantly that we have to be aggressively, constantly challenging our elected leaders. Not forget not let it go on the wayside. Have we done that? Of course I feel like we have. Are we, when we look at the situation in Iqaluit, and we're waiting, waiting, waiting for what happened? How did it come to that? What systems weren't in place, knowing what we know, even in the last 10 years, we've known enough to know that there should have been systems in place to protect the Arctic waters and the people from this and yet here we are in 2021. In Canada, with an Arctic community on on, you can't even boil your water advisory, you can't even don't use it, don't shower, don't drink it, don't cook with it. In this day and age, what? What fell through in those internal systems that it came to that point. And then now, that community again dependent on the hunter and the fisher, they probably can't safely hunt or fish next spring and summer, even now, probably because the the the caribou or the fish or the fowl that they would have hunt, the geese that the whatever they're hunting, the ptarmigan has been eating and feeding contaminated land and water. And so now they probably can't even hunt next year. So what systems are in place to supplement that? It's just scary. It's just scary where we're going with all of this. And all I can say is that we have to just keep advocating, and educating, getting our our youth in these positions to be in the positions of leadership, so that we're more better informed by us, for us in the work that has to happen and change in our communities. I hope that answers your questions. But those are the immediate reactions.

Roberta Bondar:

No, it's I remember years ago, I I just get got so upset when I'd see a pop can thrown someone just throw the pop can out. And I remember following, I would never do this, again, given the current climate but about, I don't know, seven years ago, I was following this man, he threw his coke can out of the out of the window of his car, I followed this guy. And he went, he went off into a, he knew I was following him, and he was driving this really expensive car and I would drive my little beat up, Toyota. And I drove right behind him. I picked the tin, I picked the can up. And I drove right behind him and he pretended to go into this driveway I pulled right in behind. [Laughter] I said"Excuse me, I think you dropped something." He says, "Oh, yes, yes thank you," then I backed away. And I. But I mean, I wouldn't do that now because you never know what people are going to do to you. But the idea that that a tree could recycle a pop can to me was ludicrous. And I'd see all this junk in the in the woods. And I used to get upset when back at one of the universities I was involved with, they had me do part of a celebrity run. And there's nothing to me worse than to run around a track trying to get money from people. I mean, do something, running around to track what what what, you know. Go clean up a river, you could do something in the environment. And you're Right. I mean, what are the, how can we not just as as a community at large, but individual communities say okay, well, we've got, we've got to take the responsibility here. If other levels of government are not listening, we've got to prove a point. And it helps us with other groups with advocacy. So we have to leverage the technology we have to make people aware of these issues, so that we not only can educate our own community, but the community at large that also can advocate. So I think your answer is spot on. And I really appreciate you delving into that it's not, it's not easy, because you don't want to be judgmental. But on the other hand, we have to talk about the realities. And we have to talk about some pathes forward. I think doing that doing that all. So then all of this art, this art work that you're doing and all this amazing work that you're doing up in the Northern communities. And you still have time to do some recordings, with the music that you're recording, are these new new songs that have come to you that you're writing. What is the content of these these new pieces?

Susan Aglukark:

They are new songs, and they're inspired by the current climate we're in socially, you know, we talk about and I come back to the word reconciliation, but really, my focus is healing. I've always felt that we've done this incredible work to put publicly what we have always known as Indigenous people. I mean, I've been writing about the challenges in our communities since I first started writing. The Arctic Rose album is all about those challenges. And not much has changed in 30 years. And yet we've we've got access to the Truth and Reconciliation Report, we've seen the work of the inquiry, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women's inquiry, we've seen all that. I love Dr. Blackstock and her work with Jordan's Principle. And so we see the shifting, and all this information that we have access to now. And so what I'm trying to do is one of my projects is called again, I come back to the word [word in Inuktitut] because that's the root word for work together, attack it together. And so one of the projects is creating this team of four people, and it's an ally ship project. So what that means is moving forward as Indigenous people or non Indigenous people, it doesn't mean one without the other, it means we have to find a way to work together, it was never about, for example, Indigenous communities healing and healing only if the non Indigenous are no longer there a part of the equation. Ally ships are important. And so Indigenous, non Indigenous ally ships. And so this team of four is myself with the music, collaborating and mentoring a young up and coming Indigenous artists with an Indigenous choreographer and a non Indigenous fourth person. So we have a team of four right now. And we are working to create dance piece. Because we have beautiful Indigenous choreographers and movement as expression is very important when we're healing. And so then I have a young throat singer, singer on board to help me collaborate in this piece of music, we're creating that we're going to create a dance piece around, and we've got a non Indigenous drama movement teacher that will join the team. And that idea came coming out of what does healing look like in this reconciliation piece. Well ally ships, we have to ensure that in our work moving forward, we're not repeating the problem by saying you and not you. Inclusivity is a critical part of these ally ships. And so that's that's the focus of my work right now. Other songwriting is coming from, well, it's an immediate response to the state of the world, environmentally, actually. So there's another song that I'm collaborating in that is just strictly a reaction to the situation we're living in environmentally. So there's all those things that are inspired by the immediate situations we're in right now globally, and in our country.

Roberta Bondar:

Wow. I don't know what to say, except that I'm going to, I'm just really going to look forward to hearing hearing it all. I saw a clip of you doing some throat singing with with an individual now that was probably I know, three or four years ago, maybe even longer given COVID distorts time. Do you are you interested in that as one of your forms of music? Or do you incorporate that in any of your singing?

Susan Aglukark:

So probably what you saw was a small piece called breaths. And yeah, yeah. And it was part of that part of the award ceremony, the Governor General's Award ceremony and that's one area I really really struggle in actually. I have tried and tried and tried to learn throat singing and I just don't get it. So that that lovely young artist Kathleen Merritt, who was coaching me had to pick the easiest throat singing piece we could find[Laughter].

Roberta Bondar:

It sounded difficult! [Laughter]

Susan Aglukark:

It you know, and it isn't it isn't but this is this is the stuff that excites me is I I've traced it to my trauma. And so we're in this ally ship piece for example, in the drama and movement I've made I've been very clear with our drama coach that I will not dance, I want to dance but I can't dance. So when we talk about trauma, intergenerational trauma, we can trace it. So when I understand why I can't dance and I can't throat sing, I understand why, I know where it's coming from. And then you know, it's just one of those things I walk away from but I can observe and witness and see how beautiful it is when other people do it right. But to answer your question, no. I would love to throat sing and maybe one day I will. Maybe the right set of circumstances will burst it open. I'm just not there yet, I would love to be and I can't be and so we have access to beautiful throat singers that we can work with that become that fill that space in if we need in a creation piece. For me, myself, I can't do it right now.

Roberta Bondar:

I think one of the other allies for many, many people in Canada is the the new Governor General and the prominence that the North plays into everything that she she is whether it's the clothes, whether she's she's actually giving interviews in Inuktitut or whether she's, she's just talking about the pride that she has in the land. I think she is, is a force as well. And it, it's just wonderful to have everyone to look up to, people like you and and Mary Simon to say, hey, you know, there's depth in our country that that we need to protect, we need to advocate for, we need to encourage, we need to support, all those things. It's, it makes us all feel very, very proud of, of accomplishments the accomplishment itself for a personal reason or not. And I think they must feel when people come to your, your sessions that you have, or your workshops, or whatever it is that you're entitling them. These people must feel just fantastic being able to see an accomplished person who is from the North, who has not not strayed from the value system, not strayed from the language, and is trying to cross boundaries with with art, that you don't that it's, it's great to retain one part of a culture but you you expand it, not just across different forms of art, but different different cultures. I just, it's really, it's a great time to be able to see that energy and to be able to do something about it. So I'd like to congratulate you on that.

Susan Aglukark:

Thank you. And absolutely, I think Mary Simon when, when it was announced, it was like this collective exhale, because if there was anyone eminently qualified, it is Mary. She came into the Earth, she came into this world at a time when things were changing for Inuit, but there was still a very strong traditional connection of that generation of Inuit. And she has that, she has that inherently in her. And you feel it with her, even in her company. All these years that I've known her, I feel it in her that that innate Inuk-ness that she she carries. And so when when it was announced, and it was just this, this relief, and this exhale, from the Inuit, for sure, I think from the general Indigenous population.

Roberta Bondar:

I had the privilege of doing a little bit with her because I was chancellor at Trent University. And when Peter Gzowski passed away, she stepped back into that role. So I had some opportunity to speak with her. So when she became Governor General, I wrote her this note. And wow within 10 days, I get a handwritten note back from Mary, which was quite impressive, because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not 1000s, of people congratulating her on on the role that she has that she's taken on.

Susan Aglukark:

Absolutely. And she's just so calm and experienced in the political world. And then her life in the Inuit world, they just are so well, good qualifications for what she's going, she's done, and she's going to do in her role.

Roberta Bondar:

I think it's fantastic. And I just think it's a it's just a great time. And so I'm really pleased to be able to talk to you today. And I just want to say thank you for everything that you continue to do, Susan.

Susan Aglukark:

Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much for this great conversation.

Roberta Bondar:

I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Take good care.

Susan Aglukark:

All right.

Roberta Bondar:

Okay, bye bye. Bye bye. It really is a privilege to engage with other minds and experiences. I would like to thank Susan Aglukark for sharing her thoughts on healing and life with us today. Thank you for joining me for this podcast series Sharing Space with Dr. Roberta Bondar. It was a privilege to converse with David, Buffy, Michael Hayley, Anne, and Susan. They were generous of their time to help me celebrate the 30th anniversary of my spaceflight. Check out this unique creative online anniversary event at www.therbf.org and get your tickets now. All tickets receive a charitable donation receipt with funds going to support the programs of the Roberta Bodnar Foundation. I would love you to join me then stay well and stay safe until another time and space. This is Dr. Roberta Bondar signing off. For now.